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
Neil Elder
Fact or Fiction
Mornings, I scroll through the news on my phone;
I like to know the world still exists before leaving
the house. Though today, I don’t want to read
about how Europe is on fire and the ice caps
are melting, I just don’t have capacity anymore.
Instead I shall put my head in a book,
a huge 19th century classic with sentences
so long that I forget their beginnings and pages
and pages describing a woman making a fire
early one morning, before she receives the letter
that changes the course of her life forever.
Once her secret is out, she must flee from London
hoping to find help from the one she once loved.
A ping from my phone marks the arrival
of the day’s first email: the world still wants.
But I am staying here; with my heroine, in a carriage
rattling through a storm towards uncertain futures.
Anne Stewart
Charlie
Charlie was huge – ‘last time I saw a spider as big as that’
a man I loved had told me once ‘I tried to bash it with my shoe
and it took it off me and hit me back…’
She was blackest black – glossy, plum of a body,
short stout legs at the ready, eyes peeled better than mine
for any shift of light that might warn of an attack.
And she was smart – sat mid-wall, long edge of the bed,
where any approach triggered a shift; took to flight sooner
at each advance of a trap.
She and I fell into a pact – I’d come into the room,
she’d shift to face me, chipper as a puppy, ‘Found something to eat?’
I’d say, half-expecting a wisecrack.
Time for lights out, I’d tiptoe the cold floor in the borrowed dark,
huddle under the covers, feeling safer, a little – smaller, less visible
now I had my head in the sand.
At least Charlie was sorted – she had no need to run any more,
no need to find an invisible corner to hide out in.
I took some comfort in that.
More Guest Poems
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...
Antony Mair
The Other It presses againstmy consciousnesslike a curtain blownby a wind outside. No windows free usfrom our senses’ prisonand linear timeconstricts. But in that other placethere are no walls;past, present, future,stroll together. I cannot shiftthe curtain’s...
Kathleen McPhilemy
Egret and Heron Late afternoon, December, in the gloamingacross the bridge near the Willow Walka little egret: black beak, long black legsstartling yellow feet hidden in the grass.I lift binoculars to see him more clearlyand there behind is a spectral followergrey,...
Janet Laugharne
Sightseeing A few summers ago,the cloudless blue a markerto my memory that it was duringCovid times,I saw above my city gardenthat fantastic single bird.A few flaps of its gigantic wingsand it was gone,passing over Cardiff and who knows where else;not in any hurry for...
Christopher Levenson
Insomnia It’s a country I sometimes visitbut I wouldn’t want to live there.Even at 3 or 4 a.m., the bathroom’sstainless steel fixtures, white tiles,hold their own, maintaina careful sanity. The blatant light rejectsany transfusion of darkness. By adjusting the mirrors...
Rachel Mann
England, Ice Fixed, White with Rage From a train, always train, acres of whiteness, and I watchPast or future, fields of time, seen/unseen, fields of it, the presentRefuses, I only want it more, and gods of modest means,Not first rankers, not famous ones with...
Philip Gross
Small Rain, the Sound of Breathing The way a little too much cautioncreaks the floorboards more than clumsiness –so the rain, tonight, small spatters, all around the house… The way I ease the body-weightof last night’s sleep to the edge of the bed…Its cartilages...
Philip Dunkerley
The Repair Shop Give me, please, this evening hourof rest, let me sit safely herewatching the show, alone, at home,in the quiet of this room,others busy, nearby, elsewhere,as another day ends. I have chosen this programmefrom all those that tell of the past,carefully...
Paula Sankelo
We Learned That Everything Drifts Green and Purple in the Barents Sea almost everything: R/V Lance wasgrounded deep on an unlucky reef we heard Mayday and drove to assistancesleepless the entire sunlit night. Humming a shanty we wrote for the rescue– our captain...
Tytti Heikkinen
Big Morning in Rome In the hot magenta of a dark alley,a photoallergic inamorato sees the lady of his lifeand wants nothing more.He rushes through porticos and tourist crowdswho wave positive cardio imagesin the chiaroscuro of endless fog. The lady waits on the...