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STOP PRESS…

2024 Competition RESULTS

Poets of the Month:
Sep 24

ARTEMIS
poetry Issue 31 extracts now online

ARTEMIS
poetry Issue 30 extracts now online

ARTEMIS
poetry latest Issue, 32

2023 Competition RESULTS

Listen to poems (latest by Gill Horitz, Gill Learner and Sarah Westcott)

latest Remote Workshop Endings, duo

Poets of the Month
(from Nov17)

Poem of the Month
(to Aug17)


 

*** Latest Remote Workshops: – ENDINGS
two complementary half-day workshops by Anne Stewart and Sarah Westcott ***

Latest publication: Siege and Symphony, by Myra Schneider. £9.95 see books

SECOND LIGHT ONLINE SHOP (donations to SL funds can be made here)

Poets of the Month (& see sample poem below, by Jane McLaughlin

Featured Poets, September 2024 straight to poems
 

Anne Ryland, For a Daughter
Estelle Price, Come Night
Jane McLaughlin, The Lacemaker Travels to Seville
Joolz Sparkes, We live here
Lesley J Ingram, Unzipping
Marion Oxley, Deluge
Maureen G Coppack, Wading Through Green
Patricia Helen Wooldridge, Obituary
Simone Mansell Broome, Five Changes
Victoria Gatehouse, Burning Mouth Syndrome
 

 

Sample poem (selected at random)

The Lacemaker Travels to Seville

The silver hook slips to and fro.
Dark head bent over red sweater,
in the next seat she nets
a fine white band. Fingers arched,
thumbs steady. Turn of the wrist.
 
The train gallops the latifundios,
Cordoba fades behind golden hills.
Slant orange sun descending
paints white villages, backlights her hair.
The work grows, precise as frost.
 
Her small bones and tendons learnt
this craft from women whose maths
was in their heads, patterns
of chequered mesh, stars, flowers,
eloquent as a Moorish ceiling.
 
It does not need words: the yarn
is hooked into its own language.
In the lexicon of human gestures
her movements mean this and nothing else:
I am making lace.
 
Flowing like high cirrus
it will trim an alb, perhaps,
or christening robe. Maybe
hem a sister’s wedding dress.
A rite begun, tissue of spider’s breath.
 

Jane McLaughlin

Poem Highly Commended, Torbay Open Poetry Competition, 2015

 

Second Light Network – a network for women poets.