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 Page
Phantom Ancestor
Hawker of Morwenstow
Who wouldn’t claim a man like this
for an ancestor? Poet, man of God,
mermaid impersonator, who bore the name
of my maternal line, whose wives
were twice his age then less than half,
who saw birds as the thoughts of the Almighty
and engaged them in fervent theological debate.
Whose pets were a pig called Gyp
and a stag called Robin, and nine cats
who joined his human congregation (his tenth
cast into outer darkness for the sin, cardinal
not venial, of mousing on the Sabbath).
I see my phantom ancestor, Parson Hawker,
gazing out across the Atlantic from
his cliffside driftwood hut and drawing on
his opium pipe while he is visited by the muse,
asking And shall Trelawny die?
And I wonder how many minutes passed
between his eleventh hour adoption
of the Roman path and the exhalation
of his final breath.
Christine Griffin
His Chair
They’ve cleared the rooms,
feeding the fire
with what’s left of his life.
Only the chair remains
in a miasma of old man,
pipe smoke, Rich Tea crumbs.
The cat by the footstool
waits for the gnarled, caressing hand.
Fragments of poetry float
from tattered chairside books
to settle on the cushions,
searching for his voice to give them life.
Soldier pals, freed from his memory
stand by the threadbare arms
in mute salute.
Outside, the riotous garden,
triumphant with birdsong, calls out
reminding him it is Spring.
All in vain, for he is gone,
flown to the corner of the room, to watch
as the careless flames take hold.
More Guest Poems
Jennifer Johnson
Satisfaction Sometimes, it is the common things that give satisfaction,such as chopping onions, peppers and tomatoesdespite me rarely enjoying cooking apart from the result,sharing food with the one who brings some real point to life,one who lifts me above the...
David Sergeant
A Winter Morning Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm! (Lear) My heart forgets …(Burns, ‘A Winter Night’) The globe has got its change on and frostthe artificer has strolledmadly through the world with a...
Marjory Woodfield
She Sews the Starsafter a quilt by Harriet Powers Harriet takes strips of calico,old dungarees. Stitches storiesto warm her children. Job prays for his enemies. Moses lifts up the serpentin the wilderness. A dark day in May. The stars fall.In the Garden of Eden, God’s...
Caroline Price
The Seducer’s Hat Like a skydiver about to plunge for the first timefrom the opened plane into breathlessness I stand pressed to the last strip of blackbefore sunlight, gazing across eight feet of blazing tarmac – it takes such courage, this tackling head-onof the...
Winifred Mok
Grave Sweeping Every Ching Ming, April showers weepmisty tears across the land, seepinginto gaps of loss. Gifts of paper energisethe spirits (a suit, a watch, a house) as warpingflames consume ingots, paper-gold flecks on the vergeof a hot red tin: the borderline...
Toby Buckley
Elephant Caretaker I cannot imaginestealing an elephant,notorious as they arefor being difficultto compress comfortably,but elephant caretakersuse sharphooks to find the tenderparts of elephants’mouths and inner ears,the secret malleabilityto make the beastsinto...
David Thompson
Circus Act some days it’s the high-wirewe balance on that thin pathunknown danger either side on others it’s the trapezeI swing to you to make the catcha moment of faith above the void today it’s contortionismI put both feet behind my headyou fit yourself into a tiny...
Maggie Brookes-Butt
The Conundrum of Proportion You try to force your arm into dolly’s dressbalance her hat like a pimple on your head,crush her cardboard-box bed with your giant toddlerbody, puzzled by further mysteries of perspective:big or close; small or far away; the way your...
Piers Cain
Another Land There is another land. A land of rockand falling water. Valleys deep in shadewith railway stations blue with rising mist. There’s a city of sunshine built on slopesthat flows down a hill in a torrent of stoneto water. Gardens hang in steps of green. In...
Julie Craig
Remembrance The pin pricks like a memory.She tries again,Almost stitching the plastic poppyTo her chest, over the heartBleeding past into present. Years have progressedBut the wound won’t heal:A scout’s compass, it pointsTo loss and leads to a monumentMarking her...
Vuyelwa Carlin
George Orwell Typing at his Desk – a Photo Cigarette (always), reek of paraffin, the flintyJura house; those poor, rotting, blood-leaking lungs: he pounds out, a year or so from death, his last bleak book – I ballsed it up…so ill… he wrote– that cracked, wheezy laugh....
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...