Tempo of Colour is the second poetry collection from Annie Ellis. It was published in print in 2024 and was launched on Zoom as an online audio book published by Wildfire Spoken on 31 May 2025. Access is available here.
Annie started writing poetry seriously in January 2014. Her first book Nature at a Cost, was released in February 2021. She has had poems published in eight anthologies and in Dawntreader, Snakeskin, and Wildfire Words.
Annie has read at Cheltenham Literature Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Winchcombe Literature Festival, Evesham Literary Festival, and Evesham Festival of Words. She is also Lead Sponsor of Wildfire Words and facilitates monthly poetry-reading sessions at Cheltenham Library.
Annie read a selection of poems from Tempo of Colour at an online book launch in November 2024. Supporting her were readings of her poetry by Alicia Stubbersfield, Ben Ray, Josephine Lay, Kate Copeland, and Nigel Kent, who read a poem of Annie’s and one of their own.
Orders for Tempo of Colour
Click here to order the online AUDIO edition of Tempo of Colour.
Praise for Tempo of Colour
“These poems are at once inspired and inspiring: re-interpreting artworks and experiences alike in a fresh and invigorating way and challenging the reader to look longer and find new perspectives on familiar views. From Claud Monet’s train stations and prehistoric flies, it seems no subject cannot be illuminated by Ellis’ expert storytelling voice and inquisitive eye as she paints with words”.
Ben Ray Poet, reader, reviewer, workshopper, author of The Kindness of the Eel
“In this collection of strongly-felt poems Annie Ellis conjures vignettes of sensory language that allow the reader to experience the joys and tribulations of a life well-lived. The poems are often responses to artwork and the poet employs a pleasing variety of ways to inhabit the chosen pieces. We are invited to share this intense engagement so that we may feel quite differently about how to view a painting. The poems are particularly effective in creating atmosphere – often unexpectedly as in ‘Homecoming’ where the careful choice of language gives us an unsettling picture of a ‘homecoming’. These poems, however, are imbued with hope, in part because of Annie Ellis’s extraordinary ability to express her powerful connection with nature: the seasons, the landscape and the minutiae of the natural world so that ladybirds are both awe-inspiring and frightening. This is a collection for our times and should be read to show us it is possible, despite everything, ‘to start again’.”
Alicia Stebbersfield Poet and tutor, author of The Yellow Table
“Living in such a visual world our most accessible sense, sight, can become tired and jaded. Annie Ellis’ Tempo of Colour is the perfect tonic to awaken us to the visual spectacles that are available to us in natural and urban environments if only we took the time to look. Ellis has a painter’s eye for composition and colour. Together with a variety of ekphrastic poems, the poems in this collection make a veritable gallery of landscapes expertly painted with a rich palette of words, images and forms.”
Nigel Kent Poet and reviewer, author of Fall.
Following are some of the poems in Tempo of Colour with audio.
City Palette
Moon shines through tears.
Colours blur as passing rain
mingles them in its watery palette.
Slates and stone shine.
Feet splash, send out ripples
across tinted pools.
An orange aura from streetlamps
reflects in the shadows.
The river throws off its diamond coat.
Its dark depths catch the mood.
Advertising boards
flash their neon lights
beat out a tempo
red, blue, green, yellow,
green, blue, yellow, red.
Market Day
After ‘Market Scene, Northern Town, (1939)’ by L. S. Lowry
Walking right
walking left.
Matchstick arms
matchstick legs.
Men stand tall
hats on heads.
Long skirts keep
ladies warm.
Women chatter
watch their children.
Three dogs follow
one on a lead.
People serve
people buy.
People wait
stand in queues.
Stalls under cover
factory watches.
Chimneys belch
smoke to the sky.
Crows
After ‘Wheatfield with Crows’ by Vincent van Gogh
Like black thoughts in my mind
they gather, over the golden husks
of wheat ripening in the sun.
Wings outstretched, they fly
towards clouds in a turbulent sky.
I can almost hear them calling.
A path leads them through the stalks
grass grows at its edges
keeps the muddy tracks in check.
Paint with Song
I squeeze a tube of paint
cover my palette
with a rainbow of colours.
A tune hums in my mind.
In my hand, the brush
dances to the music.
It swings with the tempo
turns my canvas into
a vibrant scene of movement.
The words of the song
swirl in bright hues
finish my picture.
Impressimo
Pissaro chose the colours
Degas bought me oils
Manet gathered my brushes
Sisley gave his easel.
Clean canvas came from Renoir
Monet handed me his pallette .
I sat down to paint.
Red, yellow, blending orange
a crimson ball, which side is west?
White clouds edged grey
blue-streak darts of purple and pink.
Black spots fly in above the horizon.
Thor nudges my hand
sends a thunderbolt.
Sky darkens, clouds cover my sun.
Blues and greys begin to merge.
Heavy rain washes it all away.
With turpentine
I wipe away all teardrops
to start again.
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Following are some of the poems in Annie’s first book Nature at a Cost.
Nature – at a Cost
Man-made clouds of steel
drop acid rain,
destroying forest masses,
polluting the air we breathe.
Farmers use pesticides,
killing bees that pollinate.
When they have gone,
there’ll be no food
in four years’ time.
Chimneys shoot out smog,
filled with dangerous gasses,
send a foggy atmosphere,
into rain-torn cities.
A mighty tanker hits a rock,
its belly ripping open,
spilling dark blood,
into a relentless sea.
Icebergs stand mighty,
crash into deep blue,
sinking bears and penguins,
into an unknown world.
The oceans grow a plastic soup,
stifling the gut of those who eat.
It ties them up so they die on the tide
and rot on the rise of the waves.
Burning Bright
Your paws dance, leaving a smokey smell,
you don’t need to stalk for prey.
Blazing a lava flow behind your tail,
everywhere you touch scorches the ground.
You roll in the dry grass
sending sparks to ride on the wind,
until out of control they grab at life
turning wood to ash.
Your amber eyes flicker, feeling the rage,
with a roar the wind screams back.
Everything turns black like the stripes
on your golden coat.
Ripples
It was always the ripples
that came first when you arrived.
Your head bobbing up,
then down you would dive,
your body slip-streaming,
bending and cavorting, paws outstretched
for a certain pebble.
The surface water would break
somewhere down stream,
where I would catch you on your back
tossing the stone,
beckoning me to play.
Your sleek brown pelt glowed
smooth as the water’s skin.
The sun casts diamonds on the water.
You would chase them
into the edge of the river bank
where reeds and bulrushes grew.
Now when I look for patterns
your head never shows.
Ducks bring the movement
of water to me now.