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)
Alwyn Marriage has been a university Philosophy lecturer, Editor of a journal, Chief Executive of two international NGOs and is now Managing Editor of Oversteps Books. Her poetry and non-fiction are published widely and she reads in Britain and abroad.
the restaurant was called la Matelote,
– the same word as le matelot
but ending in an ‘e’
and therefore feminine.
We debated what a female sailor
would be called in English
other than, of course,
a sailor –
‘fish wife’ hasn’t quite the same
éclat: shore-bound and down-to-earth,
she scolds her husband
wipes scale-covered hands on bloodied apron;
‘sailor girl’ sounds
far more jaunty, even saucy,
a jolly sea shanty of a lass
who’s good at knots, but lacks maturity;
a ‘woman of the waves’, though cumbersome,
has a more romantic ring,
laid-back and offering
her ebb and flow, her undulating curves.
In our minds these women all
transmogrified into a mermaid,
sea-born and always breaking free
like words for which there’s no equivalent.
Consulting a dictionary to check
the latest addition to our French vocabulary
we found ‘la matelote’
simply means ‘fish stew’.
Poem published in French Literary Review and ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 6
Publications (a selection):
Possibly a Pomegranate: Celebrating Womankind, 2022, Palewell Press, ISBN 978-1-911587-61-3. £9.99
Chiara, ebook, Cutalongstory, 99p
Pandora’s Pandemic, 2021, SPM Publications, ISBN 978-1-9162263-7-1. £8
William Harvey’s Visitor, ebook, Cutalongstory, £1.99
The Elder Race, 2020, Bellinghouse Books, ISBN 978-0-9930443-1-1. £10
Rapeseed: Following rape – a novel, 2017, Stairwell Books, ISBN 78-1-939269-51-5. £10
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Barbara Dordi writes poetry, reviews and articles in English and French. She is the former editor of Equinox; she now edits The French Literary Review, which publishes poems, stories and articles with a French connection. Deadlines 30th July/31st December.
Under a savage Midi sun,
in these winds: the Cers, the Autan,
and the dreaded Tramontane,
where honey-scented broom and pale-pink
almonds line the narrow roads of the Aude,
he made all this his own
a legacy of the seasons.
Up with the lark and out of doors
to capture the sights of the south.
He knew the frisson of expectancy
of this special light that makes
everything glow, when all seems possible,
meadows glinting gold
under a cerulean sky.
Brushing borders of yellow broom
his roulotte atelier would rumble
by fields stacked high with hay
to-ing and fro-ing l’Alouette
home of his family, his art.
The house stands here still, holding
its breath, awaiting his return.
l’Alouette – Laugé named his home ‘the lark’
roulotte atelier – mobile workshop
published in Achille Laugé, Neo-Impressionist 1861-1944 – A Brief History, 2015
Publications:
Achille Laugé, Neo-Impressionist 1861-1944 – A Brief History, Deco Partnership, 2015, ISBN 978-0-9536800-5-4, £11.95 (or 15 euros), incl p&p, direct from B. Dordi;
The Alfred Jewels, (bilingual), Illustrated in colour. Hayward, 2012 ISBN 0-9536800-4-5 £11.99
Moving Still, 2009, Cinnamon Press, ISBN 978-1-9056146-9-1 £7.99
Entre-Deux–Two Francophiles in Alaigne, (bilingual), Illustrated in colour, £7.95
Picture-Poems, ISBN 0-9536800-3-7 £11.99
Address for submissions to French Literary Review: 11 Bath Road, Emsworth, Hampshire PO10 7EP
Barbara Dordi at BlogSpot.
web-pages on poetry p f.
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Clair Chilvers’s poems have been published in online and print journals, and anthologies. She has published two collections: Out the Darkness (Frosted Fire, 2021) and Island (Impspired Press, 2022). She lives in Gloucestershire, UK. twitter: @cedc13
Come with me to the island,
escape with me
from the damp English air.
We’ll rent a caique,
edge out past Agios Nikolaos
to a deserted cove,
anchor, bathe naked in the warm clear sea.
Sit on the deck under a blue tarpaulin,
lunch on rough bread, feta, ripe red tomatoes.
In the evening we’ll wander hand in hand to the village –
smells of oregano and hot tarmac, perfectly blended
old men play backgammon, ouzo beside them,
beads never far from their hands.
Into Babis’s taverna,
where he presides in the kitchen
over cauldrons of bean soup, trays of moussaka.
Sit with me outside in the square
at a small wooden table, surrounded by cats.
Taramasalata, local black olives,
wine from Antipaxos, much prized,
thick coffee, sketto, a glass of kumquat liqueur.
Walk back up the hill with me,
through the olive grove by torchlight
to the cottage,
moon rise, stars perfectly clear.
Had we come in Spring, my darling,
there would be fireflies.
in collection Out of the Darkness, Frosted Fire, 2021
Publications:
Island, collection, 2022, Impspired Press, ISBN 978-1-914130-50-2
Out of the Darkness, collection, 2021, Frosted Fire, ISBN 978-1-8384357-2-1
Pilgrimage, pamphlet, 2017, ISBN 978-16909959-2-0
Featured Author in Iss 5, Impspired, also Iss 3, 4, 6, 7
Heritage, anthology, New Writing VIII. Horseplay Press, 2019
Clair Chilvers blog
Clair Chilvers at Facebook
enquiry via Second Light
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Estelle Price lives in Cheshire but often goes west to the Llŷn Peninsula. She is learning Welsh. Estelle is the winner of the 2021 Welsh Poetry Competition & the 2018 Book of Kells Writing Competition. Her poems are in Poetry Wales & other journals.
(after Derek Mahon)
And why would I not wish, after a drawerful of days
disarrayed with worry, to walk into dusk’s byways
leaving the back gate unlatched? Come night
I’ll say, lead me away from the probing kitchen light
where fear simmers blood-orange like a dying sun
and all the talk is of treatment not yet begun.
Race me across the cropped grass until my mind
is infused with black, the future set free, undefined.
Somewhere in the forest a badger leaves the sett
to forage for her cubs. Inside a child learns the alphabet
his small hand feeding the page with words.
I stand with my back to the door knowing in spite
of everything a mother never loses the urge
to run, for who can tell if everything will be alright?
Poem published in 14 Magazine, Series 2, Issue 2
Publications:
Primers 6, Summer 2022, Nine Arches Press
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Jay Whittaker’s debut poetry collection Wristwatch (Cinnamon Press) was the Poetry Book of the Year in the Saltire Society Literary Awards 2018, and her second collection, Sweet Anaesthetist, is published October 2020 (Cinnamon Press).
(day 20, first chemo cycle)
Do tree tips tingle, niggle like my scalp?
Most people’s hair (I’m told) comes out on day eighteen.
White hairs work loose first, waft down.
This late summer evening, my scarfed skull
as bald and vulnerable as a fledgling’s,
I stand under the row of sycamore, my neck sore
from looking up to the abundance of leaves.
Whatever happens to me, the earth is turning.
At the same hour in winter, haven’t I stood
in this very spot, watching bare branches
implore the sky for light?
Poem originally published in Wristwatch, 2017, Cinnamon Press
Publications:
Sweet anaesthetist, 2020, Cinnamon Press, ISBN 978-1-7886408-3-1, £9.99
2 poems in Staying Human: new poems for staying alive, 2020, Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-1-7803739-0-4, £12.99
4 poems in Scottish feminist judgments, 2019, Hart Publishing, ISBN 978-1-5099232-6-7, (hbk) £95
Wristwatch, 2017, Cinnamon Press, ISBN 978-1-9108368-0-4, £8.99
Pearl, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005, 0953121267, out of print
Pearl, 2005, Selkirk Lapwing Press, ISBN 0-9-531212-6-7 (out of print)
Jay Whittaker website
e-mail Jay Whittaker
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Judith Taylor lives in Aberdeen, where she co-organises the monthly Poetry at Books and Beans events. Her first full-length collection, Not in Nightingale Country, is published by Red Squirrel Press, and she is one of the Editors of Poetry Scotland.
(after a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth in Aberdeen City Art Gallery)
You want to think
it’s a human shape. It isn’t
quite.
You want to think it’s a bone flute
for the wind to play, but too much
is eroded out.
You want to think
that smooth surface resigns itself:
a ruined tree, made furniture.
You want to think its pierced places
fill with light, when the heart of it
is a pool of shadow.
You want to think.
You want some form of containment
the form itself will not give
for memory
for enduring grief.
You want an explanation.
You circle it
closer in this time.
There isn’t an explanation.
Poem published in Not in Nightingale Country (Red Squirrel Press, 2017)
Publications:
Not in Nightingale Country, Red Squirrel Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-910437-69-8 £8.99
Local Colour, chapbook, Calder Wood Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-902629-34-6. £4.50. (out of print. contact author for copies)
Earthlight, chapbook, Koo Press, 2006, ISBN 9780955307539 £3.50 (out of print)
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Lyn Moir, a Hawthornden Fellow, lives in St. Andrews. Her latest of four collections is Velásquez’s Riddle (Calder Wood Press, 2011). Her work is much published, including in Second Light’s major anthologies and in many of those from Grey Hen Press.
Rather compare me to a winter’s night,
snow on the roof and not much on the fire.
Even December’s gales have lost their bite.
Can you remember what it was, desire?
Passion’s a concept creaking with disuse,
a half-remembered trembling in the gut
at unexpected moments, an excuse
for rutting, heaving bodies mingling… but
the time for that is over, says my head.
My stiffening bones concur, my sinews scream,
stretched on the rack of years. We’re not yet dead,
just dying. Summer’s still midwinter’s dream
and we its shadows, turning on the wheel
of time, condemned to watch, no more to feel.
published in South 54, 2016
Publications:
Velázquez’s Riddle, Calder Wood Press 2011
Easterly, Force 10, Calder Wood Press 2009
Breakers’ Yard, Arrowhead Press 2003
Me and Galileo, Arrowhead Press 2001
2 Shorehead
St. Andrews
Fife
KY16 9RG
tel: 01334 472717
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Mary Robinson’s work is concerned with connections between people, place and nature. She is interested in text – reading, writing, interpretation, shape. She particularly responds to the visual and has worked on a poetry/photography collaboration.
for Helen
I came to an open gateway
and at that same instant a hare entered
my field of vision. I am still. I am seeding grass,
brambles, nettles. She follows her known path,
a few steps at a time, pausing for scent
in the air, a tremor of earth beneath her feet.
When does she sense my presence?
She halts
a shadow’s length away. How quick she is
in her stillness, every hair of her pelt
pricked, every nerve taut as wire.
Which of us will break this moment?
I want the legend of the hare who hid
from the hunters under the skirts
of Saint Melangell at prayer to be true.
in collection Trace, Oversteps Books, 2020
first published in anthology For the Silent, ed. Ronnie Goodyer, Indigo Dreams, 2019
Publications:
Trace, 2020, Oversteps Books, ISBN 978-1-906856-85-4, £8
Alphabet Poems, 2019, Mariscat Press, ISBN 978-1-9160609-2-0, £6
Out of Time (with photographs by Horatio Lawson), 2015, Westward Books, signed numbered edition, ISBN 978-0-9538477-3-0, £6
Uist Waulking Song, 2012, Westward Books, signed numbered edition, ISBN 978-0-9538477-2-3, £4.50
The Art of Gardening, 2010, Flambard, ISBN 978-1-906601-14-0
Literature Wales
Mary Robinson at poetry p f
e-mail Mary Robinson
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Sue Spiers works with the Winchester Poetry Festival as treasurer and was SIG Sec, British Mensa’s poetry group 2016-2021. Her work has been published in Acumen, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed With Pipework, Stand and others.
.
Stook griiind, stook griiind
the ventilator pulse
extends her life, thrusts air
down her throat
into wizened lungs
Her brain sucks
oxygen for its miserly self
storing it
for her last memory of
Shang-A-Lang
It robs muscle
so she is still
it thieves liver
so she pees brown
it purloins kidney
so toxins thrive
Her mobile shrills
Agadoo doo doo.
The nurse answers
‘Yes, I’ll tell her’
‘The Sassenachs send love’
Her hand on the blue
waffle blanket flexes
Her mouth moues
breathless unsound
meaningless and true
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da was commended in the Poetry Society’s 2020 Stanza competition
Publications:
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, 2023, ISBN 978-1-4475-2676-6
Plague – A Season on Senryu, 2020, ISBN 978-1-7167-0175-6
Best of British, 2017, Paper Swans Press, ISBN 978-0-9931756-6-4, £9
Hallelujah for 50ft Women, 2015, Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-1-78037-155-9, £9.95
Jiggle Sac , 2012, self published at www.lulu.com, ISBN 978-1-291-04430-0, £5
Sue Spiers website
e-mail Sue Spiers
Twitter: @spiropoetry
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Wendy Pettifer has been writing poems since a teenager. Her first book was published during lockdown; her second, ‘The Witching Hour’, should be out in summer 2021. Her poems reflect life as a legal aid lawyer, lover, mum and traveller.
It’s in the dead of night that we decide
The witching hour when women choose their Fates
Our inner ear alert to tempting whispers
From those who ride the moon and reach the stars
Luring us into dreams of choice and change.
Husbands snoring gently by our sides
Children cocooned in maternal lullabies
It’s in the early hours that I creep home
From lazing with a lean and hungry man
Tattoed and pierced, sperm spent, satiated.
I cycle fast through smoky inner-city early haze
Open my door before the children wake, my partner stirs.
It’s when the men work far away
That we try other softer pleasures.
Snuggle curved like spoons behind each other’s cheeks
Listen to the seaside gulls cry for freedom
Wonder whether we should go home.
It’s down amongst the dirty dishes,
Scattered shoes, squashed toys, crummy carpets
We know those voices as our own
And keep them quiet within our hearts
Waiting for another Witching Hour
from collection The Witching Hour, 2021
Publications:
The Witching Hour, self-published, 2021
Lovelines, self-published. Available @lovelines.net or via Twitter account @WendyPettifer or from Pages Bookshop in Hackney
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet