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
Roberta Dewa
Edward Burra: Never Tell Anybody Anything
In the end
I gave up on people, my layered clowns,
my boxers’ lips, my stroke-struck faces. Instead
I painted their standing gravestones, the long slicks
of their tracks across the landscape. Sometimes,
despite my best attempts, their limbs
would break the soil: the ricket
legs of pylons, the bloom of mouths
on the fronts of trucks, soft bones splitting
the taut skin of a grey snake river. Slowly,
while my hand thinned and dried around the brush,
I rendered down their bodies into great stones
whose roots leaked out into a silent
landscape.
Then there was only what
there had always been. The paint, the paper
laid out flat along the table. Hardboard
at the window, shuttering the populated view.
The water in the glass jar, darkening.
Edward Burra (1905-1976) was known for his vivid paintings of the 1920s and later cosmopolitan society. In later life his health confined him to painting in his room.
Martin Reed
Red Hares
When I think of the hare
some raggedy, angular grace
races through my mind.
It comes unlooked for
when 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 shadows.
And it may be years
before I see one again,
coming to us down a lane,
picking a way before slowed traffic,
high banks lowering on either side.
It stops and then comes on again,
a remembered wilderness in its eye,
bringing back the hares of childhood
under pylons, fizzing cables.
Before sun sank and ghosted the field,
we squinted to catch a final glimpse,
their run over hummocks of fiery light.
More Guest Poems
Peter Lockhart
Winter in these parts We lug paving slabs onto wheelie bins,Coax the smaller animals into the spare room,Sling frayed hawsers over outhouses and hen coops.Glacial swamps appear from underground.We cradle our children from school, weight them downWith rocks, free up...
Liz Adams
apple blossom if I were to disappear from here, beneaththe wing of the day, where the apple blossomsemerge a whitish pink, and the bee hovers mesmerised – where the hellos gather upthen spill open like flowers, and the beeretreats as the light fades, the white petals...
D. A. Hickman
The Dreamer’s Song We wish, we worry, we long to conquer things,but is the world stage ours to impose on like perpetual star gazers, never satisfied or contentwith a spinning planet that needs our care? What is it about the wild storm inside? Fuellingour edginess, we...
Anthony Head
Angels My Angels don’t answer. They never do. Sources disagreeon how many each of us has, but often have I pleadedfor mine to show themselves or leave at least some evidence.Never a whisper or sign, no sudden ruffling air on a windlessday, no bright light at the end...
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...