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)
Anne Boileau writes poetry about the natural world, the environment, history and her friends and neighbours. Her pamphlet Shoal Moon was published by Grey Hen in 2016. Her novel Katharina Luther – Nun. Rebel. Wife. came out in 2016.
The child leans on a hurdle, watches the sow
with her nine new-born piglets.
She smells warm pig, hessian sacks, hay
and engine grease from the Ferguson tractor
parked in the dark recesses of the huge old barn
but sees only the sow and her family,
bathed in light,
glowing from within.
The piglets were not here yesterday.
They are here today.
A tile is missing on the roof of the vast dark barn.
A sunbeam shines down at a slant
lighting up the sow
as she lies in her bed of straw,
grunting with contentment.
Later in life she will recall this scene
when she sees in paintings
the same hallowed glow.
Rubens: Daniel in the Lions’ Den
Caravaggio: The Raising of Lazarus.
Cranach: Adoration of the Shepherds
Nine new-born piglets pushed and suckled
at their mother’s teets,
the fine hairs on their naked bodies
lit up like silver.
November 2023
Publications:
Katharina Luther – Nun. Rebel. Wife., 2016, Clink Street Publishing, ISBN 978-1-9111106-1-3
Shoal Moon, 2014, Grey Hen Press, ISBN 978-0-9926983-2-4
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Four poems have been published in ‘Mirrored Voices’ An Anthology of Emerging Poetsfrom around the world. It was incepted by the American fiction/non fiction author Paul Morabito.
My blue kettle has stood for years on the kitchen counter.
Boiled innumerably over years:
cups of tea, coffee, hot water for cooking, or a winter’s bed bottle;
gently doing its job – unacknowledged!
This morning as I lift it to fill it with water for a coffee
a shaft of sun glitters over its old surface.
I stop, my hand raised between the handle and tap
listening to the water running –
my thoughts pour-back to that old farmhouse
where water was precious – the only source
a single tap that piped rainwater from an open concrete tank
unfit for drinking, only for boiling.
Even in age my aunt twice daily, would hang two white metal buckets
on the handlebars of her bike, ride/walk to the pump
fill them with spring water, her only drinking water.
I look again at the kettle and recognize other women
who today have the same task: –
for drinking water is the source of life
prized by them as without a single bucket or bottle
they die.
Poem published in Reach Poetry 300, 25 Anniversary Edition
Collection: Timelines, Indigo Dreams, 2014, ISBN 978-1-909357-53-2, £7.99
Anthology: Mirrored Voices Emerging Poets Anthology, Star Investment Strategies LLC, 2015, ISBN 978-1-5077107-1-5, £6.95.
Tel: 07950 395607
web-pages on poetry p f
Carolyn O’Connell blog
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Dorothy lives in Edinburgh where she runs creative writing groups in the community and is a Human Givens psychotherapist. In 2009, she founded and for five years ran the Young Edinburgh Writers, a creative writing group for teenagers in the city.
The antennae that once woke me
to catch a hiccup
before it revved to screams
now scan the quality of night
to read who’s out, who’s in.
And ‘out’ means stravaiging
in pubs and clubs, daundering
on streets with chittery bumps
they don’t feel, lurching for
taxis, friends’ floors, the last bus,
while I’m the missions’ sergeant
in my wakeful nightie,
alert for keys, creaking
stairs, the sloosh of taps,
counting them home.
Featured on BBC Radio 4 in Ruth Padel’s programme on writing workshops.
Published in collection Mind the Gap (see below)
Collections:
Mind the Gap, Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-909357-85-3
Leaving the Nest, 2007, Two Ravens Press, ISBN 978-1-906120-06-1
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Jean Atkin’s most recent books are Fan-peckled (Fair Acre Press) poems about the lost words of Shropshire, and The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (IDP) in 2021. She works as a poet in education & community projects.
Some mornings the van shakes on its wheels
and when I haul the sliding door, the ocean
roars its fury in a voice I’ve never heard
but feel I might deserve.
Some mornings I walk down to the beach
at Vik. Black sand is soaked to carbon
and the blistered air is stropped with foam.
I pull my hat over my ears.
Some mornings the ocean rumbles like an earthquake
just offshore. I ground my boots in raven sand.
The white comes frothing. Comes sliding up
the beach and I retreat.
Some mornings here it rains salt. Some mornings
the Atlantic flings stones at the beach. Some mornings
are a smashed sea bird and a gull-coloured sea.
Some mornings are hunters.
from forthcoming third collection High Nowhere;
first published in Raceme, Summer 2022, issue no. 13
Publications:
The Bicycles of Ice and Salt, 2021, IDP
Fan-peckled, 2021, Fair Acre Press
How Time is in Fields, 2019, IDP
Not Lost Since Last Time, 2013, Oversteps Books
Understories, 2019, Whalebone Music
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Kate Foley’s first (of 4) collection, Soft Engineering, was shortlisted for the Aldburgh Festival prize for best first collection. She is a tutor ( wordsinhere , SLN, freelance), editor (Versal, Amsterdam) and this year’s judge for the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize.
Kate is a tutor for Second Light Network and serves on the committee (see more... link below).
Ga maar lekker slapen, you say.
It’s 4 am. I have been standing on a blue dock.
Ice lights in the water. A ship against the quay
is rumbling in its guts. Steel threads run to the lip
of the gang plank. A freight wagon rolls to the edge,
unstoppable as coals down a shute. I know
it is full of my sins. I make myself
look at its logo, hoping it’s in Cyrillic,
something I can’t read. It’s the turning away
that creates furrows in our bed. When morning
comes and I open one saurian eye, I see
your collar bones arrow together as you bend.
In one hand a brown coffee mug, the other
wafting little pursed lips of fierce-smelling
wake-up coffee steam towards my sleep.
If I said to you I need to be sorry you’d ask
to whom, for what? since you have taught me
finally how to be kind. That’s just how it is,
you would say.
Ga maar lekker slapen.
Publications:
The Silver Rembrandt, Shoestring Press, 2008
Laughter from the Hive, Shoestring Press, 2004
A Year Without Apricots, Blackwater Press, 1999
Soft Engineering, OnlyWomen Press, 1994
web-pages on poetry p f.
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Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Editor, novelist & poet, Kay Syrad’s third solo collection is What is near (Cinnamon, 2021). She co-runs eco-poetry courses as half of the composite eco-poet kin’d & kin’d. She lives in rural East Sussex.
caught by the sun the fly zigzags darts
disappears another or the same fly appears
darts disappears the beech branches grow out
horizontally seeking light the leaves bright green
and shadowing some yellow the oak
hooshes in its high canopy the wind
the sound the green the yellow
in here
shame happens and a proxy shame happens
the feeling filters down through organs
tissue as if woven on a loom as if the body
is a loom and shame the warp the weft
out here
is where I am in the all-ish vastness of wrong acts
a half-thought a said/unsaid the buzzing
isn’ continuous but pulses at intervals re-charging
in the (de) forest in the parched soil
Poem from collection What is near, Cinnamon Press, 2021
Publications:
What is near, 2021, Cinnamon Press
Wild Correspondings: an eco-poetry source book, 2021, Elephant Press
Inland, 2021, Cinnamon Press
Exchange, 2015, Little Toller
Send (novel), 2015, Cinnamon Press
Kay Syrad website
e-mail Kay Syrad
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Margaret took early retirement to live in Greece. She has had over 100 poems published individually and one collection, Spectators’ View (Peer Poetry International, 2002). In 2008: Cinnamon Press, Leaf Books, iota, Purple Patch and commendation in Barnet poetry competition.
In a forgotten drawer
my father’s wooden rule,
brass-hinged to unfold
sideways and lengthways
for measuring boat timbers.
I hear the slap and click
of its closing,
before I can say ‘lifeboat’,
see it vanish
into that long pocket
on the thigh of blue overalls.
Indicator of his precision
love of numbers
a life measured
in feet and inches
business takings
cricket scores
football pools
bingo calls.
His emotions kept in check,
marked off by pencil,
held in columns,
buttoned up in cardigans,
till an outburst
a sea-squall soon past.
Now he’s gone to talk
spans and cubits
and dead-reckoning with Noah.
Poem published: Iota, 2007
Publications: Collection, Spectators’ View, Peer Poetry International, 2002
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Pat Francis has poems in ARTEMISpoetry, Frogmore Papers, South and South Bank Poetry. ‘Recalling London East’ was published by Paekakariki Press during lockdown. “Ambition: to keep writing next year, when I’m 90.”
For sale
fifteen of them
much of a muchness.
They’ll do said the lab boys.
With care one cat
grew glossy
plump, placid.
Don’t let them get fond of it said the chief scientist.
The electrodes inserted
in C351
looked like a little space-helmet.
Good publicity said the press boys.
The space cat floated
for five minutes,
weightless.
Success! gloated the headlines.
They watched to see
if the capsule would burn
on re-entry.
Lucky this time said the scientists.
The cat landed
the crowd cheered
the scientists bowed.
Felicette the Space Cat! gloated the press boys.
They waited two months
for people to forget her
then dissected her brain.
For the sake of humanity said the scientists.
Publications:
Recalling London East, illustrated by Jane Colling, 2020, Paekakariki Press, ISBN 978-1-9081334-1-0, £12.50
Pat Francis website
e-mail Pat Francis
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Sheila Lockhart lives on the Black Isle in Scotland. Her poetry has appeared in journals online and in print. Her debut pamphlet Brother (2023) is published by V.Press.
we walk away from town at dusk
red sand already darkening around us
you wouldn’t let me take a torch
said eyes would get accustomed to the dark
soon neon lights are out of sight
and the pale horizon fading
clouds turn violet like fresh bruises
and when the moon appears its beams
make hollows into pools of indigo
make sand glow like polished copper
I worry about snakes
then we hear the sound you hold my hand
it’s only the wind you say but I am fearful
two black shapes loom out of the darkness
impossibly tall against the night sky
I sense in them deep suffering
like all the sadness in the world
one is pierced through its chest
just as you in your soul’s darkness
will later be pierced
and the wind blows through the holes
like someone moaning
Published online in The Ekphrastic Review, 09/03/21;
in pamphlet collection Brother, V. Press, 2023
Note: After Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus by Salvador Dali
Publications:
Brother, V. Press, 2023, IBSN 978-1-7398838-9-8, £6.50
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet