You may also wish to listen to poem recordings that have been added to our (small but growing!) digital archive. We have poems there by:
Nadine Brummer, Daphne Gloag, Gill Horitz, Mimi Khalvati, Lottie Kramer, Gill Learner, Gill McEvoy (read by Anne Stewart), Maggie Norton, Jennie Osborne, Elizabeth Soule, Jill Townsend, Marion Tracy, Fiona Ritchie Walker, Sarah Westcott and Lynne Wycherley.
Select and listen here Poets of the Month (other dates)
I have written poetry off and on thoughout my life. Now that I have retired from teaching the urge comes more frequently.
I read your cook book, its pages stiff
With stains, hand-written notes skewiff,
Fiery sweat and a floury hand.
For you, Pam, nothing frozen or canned.
Loved wife, I know you only by repute.
He lists fondly your every attribute.
Truly, for him, you are just next door,
He will always await your step on the floor.
I know you bought fresh produce only
I bet you inspected market stalls closely.
Did you like to chat with with the greengrocer?
Ask the baker to see the loaf up closer?
I know that you and he liked walking
And would have seized the chance for talking.
I am sure you analysed the lives
Of children: their husbands and their wives.
I’ve seen you in some snapshots:
One young and slender, looking hot
In a black and white garden of your youth.
Can these pictures really reveal your truth?
Now Pam, I investigate your book
Searching for something new to cook,
And I can clearly hear your helpful voice
As you talk me through your recipe choice.
I have decided to put poems that are very far from perfect (as if!) on my page. If I wait to achieve my best, it will never happen! Apologies for some poor scansion.
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Hilary Hares lives in Farnham, Surrey. Her poems have found homes online and in print and she has an MA in Poetry from MMU. Whilst waiting for the muse, she’s slave to a demanding bird table and lives in hope of meeting the perfect dog.
All Gormley’s kin each is his own man.
The local children call one Jeff.
They drown every day.
Like gods they have no smiles.
Sometimes Titian or Hockney
will paint them a dawn and,
when the tide recedes, jellyfish land
at their feet like green glass plates.
I watch as seagulls perch on their shoulders,
mirror their gaze, ask: Why stare so hard?
But they’re not letting on, their eyes fixed
as though they can’t bear to look down.
I persist: According to Frost nothing
we’re searching for is out far or in deep?
Their silence is deeper than the sea. I make
a final bid for conversation, tell them this:
I can see what’s happening behind you.
There’s no turning back.
Winner: Write by the Sea 2018 Literary Festival Competition, 2018
Publications:
A Butterfly Lands on the Moon, sold in support of Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice Care
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Carolyn King is widely published in magazines & with three poetry collections. Competition successes over the last few years include 1st in Second Light and in Poetry on the Lake formal category and twice shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize.
is the title of the second track on my Christmas CD;
high on my wish-list – the theme from Schindler’s –
given to me by my daughter, who knows
that Itzhak Perlman’s violin makes me cry
(though she doesn’t understand why).
And if there was snow that winter of ’41,
I wouldn’t know – for I was one year old
and safe in England, warmly protected from the cold
by a mother whose major fear was the Blitz;
while Krakow infants stiffened at the dried-up paps
of starving mothers crying for Schindler,
and fathers wept for the ghost of a chance
of a place on that compassionate list.
My mother told me how the previous winter,
heavily pregnant, she fell in the snow and lay there,
helpless, hoping for a stranger – anyone –
to come along and set her on her feet;
while I, her unborn child, rocked back and forth –
rolled like a snowball, cradled like a dream –
my terra firma threatened by a natural force,
her yearning for a perfect baby put on ice.
Un-natural forces ruled in Krakow twelve months on
and strangers carried arms – not to assist
but to enforce fanaticism, warming to censure,
turning the gas full-on to fight the cold.
I’m the survivor – one who never faced
the unsound rationale that threatened every Jew
caught up by bigotry in that sectarian race:
a child born twelve months earlier than Krakow,
whose father used to play the violin.
Latest publications (available from Carolyn):
Caviare and Chips, Human Writes, 2004, ISBN 0-9531860-2-4, £5.99;
The Reunion, ISBN 0-9531860-0-8;
Lifelines, ISBN 0-9531860-1-6
Woodleigh East
Madeira Vale
Ventnor
Isle of Wight
PO38 1QU
tel: 01983-852593
Carolyn King at poetry p f
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
An Australian living in North London. Retired from nursing – time now to pursue a love of poetry. Published in various magazines and a prize winner in several competitions.
