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
Piers Cain
Half life
It all depends which way you turn in the half
light, in the space between day and night
or between one year and another.
It affects how much your eye adapts, and how dark
or bright the sky you face, how soon or late
for you the night draws in.
And when you walk in the hollow dark at dawn
you feel the expanse of the air around you while a glimpse
of light turns the foreground ocean grey.
Why did you choose the heaving bulk of the hill,
the patchy dun of the paving stones in the lane,
the muzzy form of the car in the car park?
You who’d always loved the trees and fields
why did you walk towards the failing light?
Matt Gilbert
A Solar Diversion
The sun slants low. Rays point west,
refracting from the roofs of oversized
parked cars on Manor Mount, forcing you
to squint, walking down the slope towards
the station. Preceded by long shadows,
bouncing to the rhythm of their owner’s feet,
you are trailed by your own. The suburbs are
a dancefloor. Commuters outlined by morning
shine. A light fiercer than any nightclub laser.
The dazzling energy of our local star: 93
million miles off, sending warmth and still in full
possession of the unthinking power to obliterate us all.
More Guest Poems
James Priestman
That Tremendous Fish after Elizabeth Bishop So, I let the fish go, but it did not swim away,remaining instead port-side of the hired boat,right eye staring unblinking into my startled gaze. I raised the revs on the motor but it stalked me.The bows pushed harder...
Rachel Bruce
Du Lac My lover was born under a wet star.He is not my first, but he is my favourite.The waters of the lake hold the shape of my body in their silt.I found him at the water’s edge,blurring into the shallows like a mirage.His hands slid over my shouldersand droplets...
Cyril Dabydeen
Last Inhabitant Left on Earth Give me one place only –one area the size of Americatoo large to fathom where I willmake myself known asking formore space a fortress where tobuild upon and declaring myselfto you without animosity. What’s left on earth notlooking...
Sarah Hehir
The Poisoner’s Poison Sleep has led me one step to the leftof lead.A periodic transition to thallium:softer certainly,like freezer bread thawing. But there’s still no stretch inside thisgrey,tasteless,odourless shape. Though they say sometimeswe live in secrets -that...
Seán Street
On Hearing of the Death of Benjamin Zephaniah 7.12.2023 Because they told me in the neutral grey of an ordinary day when the sun neither shone nor set,when the rain could do no more than drizzle, when all I was doing ...
Edmund Prestwich
The Ground of our Music Now the warm moist air is alive with voices.Frogs are singing. Soft introspective crooningmakes the mild night throb with erotic feeling.Somewhere above them owls are calling, female to male; hauntingbreeze-blown signals float between houses....
Beth Junor
Partition i.m. Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), mathematician Don’t be afraid. Like the first brushstrokeof the Mona Lisa, it begins simply enough. The partition of three is three,the partition of four is five. Meaning, you can arrive at three in threedifferent ways...
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Twine Lazing on the tablestrung out with a casual loopit could be someone’s noosethe knot ready to slip tighteraround a waiting neck ...
Adam Cairns
Abandoned When the A-Road Was Built How do you find St David’s church?You must search. It is here, but lies abandoned?Look beyond. I see towns, the heavy traffic.Take your pick. Its loneliness makes my heart sick.All progress has its consequence.And our children’s...
Neil Beardmore
Cave Paintings, Onuke Kundi,Near Hampi, India Boulders of granite tossed intumbling piles around a flat oasisof date palms hold the plateausafe from intrusion. Camouflaged by the earth’s ochre,a bulge of rock with deer,where men, no longer sticks with sticks,come to...
Kathryn Kimball
The Ghost Magnolia in commemoration of the opening of the National Memorial forPeace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, April 2018 Give me a ladder to climbthe ghost magnoliaon the corner of Pleasant Avenueto sit there with the sweet fragranceof the foot-wide blossoms...
Lola Haskins
The Perch The glacier on which I stand has become an island.Blue and white as the insides of clouds, it calvesinto the sea which is no longer ice, and the newbeings, the calves, sink slowly, but they sink. The glacier on which I stand is a mystery in whichI used to...
Peter Robinson
Evening Primrose You call me out as the light goesto watch our evening primroselemon-yellow petals splay. With more rain threatened for the weekend,sun come and gone all day,getting ahead of itself againcan a summer remember its springtime?Is it welcoming of autumn?...
Jeanette Burney
The Discoverer Undiscovers 1948 Explorers take a trip to discover Antarctica.They take their leave of household chores.They take boats.They take cameras.Then they take white stretches of Antarctic iceonto film. Adventurers take trips too,to get away from home, and...
Geoffrey Winch
Walter Palmer (from Encounters with Oscar) plays painters parties poets –Oscar’s social round never ceasing Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsleyand always Reggie and Robbie fascination of the fond-ofand the influential Lillie Langtry, Henry Irvingand always Reggie and...