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

Winifred Mok

Winifred Mok

Grave Sweeping

Every Ching Ming, April showers weep
misty tears across the land, seeping
into gaps of loss. Gifts of paper energise
the spirits (a suit, a watch, a house) as warping
flames consume ingots, paper-gold flecks on the verge
of a hot red tin: the borderline where we grieve
the years gone. The pastel rain
renders a little forgetting, as ageing
aunts sweep the tomb. A son garlic-gingers
the open-hearth wok, while prawns
are blanched – carpe diem – and they’re done. Near
the firecracker flowers, a rusty wok reclaimed by Spring
is filled with earth, a reincarnated vessel. A sprig
of leaf ventures sunforth as the fire wanes.
Some distant uncle fixes the roof, removing vines
and tells a story with tools and junk, weaving
shelter with refashioned verse.

Through sepia glass, the long-gone parents agree
all is as it should be.

Toby Buckley

Toby Buckley

Elephant Caretaker

I cannot imagine
stealing an elephant,
notorious as they are
for being difficult
to compress comfortably,
but elephant caretakers
use sharp
hooks to find the tender
parts of elephants’
mouths and inner ears,
the secret malleability
to make the beasts
into something more
accommodating,
and I imagine this
encouragement
by cold metal could shrink
anything down
to pocket-size.

More Guest Poems

Geoffrey Winch

In this Silence To her the silence had been in itself a prayer, the deepest, the holiest, the most illuminating. T. F. Powys: Mister Tasker’s Gods its utter depth and width can only leave one standing on this canyon’s rim entirely without speech its walls stacked so...

Barbara Cumbers

Of all the stars, the loveliest ... Sappho: Fragments on love and desire ... are the Pleiades for they are blue like the sparkles of ice in the coldness of air for they cluster like buds of angelica for the glow that surrounds them is the birthplace of stars for they...

Isabel S. Miles

Sunflower Potatoes, cherry trees and wheat begin in darkness, as sunflowers do, rooted in dank clay, eating ochre, seeking light. With brush for bow and canvases for instruments, in colours only he had vision clean enough to see, he played sonatas filled with blossoms...

Estill Pollock

In Places We Invent In places we invent, cities not cities In ways we knew, in our little understanding Of structures and remorse, where stations prosper From years of long cold, or in savannahs Dry winds strip breathless, our new lives Printed veils of fabrics, tools...

John Gosslee

Below the Night Sky and Blazing My bones hollow, but I don’t grow feathers like a good bird. The village torches mark the trails from the foothills into the rows of shops, onto the box-heavy-delivery-truck-filled roads, the scabs of progress flicker under the...

Robert Dorsett

Voice for the War Refugees The suffering of others is always a foreign language. They speak, leave gaps for others to fill. Keep meaning close, crisp and dangerous. Packed into camps, huddled behind wire, they bandy facts into lies, clench fear into a pause. And speak...

Eleanor Westwood

Breaking News 16.3.22 the child, too excited for school the husband, heart in his guts twisting the woman kissing her parents goodbye the passport bearing her name in her own hands her sweat impregnating the cover joins the man whose family wait for him negotiators...

Hannah Linden

The Woodcutter’s House from Wolf Daughter Now the wolf is dead, dissected into pieces and the knife has been cleaned and put back into the drawer. No more dwelling on it he said. Take some pills and put a smile on your face, no need for red capes now. What was your...

Paul Surman

Sparrowhawk You have come to rest on a stave of the low wooden fence yards from our window, a desperate look of tired ferocity in your eye. Next to our neighbour's forsythia, your feather cloak's duller shine. You look haughty, like an old nobility fallen on hard...

Frank McMahon

Saving Byzantium Every time he asks, is this allowed? They do not paint God’s face, our enemies. They are ocean, plague, unanswered swords, surely God must love them more? They tell him: this is a settled question and this is your commission, The Triumph of Orthodoxy....

Bert Molsom

Inside the house I am safe, all I want is here. These people tell me – what I think is right. They are my family, think like me, speak like me, behave like me. Outside it doesn’t work as my family say it must. Outside is danger, weakness. We know what is right, the...

Dinah Livingstone

Rose Garden I see things in black and white, he says. He means he sees them plainly with a will proudly to describe the truth in prose and strip away the fantasy and frill. Red rose of passion, yellow rose of peace, the flaming orange and soft violet stir feelings as...

Louise Walker

Jug after Vermeer’s Milkmaid She knows to hold it steady with her left hand, as her right hand tilts the heavy jug – too much milk and the children won’t eat the pudding of yesterday’s bread, crumbled ready on the blue cloth, the Virgin’s colour, like her apron, yet...

Samuel Prince

Agent is Typing... In order to help, I need to get you to the right person, a few questions now, to confirm your identity. Where shall I send the transcript of our conversation? We’ve all got hologram thoughts, biases, perversions, you may feel you were born in the...

Jennie Osborne

On the Line It's cows that block our journey, leave us wrapped in a tunnel of trees,learning – because we have no choice – to be stopped, somewhere near Crewkerne, to look at leaves unblurred by speed, speak to our neighbours, stretch and peer – although we can't see...