Years ago I held your hands
to guide you on the long
walk to hospital. Beneath
their patches your eyes
oozed tears to wash away
woodchips thrown there
by the giant saw.
Your hands were large,
calloused. Black sap
emphasized lines and folds,
darkened every nail. Skin,
brown and tough from the sun,
still let splinters skewer in –
you’d prise them out with Mum’s
fattest darning needle.
Though I led you, all
the strength of our bond
lay in your hands not
in my small, anxious
eight-year-old fingers.
When I hold your hands again
to help you from your wheelchair
mine are the weathered, rough hands,
yours are Persil white, baby soft.
You do not recall the pain
of penetrating wood and your hands,
calm, delicately trusting, accept
that now the strength is mine.
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Jenny Morris writes poems and fiction. She has taught in the UK and abroad. Her writing has won awards, been published in five collections, numerous magazines and anthologies. She has read at literary festivals, on radio and in prison.
This circle’s rolled through many women’s lives.
This working hoop, this noose, this golden band
worn thin, so close to bone, it still survives.
This circle’s rolled through many women’s lives.
A spinning world that loses, shines and thrives
on grandma’s, mother’s, daughter’s thin left hand.
This circle’s rolled through many women’s lives.
This working hoop, this noose, this golden band.
Poem published in The Oldie
Publications: Domestic Damage, Cinnam on Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-7886490-1-8 Keeping Secrets, Cinnamon Press, 2015. ISBN 978-1-9090776-0-7 Lunatic Moon, Gatehouse Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-9554770-0-3
The Sin Eater, National Poetry Foundation, 1993. ISBN 978-1-8705563-8-5 Urban Space, National Poetry Foundation, 1991. ISBN 978-1870556811Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published and she’s been listed in various competitions. Her collections are Tessitura, It Was When It Was When It Was and Fivestones. She researches and writes about the lost history of Devon women writers.
by the tips of twigs in the linhay-field hedge.
She reels us, reels us in.
We, her ladybird t-shirted children
slip inside, fit snugly in the hollow
of her branch-nest bower,
swaddled in the coil of her moss-lined palm.
A chattery congregation, tiny twittery finch,
a dormouse, the rarer fritillary –
all pitch in with the chit-chat
of marginals, telling us how much she loves us.
We are her traveller’s joy.
Afraid of losing us
she lathes, then swashes our faces
with her wild-rose leaves,
her willows brush our long-hair tangles
and in the ambient whispers of sweet nothings
we lull to sleep in the canopy’s swing-harmonies –
backed by harps of hawhorn, beech, ash.
Knowing we are hers
we lie on our backs on her oak-leaf bunks
conjuring the scene –
Nancy and Peggy
at the helm
negotiate the Amazonian storm.
first published in Dawntreader in collection Fivestones, Lapwing Publications, 2022.
Collections:
Fivestones, Lapwing Publications, 2022, ISBN 978-1-7391642-7-0;
Tessitura, Shearsman Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84861-239-6;
as editor Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, Shearsman Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84861-048-4
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Anne Sherry is a Writer and Management Consultant. She lives in Winchester but travels widely. Her first collection, Safe Passage, was published in 2014.
My love who promised the earth
then pawned it all away
my love shouldered like Goliath
with the belly of a mollusc
my love with a cavalier’s exfoliated thighs
and the swaggering hips of a toreador
my love who adored my classic clothes
then recommended froth and flowers
my love with the feet of a ballerina
and the strut of a petulant brat
my love who liked my symbolic phrases
then told me not to play mind-games
my love with Blue Beard’s hooked nose
in the baby face of a petit ingénu
my love who appreciated my honesty
then devalued me for being naïve
my love who made me writhe and pant
then fled when I expected the same
my love with eyes like brackish pools
which obscured an Arctic mind
my love who hijacked my freedom
but clung limpet-like to his own
my love who chided me for vacillation
then revealed each endgame in his book
my love with the evasive tongue
which accused me of lying by omission
my love who scorned my secure life
then grabbed one for his own
my love with generous Gemini words
underscored actions of Scrooge
my love who promised to always be there
then scarpered when things got tough
my love whose past killed our present
contaminated my future.
That love who left me on a Pyrrhic fire
but missed this harpy eagle flying hope.
Publications:
Failing to Find Old Sarum, 2019, Mudfog Press, ISBN 978-0-9927930-1-2, £5.95 (free p&p)
Safe Passage, a Memoir in Poetry and Prose, 2014, Ashbrook Publications, ISBN 978-0-9927930-0-5, £7.95 +p&p,
(proceeds after costs to Alzheimer’s Research UK, www.cpibookdelivery.com)
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet