Guest Poems

Raising the Spirit Always such an unsettling time of year,Christmas with its fake joviality departed, thoughseasonal lights still blink from nearby gardens andabandoned Christmas trees lie forlornly atthe roadside, drenched by the incessant rain.Meanwhile the new year...

Aftermath We’d gone to Dublin in search of artand found William Orpendispatched to record the Great War, all those boys in muck and mire across French countrysidethe gallery full of pink, land and sky in pastel shades,not the colours you expect of brutal conflict....

Edward Burra: Never Tell Anybody Anything In the endI gave up on people, my layered clowns,my boxers’ lips, my stroke-struck faces. InsteadI painted their standing gravestones, the long slicksof their tracks across the landscape. Sometimes,despite my best attempts,...

Red Hares When I think of the haresome raggedy, angular graceraces through my mind. It comes unlooked forwhen chatting of nothing,rounding an August cornfield hedge, up and away across sharp stubble,square to the ground in an upright scurry,arcing its route to distant...

Thoughts on Crater 308 …io nol feci Dedalo…Dante's Inferno 29:116 It is freedom we sail to. Or this is our story. Who gets to flywhen the winds are not hers to control? Yet, there is nocoastline, nor even a sea. Only mind. And, when the wax melts, pesanteur. In the...

Amongst the Rubble from a photograph by Lee Miller All colour is bleached from the landscape.Only grey dust, ash falling, dereliction.The children sit in the rubble, face in hands,horrified that their homes have gone.The boy, eldest of the three,is creased with...

After a Concert II But music does not always unite.Armies clash on through the night,Ignorant, in aesthetic spite.Brahmsians, Wagnerians brawl,Trash composers, concert hall.Igor Stravinsky’s Spring RiteProvokes all Paris to riot!Mods and rockers rev and roast:‘There’s...

Is it Crazy to Wish them Happiness? Some friends don’t get angry in flaming emojisor start nonsensical fights with others, voice their disagreements in no uncertain termsor claim superior knowledge of diverse subjects. They don’t much like things. OK, they never like...

Tennis Club Indoor Courts aquarium worldseen through thick glasssubterranean silence four-limbed fishstrange white fishin a green and white world the walls are light green on topdraped on the bottomwith dark green cloth dark green flooris subdivided and outlinedby...

Anglezarke As Edward Thomas his Adlestropso I my Anglezarke,but with this difference:for him it was the nameon the station signand the tranced afternoon;for me it is the namethe rest clean goneconjures the feeling,but there must have beenwater, woods, fields, for...

Saint with Accoutrements after ‘Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table’ by Harold Gilman All spotless. Some objects we might deemespecially significant:the glistening tea pot, pristine cupslustrous milk bowl, the best surely.We inhale diverse aromas:odour of home-made...

Car Coat Through all the subtle chicanes of his existence in the 1960s,It was his constant companion –That car coat redolent of hairpin bends and handbrake turns,Bearing him along shopping parades and in and out of supermarkets,Evoking pine-clad mountains and Alpine...

Back to Nature i.m. J.S. You liked to sleep outat the edge of your gardenunder a scatter of starstucked into your bivouacon a bed of leavessoothed by a soft breezedrift over the South Downsthe smell of honeysuckleafter rain the rustleof hedgehogs in the compostto wake...

Horse A pool of shadowShapes the lonely placeWhere the old horse stands.He shakes his head. Remote fromCows, sheep, people,It seems farming proceedsAround, beyond him. His tufty fetlocks apeThe head-heavy cow parsley,Hair grass, oval sedgeUnheeded at the field’s edge....

On Stage Small spillages of lightare gathered on the woodland floor.Invisible strings tie themto the matrix of branches above. Sun, looking down through the canopy,has assembled them and standsas director, while a light breezetakes on the choreography. To their...