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
Sally Long
Loss
My loss comes wrapped up in phrases:
… no more funding
… have to let you go.
Yours has no such delicate packaging:
the click and boom of gunshots
that violate the rushing street,
the angry blade that rips through flesh.
I add the experience to my CV,
gain advantage from it,
move on, give thanks.
You are left with unspent years,
photographs of absent brothers,
a restless fury that invigorates,
refuses to give in.
Robin Thomas
The Deliverance of St Peter
David Teniers the younger, c.1645
On one side of the massive door,
which stands unaccountably open,
the guards, so steeped in reality it hurts,
are playing dice, that means of transport from
reality into some other sphere of things,
where it’s the going away from that matters,
not the to to which you go. Meanwhile,
on the other side, St Peter has received
an angel who is inviting him to the tea shop
round the corner, or to heaven. From this
distance we can’t hear which; in any case
the angel is whispering in a special language
and there’s plenty of noise from the
rattling dice and the shouts of the guards.
More Guest Poems
Martin Reed
Red Hares When I think of the haresome raggedy, angular graceraces through my mind. It comes unlooked forwhen chatting of nothing,rounding an August cornfield hedge, up and away across sharp stubble,square to the ground in an upright scurry,arcing its route to distant...
D.G. Herring
Thoughts on Crater 308 …io nol feci Dedalo…Dante's Inferno 29:116 It is freedom we sail to. Or this is our story. Who gets to flywhen the winds are not hers to control? Yet, there is nocoastline, nor even a sea. Only mind. And, when the wax melts, pesanteur. In the...
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...