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
Mike Everley
Soul Music
3 – Swallows
My uncle and I flew paper swallows from the high bedroom window. They caught the lifting wind, drifted above the narrow road and pointed metal railings that had somehow escaped the Spitfire Fund, into the small park with its swings, roundabout and curving metal slide. Origami birds designed centuries before man took to the sky. I make them still. But now they fly over a far different world where computer obsessed children view them with indifference. There is something therapeutic about working with paper: fold left, press along the crease, fold right, press along the crease until the skin’s impression is absorbed and incorporated into the structure, part paper part person. Unlike merely pressing a key or moving a joystick on a video game. In Ancient Egypt, birds were thought to carry the souls of the dead. I fly many swallows now, one for each of the lost. They soar high over fields lush with grass, towards the waiting arms of the sea. Do they carry the dead souls of family and friends? Or are they carriers of my hopes and memories, riding the wind of imagination to a better place? I fly my swallows for those who are gone. Who will fly a swallow for me?
Emma Simon
Lullaby
I want a slow horse. Those heavy-hoofed kinds
that used to drag a plough across a field
or haul the beer drays through the town.
I’d sit up high, proud as an empress
with reins in hand, an easy sway of hips
rollicking like hills from side-to-side.
We’d walk the daylong lanes, breathe in
the smell of mouldering hay and apple pulp.
The heartbeat pace of metal shoes on stone.
A broad support of back. I’d press my cheek
close to the fuzz of muscled neck, wind fingers
through his mane, tether myself at night.
Through plodding dark I’d whisper stories
in his velvet ears, of fabled beasts
looming from a golden age of horses:
the fairground strength of Suffolk Punch,
Dutch Draft, a trusted Clydesdale,
sing battle songs of brave Percheron,
the long-gone jousting Great Horse.
Pick a steady path home through the stars,
held by the cradling shoulders of the Shire.
More Guest Poems
Stephen Miller
Gull Island Unfamiliar shorea broken doorsill to a part-remembered landthe dismantling sun bleedsinto a rough-hewn slab of seaand seabirds scream their warningand welcoming of all that is unfixed,uncharted, unrehearsed. Demonstrative as daysavvy as bull terriersand...
John Sewell
St Lucy’s Day 1This dark year’s endis a short night’s passagefor the veteran oak. John Donne’s passionruns centuries beyondhis lover’s last embrace. Neither recompenseoff-sets our final days. But let’s light a New Yearfrom the night that’s gone,bring to...
Cathra Kelliher
Kestrel kestrel hoveringthe moment before her stoopas our first remembered falcon the field behind the cottageempty farm buildings and twilight fallinglike a gathering of ghosts shadow dropping from the fencepostthat could be a buzzardthe instant, unexpected movement...
Ralph Mold
Scilly Shore Here white foam flecks the fingersof cracked black granite,one world surrounds anotherand edges seep inwards. The thousand-mile momentum of waves,the strong, slow, shunt of currents,are broken, parted, giving uptheir gifts, blindly, unknowingly. Live...
Sue Spiers
Al Fresco Dining Ctenocephalides felis A black cat saunters under our tablewhere a meat meze calls to its nose.Feeding it would keep it attentive;there’s more kleftiko than we can eat.I tickle its brow. It looks hopeful.A...
Biljana Scott
Time has Slept Soundly in this Archipelago Time has slept soundly in this archipelagoher soft couch hollowing the hills of Hoy.A corrie for a pillow and here, two glacial sheetstheir edges scalloped, a watch-stone at their feet. What did time dream of during that long...
John Greening
Monks Wood to an unborn grandchild ‘Growth, growth and growth’, Liz Truss Roaring downthe hours as ifto forget rootsand obliterateplainsong,the A1 has no timefor Monks Wood,its yellow crossesflashing their diebackhazard warning,but certain rides offer a...
Susan Mackervoy
Community Wood, Evening Let loose from his lead, the elegant dog,though it is late and leaves murmur cautious forest words in the compact modern wood,speed-changing green to gold to winter black as we look down from the path and trafficpelts by, making thrumming beats...
Stephen Claughton
Kite Weather Clever you! You’ve made it workfirst time without any practice. The kite we bought for your birthdayjinks and swoops and dives, skywriting a scribbled message,which says you’re a natural. You held it up like a placard,while I attached the string,...
James Deahl
Scarlet Roses of October for Norma The sun near the harbour turns maple leavesinto stained glass windows. Sailboats head outto celebrate this Indian Summer daybefore autumn’s storms set in. Norma andI watch a freighter pass the harbour’s headon her way to Europe. All...
Joan McGavin
In Praise of the Clearers-Away who when the tree falls across the roadcome with their winches and chainsaws and hard hats;who when the nappy needs changed, the bedpan emptiedcome with sense of smell deliberately dulled;who when floods recede leaving mud floors and...
Richard Lister
Antarctic Follies Manchurian pony, fetlocks sunkinto the snow, then hock and knee,straining, slowing, stuck. She shiversin this blind space of hammered cold. Scott stumbles on bloodied feet.He can no longer drag his sled,dried beef and fat run thin.His woollen kit and...
Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Of Ducks and Dinosaurs Here at the farthest lake, everythinghas the precise brightnessof a Dali dreamscape. Instead of swansreflecting elephantstall, grey, January birchesfind themselves mirroredby ancient, long-necked creatures -plesiosaurs, perhaps. The stillness of...
Nick Grundy
Verbal Economy: Getting Your Words’ Worth… Windy Day Rewind I saw lots of daffodilsSeeming to dance in the wind;Thinking of them still makes me smile. A Touch of Frost… The snowy woods look nice.My horse and I would linger,But we’ve got too much to do. Marvel Soon...
Cindy Botha
on good days I believe a thousandCalifornia condorswill fly headlonginto the futurenot looking back believe the coloursof a paint-box skyaren’t pollutionbut light scatteringthe way it’s meant to on good days I thinkwe’re doing our bestor at least our bit ‒not...