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
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 ice
onto film.
Adventurers take trips too,
to get away from home, and see
the nothing that is not out there
and the nothing that is.
Then they leave it there.
But in 1948 the men brought back what they discovered:
sketches, maps, names they gave the land:
Deception Island, Buckle Island, Mount Melbourne.
And a film.
Then they died.
Now
What do we see in the film?
Not Elm Street, even when all the elms are gone.
No balconies and awnings,
or unkempt shrubs
or iron gates festooned with carved rosettes.
Just trees that seem to stand on ice,
and a strip of tents.
What is, without a walk of poured cement.
or chiseled stones laid out in a pattern
or even a footpath pressed hard and tight
by many feet.
Remember your first tree?
There was a tree (was it 10 feet? 30 feet?)
and one fallen beside.
What kind of leaf?
Was it an oak?
In the end, memory gives no leaves, no street names, no maps.
When our own snow wipes out all trace of tents and cooking pots,
there will be only the smell of rich wet earth, maybe,
and a cool breeze.
That is all.
Geoffrey Winch
Walter Palmer
(from Encounters with Oscar)
plays painters parties poets –
Oscar’s social round never ceasing
Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley
and always Reggie and Robbie
fascination of the fond-of
and the influential
Lillie Langtry, Henry Irving
and always Reggie and Robbie
meeting acquaintances
with or without family
Max Beerbohm, Sarah Bernhardt
and always Reggie and Robbie –
then at Westfield, among notables,
at a Reading garden party
Oscar, Constance, Cyril, Vyvyan
(not sure about Reggie and Robbie)
relaxing in the generous grounds
of a Palmer son
Walter and his wife, Jean
vivacious company promising
a visit to their famous factory
(just across the road from the gaol . . . )
Cyril and Vyvyan,
with permission testing, tasting biscuits
straight from the ovens then,
Oscar Wilde – with a flourish
freely signed the visitor book,
September 1892
More Guest Poems
B. Anne Adriaens
Pietà, inverted I meet you halfwayacross the wasteland of your mindto find you plonked on the ground,drawing circles in the dust.I sit down behind you,wrap myself around your frame,so small I could doubtyou gave birth to me – you,this shell I’m holding and rocking...
Graham Mort
Talking to a Spider in the Bath(January, 2022) There you are in the corner of my eyescurrying sideways a black atom, a stain against enamela venomous intruder or is that me, stepping into theshower’s caul of steam? I notice how careful we areof each other a kind of...
Regi Claire
When it is Time The beeches were the last to leave. Too stately maybeor too full of themselves they stayed on, blazed morefiercely copper in the sun, soaked up dusk until they inkedto darkness. Then they threw their arms around the stars,called them theirs, their one...
Christopher M James
Traces Isaan, the vast rice-growing plateau in north-east Thailand Endless paddiesstencil the land, enmesh the living.Their waters smudge a setting sun’s inks. A handhas wiped leftover pigmentson a cloth of sky. A motorcyclescratches the landfor epidermic dust,...
Nicola Warwick
Launching the Moon Does it really take two hands to toss it skywards? You’d think it could be done in the space of an owl’s blink, but you’re wrong. You cup this glossy thing, roll it over and over in your palm, hold it to the light and it’s a crystal ball crammed...
Robert Stein
Finis This is it: the final leaving,The stars loitering and out of luck.The dice ceased rolling. All numbers up. This is the gone at the end of going,The rotted apple after knowing.The box nailed. The straw. The shut. The trap tripped, sprung through and up.The...
Frances Sackett
Free Spirit Bordering the road,but theatrical, the wayit looked like someonehad planted a gardenrich in wildness. A rocky outcropwith ragwort and willowherb,vetch and wild thyme –the hills beyond mantled with sun. I scatter you here,watch as a wisp of smokelifts along...
Sue Spiers
Jealous of the Listening Air She tells me her deafness is more complete,no sound penetrates her ears, masks are difficulties. Imperfect silence of devices switched off but stilloutside chunters; car engines, birdsong, the wind. Conversation in another room with no...
Douglas Cole
The Lighthouse Keeper In this season he knowswe are smaller than wind,as the storm blast singsthrough the boarded glass. He opens his doorto the sting and stab of rain,making his way as he leansunder the arc-lamp light. In the radio house he listensto distress codes a...
Cathra Kelliher
we sat holding the lamb we sat holding the lambRichard and Ithe field soft about uscold coming on below the ash treesand the farm buildingssilent as flint through the arrow slits how slight it wasand how meagre the pullof its miniature mouth on my fingera smear of...
Anthony Lawrence
The Moonlit Lakes of John Atkinson Grimshaw have all the hallmarks of ice, when seen througha hawthorn hedge or drystone wall,and you’d be forgiven, the way a witness,driven to description, not of a man,but of animals on the surface of the moon,is forgiven for seeing...
Patrick Osada
Rooks Each evening they appear at duskin ones and twos –return from distant foraging.Flapping untidy wings in laboured flight,they circle,gathering as a cawing group,heading for their roost in Hazelwood. Today, nest building in the tallest treesthat screen the...
Yasmin A. Hussain
Treasure Chests Dad decides to give us pocket money.Mum decides it’s better saved. She buys tinmoney boxes with painted timber panels,crossbands of brass and a central padlock. She holds out the chests as cash is passedfrom Dad to us into the slots. Eventually,mum...
Leo Boix
A Latin American Sonnet CXCVI In a dense forest of the Gran Chaco stretch, ‘the hunting land’,Argentina’s largest known jaguar–the Qaramta–is on high patrol,it’s after giant anteaters, tapirs, capybaras, peccaries and standscrouched down by the riverbed, alert,...
Margaret Wilmot
The Butterfly Effect for Nick and his butterfly I heard Monarch for Monach as a sealrolled high in the curve of a wave, and marvelled that sea-battered islands far west of Scotlandshould share a name with butterfliesin another Far West. Do they still build cocoons in...