Guest Poems
We love to read your poetry and, even though we receive over 1,000 poems per month, we always take time to read every single one.
A few of the poems we especially enjoyed and which were selected for publication in our Journal are reprinted below.
For more information, please see our Submissions page.
Guest Poems
Denise Bennett
The Table
You made the coffee table long before
I was on the scene, aged thirteen, a term’s work
in the carpentry class, as yet the names
of your wife and children uncarved in your heart;
young to master the music of your tools:
bit and brace, mallet, plane, drill and chisel,
to learn the skill, mystery of the grain;
to sand and saw, precision of the dovetail.
When later, our children began to walk
and fall, used it for support, you buttered
their bruises, covered corners with padded cloth;
turned your strong hands to fort and doll’s crib.
I never thought, you said yesterday,
of a wife and family, how it might be used.
For fifty years it has graced our sitting room
felt the rough and smooth of our lives,
lustre and shine. Quiet evenings we sit now
at our coffee table, your gifted hands in mine.
Fred Beake
Spring Returns
By the narrow high-hedged lane to Holne;
and then up over the moor to see the snowdrops at St Raphael’s!
The gale rocks us; and the rain slaps the windscreen,
but you can glimpse black rocks of tor and combe.
Then down Three in One to the valley of the river;
and the storm suddenly pauses.
The river is beyond its banks, a great seething white.
Wild bulls of Bashan have beset me round.’ slips into my mind.
But will the snowdrops be out at St Raphael’s?
It is what we have come for. They may well not be there.
Sure enough, the notice says, ‘Snowdrops out next week.’
Disappointment! But we pull on to the gravel.
We may as well get out and taste the calm of this wild ancient place.
One rather posh car is already there.
The well drenched owner changes his shoes, and says. ‘If you have come
for the snowdrops they will be coming later.’
‘We can still visit the chapel.’ I mutter back, embarrassed.
But as soon as we open the gate snowdrops are visible.
We feel joy, and mockery at one who would not look.
Just a few yards in the snowdrops are multitudinous.
More Guest Poems
David Ball
To those who will come after us after Bertolt Brecht who will work longer to pay off the debtswe have accumulated, rememberhow many things we had to buy,how many interesting things there were to do,how many places in the world to visit.The cars, in which we went...
Kim Moore
And As When And as when the houses of Pompeiwere covered in ash, heavy enoughto cause buildings to collapse, and the pyroclastic flows,mixtures of lava blobs and gasran through the city faster than a horse could run,the horses trapped in harnessin the stable, bodies...
Alicia Byrne Keane
Sceach / Uncommon Knowledge The last days of January lap & settlebut, twice now, I have heard birdsat dusk. The skylight that slantson the landing of my parents’ houselooks unfamiliar for a second:some things are seen and seen again.Dust-mauve, that swatheof clear...
Ben Banyard
Car Boot Sale Stall as a Metaphor For Life Do you turn up at 8am, front of the queue,car full of desirable items from an elderly relativewhich savvy buyers peer at through cupped hands,eyes creased, noses fogging the glass,clammy at the thought of bagging a Clarice...
Nick Pearson
Water He spends fifteen minutes bringing stuff in,makes himself at home on the bathroom flooras if he’s arrived at a favourite camp site. I hear him thinking behind the door,his expertise the commodity of silence. He reminds me of a person I’ve seen before,a...
Chiara Salomoni
Heartwood Sheltered by young cypressesand thick-leaved olive trees,a plum tree stands in my family garden. The knobby branches hold clustersof round, juicy plums in summerso heavy they twist. The smiling crop persists for a month at least;the taste is so sweet, it...
Myra Schneider
Brussel Sprouts When the February sky is weighty with clouds and the wind,a ferocious animal, knocks over fences and rickety sheds,rushes rubbish down streets, rocks trees madly,tears off their branches and crashes any it can to the ground, when the paper is packed...
Martyn Crucefix
‘when’ whenlike a falling flower-print cotton dress has dropped its round spoor in the breathy silence...
Michael Henry
The Brownfields of England This “Go-Between” of a summerthe heatwave’s a marqueand hours and days repeat themselves like a slo-mo film. This chameleon summera hare jogging in a fieldturns out to be a man ...
Martin Reed
Finisterre The lawn is browning, hydrangeas are leached,colours dried to taffeta,summer fading early. Parched.Last night we left a saucer of waterfor linnets who gather on the telegraph wire;insects have drowned in it overnight. Through a gap in the ferns beyond the...
Jennie E. Owen
Advice on Caving for Survivalor Marriage as an Extreme Sport Caving is a polarising sport: underground/marriageis one of those places you’re either happy or you’re not. As the leader, you will have to take control. Mistakescould rapidly escalate a situation into...
Simon Jackson
The Light You are composed of heavenly light and shade,arms raised like Caravaggio’s Saint Paulin his Conversion on the Road to Damascus.Your hands reach into the surgeon’s light.I am relegated to the shadowslike Saul’s servant, holding the horse’s head,a role of...
Ali Blythe
Still, still So being in loveis a lake. The worldturns upside down. We shatter itwhen we dive in. How darkit had to become. To see the unnumberedsparks on each shook swell. To feel their goldhooks fixed in us.
Christine Tainsh
Magritte The surreal was always problematic,shape-shifting and strangelike a helium balloonthrough melted stratospheresand haunting melodies stuck on a soft grooveand always lilting and lifting beyond itbut the artist chose itfor someone always has to bereaching above...
John Arnold
Footnotes My sock, turned inside outamong the laundry –woolly pile, soft to touch. So this is what my feet see,feel, as they walk my ways;then, pressure off, relax as I sit: nothing to concern them,no worries over money or relationships;cocooned from a harsh cold...