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

Richard Lister

Richard Lister

Antarctic Follies

Manchurian pony, fetlocks sunk
into the snow, then hock and knee,
straining, slowing, stuck. She shivers
in 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 canvas coat
so apt for Scottish sleet but not
for sweat then slicing, splintered air.

Amundsen learned much from Inuit skill.
He glides a frozen bank on skis,
his poles are tipped with ebonite,
hood of his reindeer coat tufted with ice.
Huskies with pale blue, callous eyes
will yelp and snarl but drag and win.

Jen stares at flashcards, swills her tea.
She needs to know psychologists’ names,
their surveys’ scale, responses’ sweep
carry each weighty fact ’til June’s exam,
Learning facts by rote is not tailored
to the world ahead, no space to roam:
a pony in the snow.

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

Kathryn Daszkiewicz

Of Ducks and Dinosaurs

Here at the farthest lake, everything
has the precise brightness
of a Dali dreamscape.

Instead of swans
reflecting elephants
tall, grey, January birches
find themselves mirrored
by ancient, long-necked creatures –
plesiosaurs, perhaps.

The stillness of this underwater forest’s
invaded by two mallards who speed-land
on the primeval surface,
breasts gleaming from the spray.

His greens, catching the sun
are tropical as those exotic plants
reaching for heaven
in the Orangery.

He bows and bobs.
And when she doesn’t
flinch or fly
he rides
the moment.

She shivers
taut from bill to tail.

More Guest Poems

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...

Anna Barker

When I think of my body as a crow We slide together:my flesh, your feather, your jet eye, the haw you draw across in sleep,the patient keel of your sternum,the steel of your rib your beak to stitch the vane, the silken ley,the tap of talons on glass,the hollow bone...