Guest Poems

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Wild Swans of Torquay Queuing in a traffic jam driving to the seafront pre-dusk. Emerald, garnet and diamond illuminations flicker. Oblique shadows crisscross the road. Dwindling rays glance off wing mirrors and chrome fittings. The sea soothes in soft grey, Devon...

Kingfisher A colourful fantasy flung between river banks splashing a drab winter day. It wedges its ego through excited heartbeats of this wrapped-up walker, seeming to ask if I know how to be me. I feel that the flight is a zip opening my mind. I get a feeling of...

A Movement Does there exist, and has there ever existed a movement to make the muddy plain strewn with wrecks and lost goods west of Lisbon, that people witnessed some time All Saints' Day morning 1755, the new Atlantic normal all oceans should aspire to? In less than...