Young Poets

Published here are some of the excellent poems we receive from our gifted young writers.

You can submit poems either by post (please enclose a stamped address envelope for reply), via our on-line portal, or by email to acumeneditor@gmail.com. Please mark the contents ‘Young Poet Submission’, put this in the subject line if you are submitting by email, and put your name, age and address on each page of the submission.

Please submit no more than four poems. You should be aged between 16 and 25 years, the work should be unpublished.

More information about submitting your poetry

Sidney Lawson

Anecdote

I’d like to have her laugh / Which erupts like a broken hose / Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders / Which people love to lay their head on. (from The Party by Sinéad O’Reilly)

In dizzy rooms awash with eyes of green,

The air is smoke, the water something pink,

And I whose shoulder people love to lean

Their heads on might not be what they think.

My silken hair is wrought with curls of fire,

Will promise bliss for those who catch my eye,

For rumours single touches drive desire

Wild, they’re true, it’s true I make them cry.

They hover drunk in swarms towards my scent

(Chanel, almost) to lap from fountains gold

Which feed my font of honeyed truth, and lent

As if by Gods, or Lucifer, to whom I sold my soul.

I see myself in cigarettes and yearn.

Oh God, oh Christ, oh fuck, oh fuck, I burn.

Raconteur

The truth finds me, the truth loves me. Pilgrim,

You haven’t the gold for the truths I’ve told,

Couldn’t handle that which hides behind lies of old.

The grass unloads its griefs upon my feet

As if I am God, its prickling a prayer. Not

God but O gold-winged messenger of mighty Gods.

My fables float towards the gates of heav’n.

Saint Pete panics, unsure of what to make

Of me, he who knows more of worlds than deity.

Thunder follows lustrous footprints in my wake,

For I have awoken the malevolent king, I,

Teller of tales, I, the Creator’s greatest mistake.

O God-Drop

I crave, kill pain, gift faith to soulless sentience.

This fleshy stack of muscles, veins, and nerves

Will praise your healing works, your little miracles.

O plastic capsule, globule, God-orb, God-ball

Who’s eucharistic in the act of feigning lifelessness,

I beg, I pray to you to numb the burning nerves.

And while you wield a lethal dynamism

Disguised beneath benevolent guise,

I know, I know, I cannot help but think,

Be haunted by the years before your birth,

Before Asclepius, his snakes in extremis,

When all there was was hurt and hurt breathed.

Audrey Hunter

This Is What I’m Thinking

Rain on the window & the ground

Everything is impermeable

So we leave behind streetside streams

& we leave in them

I want to go home

But I rue the journey

Hate the water that drowns the roads

Hate the water that ends up where

I’m wanting to go

I know what it means to be taken for granted

Sprinkle down & write your message in

On the windshield

Watching out for what’s next

You know what it means to have no idea

There is nothing left between the walls

That hold me up in place here

So I am facing skywards

I am falling with my eyes

And then the rest of me

Headed nowhere,

Headed north,

Headed to the gulf,

Traveling smooth but splashed up and around

By reckless, wantless tires

And nothing is lost to the concrete

But something is lost to the air

Little Movements

We can laugh it off all we want but

It won’t change a thing.

It hangs around us,

The air is thick and clouded like stream water

I never have any idea what to say.

Swallow smoke and spit out blindness

Nothing left after the sun rises

& eats up homes,

Cleans out the valley,

And nothing is left except the sighs,

Hitting the walls of the hills

This (like everything) Is About Self Esteem

After my friends across the hall have

Nodded off

I’ll be the loud one

I’ll call the front desk

I am the ghost, the prankster

All my feelings come in seasons

Brought on my rafts of heavy rain

There’s nothing I love all the time

I am a hummingbird,

A big bee,

I weigh nothing, I cost nothing

If you hit too hard

If you look too long

I fall off the face of the earth

I leave nothing

I play songs that become you down halls that

Drip and ooze

Your feet fall on velvet drums

And make velvet songs

I open doors quiet

But I close them loud

There’s a call, a creak for help either way

I cost nothing, I leave nothing

More Young Poets

Saul Grenfell

Rain and cheer Innocence darted through streets alone,hair dancing in the rush of itamid dense smells and bids and cumin and saffronlittle lungs a-panting. Now, with top button stiffly done,greying hair flattened and...

Sidney Lawson

The First Affair I rinse my hands of the way your skin felt, Brush my teeth thinking of how you tasted. The soap’s scent is reminiscent of your Intense fragrance, something I won’t forget In a hurry. I remember the sight Of you in that red dress, the slight gasps you...

Emily Riley

till dawn do us part late night kisses behind closed doors no one has to know you’re mine for the night unwavering devotion you write novels on my skin then tear them to pieces leaving me severed and shattered your beautiful work destroyed no one has to know...

Charlotte Lebedeker

Josephine It’s been ten years of Josephine, and the world will give us decades more. But if that’s cut short by the gods above, I would upturn all our climbing trees, I would dry out all our oceans, I would leave no corner of the world unchecked searching for her. As...

Daphne Harris

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Florence Grieve

The Bristol hum I’m looking for the secret portal where the air quivers above the grass because I want to get away from here from the place where emotions are berocca dissolved in the white wine served with dinner, swallowed with our plates of macaroni cheese and...

Isaac Cude

Sandpaper There is not much difference between words. Maybe there is, maybe it is different. There is horror in thoughts, in desiring Something unknown; it seems known to others. It is kept hidden, secret, and it is unfair. When words bubble up, they are strange....

Tricia Tan

finding nemo in the ward the aquarium of her ward was rich as ever in the Great Barrier Reef Hospital. Old fish diving in the shallows of the ED. The pillows a lush anemone, her clownfish gown swallowed in. My smile daft as Dory’s. Brief as bubbles, or the...

Emily VanPelt

Adoption I didn’t spend 9 months in your womb, growing into a creation of my own I wasn’t the result of your great love story, but of one unknown You didn’t feel the emotion when the second line appeared There were no tears of joy and no little kicks that you endeared...

Liberty Price

Swapsies Your favourite jumper is draped, Languishing on the back of my chair The tattered sleeves unmoving, Its snot stains ever-present And the colour clashing As always With your imagined outfit. The window looks on, Sheets of sunlight In heavy layers over the...

Grace Marshall

Esplanade I saw a man on the edge of the sea one black morning. No sand, just stones, and me on the Esplanade. He paused at the lap of the waves and surveyed. Where I stood on the grey I could tell his upset Too far from his wife who rose and fell further out....

Alex Walker

Strange Winter river pouring daily puff of coal chatter of friends press of water against the lock gates overflow balsamic moon I am swallowed up I am swept away in the overflow of turkey tails lobular expanses drops of rain strung like beads of liquid starlight...

Anna Ray

Exile Displaced I break myself up in a million pieces Can’t forget the taste of the sky more bitter than my aching tears or the airport-coffeed flavour in my mouth Eyes closed uncomfortable flicker Out of the window the trees are running away Disjointed thoughts to...

Imogen Davies

Starlings Flit from Lobster Pots Starlings flit from lobster pots The harbour – a nest Of buoys and nets – A breath – To the beat of boats And wings – Sun and sea sing – Salt clear notes – blue Chasing dawn’s dissolving hue – Hulls bead and dimple dew Over paint that...

Callum McGee

Withered church of Ormskirk God’s stone temple returns to weed brittle bricks of busted bones slant sideways a shadow of its former self, glass sockets empty, shrivelled foundations Green veins entwine brown vessels solid clots collect dust, splintery bones wither...