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
Lola Haskins
The Perch
The glacier on which I stand has become an island.
Blue and white as the insides of clouds, it calves
into the sea which is no longer ice, and the new
beings, the calves, sink slowly, but they sink.
The glacier on which I stand is a mystery in which
I used to trust, the way a child trusts her parents
as if they were gods, though every night she sees
them vanish into the room where she is not allowed.
The glacier on which I stand is my life, is my
argument with the world, is the world. And
every moment my perch on it is smaller than
the moment before and soon the day will come
when its shifting edge will ease me into the slush
where my parents are, and my grandmother the crone,
who snored like a cow in the twin bed next to mine, and
would dress, arms akimbo, under her voluminous gown.
Peter Robinson
Evening Primrose
You call me out as the light goes
to watch our evening primrose
lemon-yellow petals splay.
With more rain threatened for the weekend,
sun come and gone all day,
getting ahead of itself again
can a summer remember its springtime?
Is it welcoming of autumn?
Because in this season’s climacteric
we’re making the most of serene
or over-clouded forecasts
where age in marriage still loves to hear
years told, and finds them evergreen
despite your primrose petals’ span,
I ask what does the weather mean?
But you say best go in, as dew’s
seeping through our summer shoes
and there’s no time to lose.
More Guest Poems
Briege Duffaud
Privilege A school day, normally. He may have thought of that,missed friends and reading books. Or not. (I never knewhis thoughts nor wanted to.) But still. Nine milescutting over frosted fields to the Newtown hiring-fair,to shiver in a hungry street while meat-fed...
David Olsen
Lighthouse i.m. Cathy Young, R.N. (1953-2022) Smooth rounded pebbleschatter in turbulent surf,aspire to perfect spheres. Ribbons of uprooted kelpintertwine. Broken shellsbleach in the sun. Above the shingle,a promontory risesto reveal an obelisk of whitened...
Nick Pearson
Water He spends fifteen minutes bringing stuff in,makes himself at home on the bathroom flooras if he’s arrived at a favourite camp site. I hear him thinking behind the door,his expertise the commodity of silence. He reminds me of a person I’ve seen before,a...
Chiara Salomoni
Heartwood Sheltered by young cypressesand thick-leaved olive trees,a plum tree stands in my family garden. The knobby branches hold clustersof round, juicy plums in summerso heavy they twist. The smiling crop persists for a month at least;the taste is so sweet, it...
Myra Schneider
Brussel Sprouts When the February sky is weighty with clouds and the wind,a ferocious animal, knocks over fences and rickety sheds,rushes rubbish down streets, rocks trees madly,tears off their branches and crashes any it can to the ground, when the paper is packed...
Martyn Crucefix
‘when’ whenlike a falling flower-print cotton dress has dropped its round spoor in the breathy silence...
Michael Henry
The Brownfields of England This “Go-Between” of a summerthe heatwave’s a marqueand hours and days repeat themselves like a slo-mo film. This chameleon summera hare jogging in a fieldturns out to be a man ...
Richard Lister
Turner’s flight Fishermen at sea, 1796 by JMW Turner As a youth he learnedhow watercolours spillthrough canvas grain and weight,now oils shiver in his hands.He paints the wavesclear enough to glow yet with such thump and throwthat they could snap apartthese men upon...
Martin Reed
Finisterre The lawn is browning, hydrangeas are leached,colours dried to taffeta,summer fading early. Parched.Last night we left a saucer of waterfor linnets who gather on the telegraph wire;insects have drowned in it overnight. Through a gap in the ferns beyond the...
Jennie E. Owen
Advice on Caving for Survivalor Marriage as an Extreme Sport Caving is a polarising sport: underground/marriageis one of those places you’re either happy or you’re not. As the leader, you will have to take control. Mistakescould rapidly escalate a situation into...
Simon Jackson
The Light You are composed of heavenly light and shade,arms raised like Caravaggio’s Saint Paulin his Conversion on the Road to Damascus.Your hands reach into the surgeon’s light.I am relegated to the shadowslike Saul’s servant, holding the horse’s head,a role of...
Ali Blythe
Still, still So being in loveis a lake. The worldturns upside down. We shatter itwhen we dive in. How darkit had to become. To see the unnumberedsparks on each shook swell. To feel their goldhooks fixed in us.
Christine Tainsh
Magritte The surreal was always problematic,shape-shifting and strangelike a helium balloonthrough melted stratospheresand haunting melodies stuck on a soft grooveand always lilting and lifting beyond itbut the artist chose itfor someone always has to bereaching above...
John Arnold
Footnotes My sock, turned inside outamong the laundry –woolly pile, soft to touch. So this is what my feet see,feel, as they walk my ways;then, pressure off, relax as I sit: nothing to concern them,no worries over money or relationships;cocooned from a harsh cold...
Stuart Handysides
You might think we would talk after Absent in the Spring. Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) A desert station home for several daysno view to speak of, only space our books already read, no outside worldno view to speak of, only space. One day the train will just...