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
Seán Street
Breakfast with Michael Longley
River and Fountain
From beyond the window October’s memory
of what summer might have been poured in, and there
was Billie singing God Bless the Child, there was
sun through the apple juice, dazzling the table.
There was Hart Crane, there was Wallace Stevens,
time murmuring and the toast crumbling,
Kunitz, Masefield, Stevens, talk of poets who sang
with you: Heaney, there was Mahon, Muldoon,
the dance of a new poem made, poems
flowing from Pee Wee Russell’s clarinet,
and you said – and the coffee was my witness –
prose is a river, poetry a fountain,
and I knew that because you’d written it, because
I’d long had the text in my head and by heart,
but to hear you say it. To hear you say it…
the table white, silver, a Ghost Orchid there,
Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose. And then it rained,
but Billie sang I’ll find you in the morning sun,
so Autumn resumed, playing still-bright notes that
fell through harvest light, prisms in every one.
Caroline Maldonado
Foraging for the Ideal
The lights of Macerata, Loreto, Treia
pulse across each hilltop town
and fireflies
swing their lamps
over the earth
to echo the stars.
There’s the scent of
laurel, rosemary, lavender
wild mint and fennel.
L’amore che move il sole
e l’altre stelle warms the
perfume of my lover’s skin.
I follow the poets
– so help me –
searching through
the emptiness without
& the darkness within
through villages atilt
after the quake,
through mud that slides
Senigallia’s town to the Adriatic,
in a city through blackshirts
who chant their presence,
arms raised in the Roman salute.
We forage here,
we forage there
for l’ideale che illumina.
More Guest Poems
Stuart Handysides
You might think we would talk after Absent in the Spring. Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) A desert station home for several daysno view to speak of, only space our books already read, no outside worldno view to speak of, only space. One day the train will just...
B. Anne Adriaens
Pietà, inverted I meet you halfwayacross the wasteland of your mindto find you plonked on the ground,drawing circles in the dust.I sit down behind you,wrap myself around your frame,so small I could doubtyou gave birth to me – you,this shell I’m holding and rocking...
Graham Mort
Talking to a Spider in the Bath(January, 2022) There you are in the corner of my eyescurrying sideways a black atom, a stain against enamela venomous intruder or is that me, stepping into theshower’s caul of steam? I notice how careful we areof each other a kind of...
Regi Claire
When it is Time The beeches were the last to leave. Too stately maybeor too full of themselves they stayed on, blazed morefiercely copper in the sun, soaked up dusk until they inkedto darkness. Then they threw their arms around the stars,called them theirs, their one...
Christopher M James
Traces Isaan, the vast rice-growing plateau in north-east Thailand Endless paddiesstencil the land, enmesh the living.Their waters smudge a setting sun’s inks. A handhas wiped leftover pigmentson a cloth of sky. A motorcyclescratches the landfor epidermic dust,...
Nicola Warwick
Launching the Moon Does it really take two hands to toss it skywards? You’d think it could be done in the space of an owl’s blink, but you’re wrong. You cup this glossy thing, roll it over and over in your palm, hold it to the light and it’s a crystal ball crammed...
Robert Stein
Finis This is it: the final leaving,The stars loitering and out of luck.The dice ceased rolling. All numbers up. This is the gone at the end of going,The rotted apple after knowing.The box nailed. The straw. The shut. The trap tripped, sprung through and up.The...
Frances Sackett
Free Spirit Bordering the road,but theatrical, the wayit looked like someonehad planted a gardenrich in wildness. A rocky outcropwith ragwort and willowherb,vetch and wild thyme –the hills beyond mantled with sun. I scatter you here,watch as a wisp of smokelifts along...
Sue Spiers
Jealous of the Listening Air She tells me her deafness is more complete,no sound penetrates her ears, masks are difficulties. Imperfect silence of devices switched off but stilloutside chunters; car engines, birdsong, the wind. Conversation in another room with no...
Douglas Cole
The Lighthouse Keeper In this season he knowswe are smaller than wind,as the storm blast singsthrough the boarded glass. He opens his doorto the sting and stab of rain,making his way as he leansunder the arc-lamp light. In the radio house he listensto distress codes a...
Cathra Kelliher
we sat holding the lamb we sat holding the lambRichard and Ithe field soft about uscold coming on below the ash treesand the farm buildingssilent as flint through the arrow slits how slight it wasand how meagre the pullof its miniature mouth on my fingera smear of...
Anthony Lawrence
The Moonlit Lakes of John Atkinson Grimshaw have all the hallmarks of ice, when seen througha hawthorn hedge or drystone wall,and you’d be forgiven, the way a witness,driven to description, not of a man,but of animals on the surface of the moon,is forgiven for seeing...
Patrick Osada
Rooks Each evening they appear at duskin ones and twos –return from distant foraging.Flapping untidy wings in laboured flight,they circle,gathering as a cawing group,heading for their roost in Hazelwood. Today, nest building in the tallest treesthat screen the...
Yasmin A. Hussain
Treasure Chests Dad decides to give us pocket money.Mum decides it’s better saved. She buys tinmoney boxes with painted timber panels,crossbands of brass and a central padlock. She holds out the chests as cash is passedfrom Dad to us into the slots. Eventually,mum...
Leo Boix
A Latin American Sonnet CXCVI In a dense forest of the Gran Chaco stretch, ‘the hunting land’,Argentina’s largest known jaguar–the Qaramta–is on high patrol,it’s after giant anteaters, tapirs, capybaras, peccaries and standscrouched down by the riverbed, alert,...