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
Jeremy Robson
Raising the Spirit
Always such an unsettling time of year,
Christmas with its fake joviality departed, though
seasonal lights still blink from nearby gardens and
abandoned Christmas trees lie forlornly at
the roadside, drenched by the incessant rain.
Meanwhile the new year waits impatiently in the wings.
Who can say what it will bring, though we wish all
those whose lives we touch the best of everything,
knowing full well it’s not in our hands to dispense
such wondrous bounties.
Lost in thought, drink in hand, I stare through
the rain-speckled window at the silent street below,
the trees seemingly lifeless, and the buildings
too, as the evening gradually descends like an
unwanted guest who has arrived too soon.
Suddenly ablaze, the streetlights opposite stain
the pavement with their amber beams as the wind
picks up. There are shadows everywhere.
Patiently we must wait for the year’s agenda to unfold,
for daylight to return, for leaves to silently explode from
the bereft trees, for wars to cease, for smiles to reign.
Then we can charge our glasses again.
Nicki Griffin
Aftermath
We’d gone to Dublin in search of art
and found William Orpen
dispatched to record the Great War, all those boys
in muck and mire across French countryside
the gallery full of pink, land and sky in pastel shades,
not the colours you expect of brutal conflict.
Bodies abandoned, trenches and dugouts
desert of craters, stumps of buildings
remains of Thiepval, La Boisselle.
A prehistoric burial mound, pale gold in summer light
barbed-wired, tunnelled, mortared.
Mud, baked white, cleansed by sun,
bones scoured by wind and frost, skulls
detached from backbones, feet
scattered among cornflowers.
The final painting an altered landscape,
scrubbed by nature
wounds cleansed by sun and rain.
Later shoals of tiny white butterflies
would come to cloud a faultless sky
above the wonder of poppies.
More Guest Poems
Terry Sherwood
Warning Signs gracing sea and coastland: kittiwake herring gull puffingracing wetlands: curlew whimbrel lapwinggracing grassland: fieldfare yellowhammer skylarkgracing waterlands: goldeneye...
Piers Cain
Half life It all depends which way you turn in the halflight, in the space between day and nightor between one year and another. It affects how much your eye adapts, and how darkor bright the sky you face, how soon or latefor you the night draws in. And when you walk...
Matt Gilbert
A Solar Diversion The sun slants low. Rays point west,refracting from the roofs of oversizedparked cars on Manor Mount, forcing youto squint, walking down the slope towards the station. Preceded by long shadows,bouncing to the rhythm of their owner’s feet,you are...
Jeremy Page
Phantom Ancestor Hawker of Morwenstow Who wouldn’t claim a man like thisfor an ancestor? Poet, man of God,mermaid impersonator, who bore the nameof my maternal line, whose wiveswere twice his age then less than half,who saw birds as the thoughts of the Almightyand...
Christine Griffin
His Chair They’ve cleared the rooms,feeding the firewith what’s left of his life.Only the chair remainsin a miasma of old man,pipe smoke, Rich Tea crumbs. The cat by the footstoolwaits for the gnarled, caressing hand. Fragments of poetry floatfrom tattered chairside...
Jim C. Wilson
Swans At Night On the wildest night of the year’s beginning,the park’s a moor, the pond a heaving ocean.Like hailstones, stars soar past our heads;the trees are stripped by the shrieking gale. My eyes stream and my face feels stretchedand I worry about tomorrow....
Damaris West
Into this Breathing World Found in hallowed soil,his scoliotic spine strungloosely like a rosary(one shoulder higher than the other;five foot eight but would have seemedmuch shorter) he’d been struckby many men so eachcould claim the fatal blow. History has told of...
Sara Davis
Carousel Set free – the horses leap out to grasspause – sit onto angular hocksstretch stiffness from limbs cramped too longthen snorting – high stepping they buck – run – droproll over and over – ease rigid spinesmask paint-bright colours in scuffles of dust. Heads...
Chris Hardy
Samos On the beach wherethe Syrians landedthen walked along the shoreto the police stationleaving their long boatand orange jackets behind, where the sea easesback and forthagainst the landas if trying tomake peace with it,I collected marble pebbles that the waves had...
Denise Bennett
The Table You made the coffee table long beforeI was on the scene, aged thirteen, a term’s work in the carpentry class, as yet the namesof your wife and children uncarved in your heart; young to master the music of your tools:bit and brace, mallet, plane, drill and...
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...
Seán Street
Breakfast with Michael Longley River and Fountain From beyond the window October’s memoryof what summer might have been poured in, and therewas Billie singing God Bless the Child, there wassun through the apple juice, dazzling the table. There was Hart Crane, there...
Caroline Maldonado
Foraging for the Ideal The lights of Macerata, Loreto, Treiapulse across each hilltop townand fireflies swing their lampsover the earthto echo the stars. There’s the scent oflaurel, rosemary, lavenderwild mint and fennel. L’amore che move il solee l’altre stelle warms...
Carolyn McCurdie
To Cleave This morning a sheer, immaculate skywas bisected horizon to horizonby interlacing white and blue threads of a cloud formation,delicate, curling filaments, intricate weavingsthat bound east to west. And held their breath. I stood at my back door, thinking...
Daljit Nagra
parka your brother’s made friends with two boys down the roadwho are your own backgroundwith their parents from the villages in Punjab they’re in his year and they’ve been mixing languagestill they giggle their heads offslipping from rugged London to farmer’s Punjabi...