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
Stephen Claughton
Kite Weather Clever you! You’ve made it workfirst time without any practice. The kite we bought for your birthdayjinks and swoops and dives, skywriting a scribbled message,which says you’re a natural. You held it up like a placard,while I attached the string,...
James Deahl
Scarlet Roses of October for Norma The sun near the harbour turns maple leavesinto stained glass windows. Sailboats head outto celebrate this Indian Summer daybefore autumn’s storms set in. Norma andI watch a freighter pass the harbour’s headon her way to Europe. All...
Joan McGavin
In Praise of the Clearers-Away who when the tree falls across the roadcome with their winches and chainsaws and hard hats;who when the nappy needs changed, the bedpan emptiedcome with sense of smell deliberately dulled;who when floods recede leaving mud floors and...
Richard Lister
Antarctic Follies Manchurian pony, fetlocks sunkinto the snow, then hock and knee,straining, slowing, stuck. She shiversin this blind space of hammered cold. Scott stumbles on bloodied feet.He can no longer drag his sled,dried beef and fat run thin.His woollen kit and...
Kathryn Daszkiewicz
Of Ducks and Dinosaurs Here at the farthest lake, everythinghas the precise brightnessof a Dali dreamscape. Instead of swansreflecting elephantstall, grey, January birchesfind themselves mirroredby ancient, long-necked creatures -plesiosaurs, perhaps. The stillness of...
Nick Grundy
Verbal Economy: Getting Your Words’ Worth… Windy Day Rewind I saw lots of daffodilsSeeming to dance in the wind;Thinking of them still makes me smile. A Touch of Frost… The snowy woods look nice.My horse and I would linger,But we’ve got too much to do. Marvel Soon...
Cindy Botha
on good days I believe a thousandCalifornia condorswill fly headlonginto the futurenot looking back believe the coloursof a paint-box skyaren’t pollutionbut light scatteringthe way it’s meant to on good days I thinkwe’re doing our bestor at least our bit ‒not...
Roberta Dewa
Kay The river is playing at land again. She used to say that, standing onthe floodbank by the sudden lake,her feet gloved by the water. She was always remembering things. How our mother wore her headscarflike a bandage, drew her bike around her like an arm;watched out...
Martin Reed
Running Late My father stands with his back to the firetrying to keep our spirits upin the waiting-room, speaking of trainsand life getting better for all of us.We study brazen, purple flames,listen for a piston pulse,picture a single pinpoint of lighton the front of...
Siobhan Ward
Morning Swim, Saint Malo The water is never as cold as it looks.If you think too much about the cold,you’ll miss the chance to let it slapyour skin, push your body back and forth,be legs, arms and chest in it – and eyes –yes eyes – to see the expansiveness of sea,sky,...
Charles Bennett
Robin I realise now what I wanted when I whistled in a botched echoas if to say ‘sorry’ for all the harm humankind has wrought, was a recognition of sortsa sign I was known and familiar. When I said in my cackhanded...
Gary Day
Your Call Is Important to Us Dust in a sunbeamSlanted across the naveIs all that remains of thoseWho prayed here once. Did they get an answer?Or did they meet with the sameSilence the visitor does today,One older than God himself? No matter. They are at peaceNow,...
Briege Duffaud
Granada I recall it life-sized, to my left, beside the altar:Isabella’s royal foot treads on an Arab neck,triumph of Los Reyes Catolicos.The man’s eyes howling. That was the week of Abu Ghraib. A tv in my roomshowed the US soldier’s equal triumph,trampling her...
David Olsen
Nothing Happens I sit in the darkness of the stallsawaiting a momentous eventthat never occurs, as if the actiontook place in the green room;the actors emerged exhaustedby the effort of dressing and makeup,too tired to propel the plot. I sharethe idlers’ ennui as they...
Julie Cameron Gray
Grocery Store Tulips Bought on a whim, pale petals shutlike seashells slow to open, waiting to soakin the weak light that streaks through the window. My cat unbothered, too old to be curious, the tipof her tail a calligraphy brush dipped in ink.I serve her daily meds,...