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
Maggie Wadey
On not Being the Last Bird to Sing
my child’s face, stretched
in pain like a Noh mask, relaxes
and she sleeps at last,
leaving the land around us
to lie awake under a crust of stars
that mists the sky with light like
the illuminated face of a watch.
On the hillside, a hare plays
at radar as the night’s deep silence
turns slowly until dawn runs a different story,
summoning left-over birds – so faint,
so few – to stitch a thin tapestry,
self-conscious in their loneliness,
cutting the threads too soon,
not wanting to be remembered only
as the last bird to sing.
My child wakes and, seeing me,
she smiles.
Kevin Graham
Let’s Do Cartwheels
and watch the great world spin.
Everyone will be on the green again
playing football or tip the can.
Parents will pop out every now and then
to check we’re still alive and then some.
All the flowerbeds will be shaking
with laughter, ickle secrets hidden
in the undergrowth. No one will be alone.
If we’re lucky maybe an ice cream cone
or sandwich, its strawberry syrup running.
Cancer won’t have entered our imagination;
or the plight of the disabled: accommodation,
public healthcare, dignity and indignation.
The sun will be high, then low, then gone
but as it stands we’re having fun
and unaware of what’s happening to time:
how it’s speeding up, then slowing down
depending on what’s happening.
When we’re crouched behind a pillar hiding
it’s from ourselves and not anything
untoward. There is no fault or blame,
just the present participle spinning
like a Catherine wheel, halcyon
as innocence, and telling.
More Guest Poems
Frances Sackett
Amongst the Rubble from a photograph by Lee Miller All colour is bleached from the landscape.Only grey dust, ash falling, dereliction.The children sit in the rubble, face in hands,horrified that their homes have gone.The boy, eldest of the three,is creased with...
Ranald Barnicot
After a Concert II But music does not always unite.Armies clash on through the night,Ignorant, in aesthetic spite.Brahmsians, Wagnerians brawl,Trash composers, concert hall.Igor Stravinsky’s Spring RiteProvokes all Paris to riot!Mods and rockers rev and roast:‘There’s...
Kate Noakes
Is it Crazy to Wish them Happiness? Some friends don’t get angry in flaming emojisor start nonsensical fights with others, voice their disagreements in no uncertain termsor claim superior knowledge of diverse subjects. They don’t much like things. OK, they never like...
Edith Speers
Tennis Club Indoor Courts aquarium worldseen through thick glasssubterranean silence four-limbed fishstrange white fishin a green and white world the walls are light green on topdraped on the bottomwith dark green cloth dark green flooris subdivided and outlinedby...
John Killick
Anglezarke As Edward Thomas his Adlestropso I my Anglezarke,but with this difference:for him it was the nameon the station signand the tranced afternoon;for me it is the namethe rest clean goneconjures the feeling,but there must have beenwater, woods, fields, for...
Annie Kissack
Saint with Accoutrements after ‘Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table’ by Harold Gilman All spotless. Some objects we might deemespecially significant:the glistening tea pot, pristine cupslustrous milk bowl, the best surely.We inhale diverse aromas:odour of home-made...
Jonathan Steffen
Car Coat Through all the subtle chicanes of his existence in the 1960s,It was his constant companion –That car coat redolent of hairpin bends and handbrake turns,Bearing him along shopping parades and in and out of supermarkets,Evoking pine-clad mountains and Alpine...
Judith Wozniak
Back to Nature i.m. J.S. You liked to sleep outat the edge of your gardenunder a scatter of starstucked into your bivouacon a bed of leavessoothed by a soft breezedrift over the South Downsthe smell of honeysuckleafter rain the rustleof hedgehogs in the compostto wake...
Robert Leach
Horse A pool of shadowShapes the lonely placeWhere the old horse stands.He shakes his head. Remote fromCows, sheep, people,It seems farming proceedsAround, beyond him. His tufty fetlocks apeThe head-heavy cow parsley,Hair grass, oval sedgeUnheeded at the field’s edge....
Helen Ashley
On Stage Small spillages of lightare gathered on the woodland floor.Invisible strings tie themto the matrix of branches above. Sun, looking down through the canopy,has assembled them and standsas director, while a light breezetakes on the choreography. To their...
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...