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)
Caroline Carver: I’m not a Jamaican or a Bermudian or a Canadian or even a Cornishwoman but a curious mid-Atlantic mixture of all of these with a bit of Inuit thrown in and therefore somewhat like a coelacanth: confused about origins and the big Why?
The bird turned into a man
so beautiful
snow lay on his shoulders
like ermine
was he petrel or fulmar?
he didn’t say
At first he came
only in dreams
one summer night
lay with her
at dawn she left her house
to marry him
Who could explain
her father’s rage?
His storms reached
across oceans
she knew full joy
only six days before
he killed her husband
threw her in his umiak –
pushed her overboard
when winds frightened him
she wouldn’t give in
gripped the boat so hard
he had to chop her fingers off
one by one
did not know
as she sank into her new Kingdom
they would transform
become whales narwhals seals walruses…
Among those she loves best
Singing Midshipmen
fish which like humpback whales
sing to the seabirds
make sailors who hear them
believe in mermaids
Poem published: Acumen.
Publications:
Three Hares, Oversteps Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-906856-06-9, £8
Jigharzi An Me, Semicolon Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9533525-2-8, £6.95 (from Caroline)
Bone-Fishing, Peterloo Poets, 2005, ISBN 1-904324-32-0, £7.95
address:
Michaelmas Cottage
14 Passage Hill
Mylor
Cornwall
TR11 5SN
UK
web-pages on poetry p f
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
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
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
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 Stewart founded poetry p f in 2005. Her awards include The Bridport Prize, Southport Prize, Silver Wyvern (Poetry on the Lake, Italy) and a Hawthornden Fellowship. Her collections include The Janus Hour (2010) and The Last Parent (2019).
Anne is editor of the SecondLightLive web-site and serves on the Second Light Network Committee and as part-time administrator for the Network. (see ‘More’ link below)
sample poems and comments on ‘The Last Parent’
"I like the whisker of hair/ under her armpit. It suggests/
that she’s not one of those women/ who are always trying
to get rid/ of their smell."
Vicki Feaver, OI YOI YOI
Give me silky legs glistening in the sun,
bikini line and oxters done and no shame
for the dishonest shape-shifter I’ve become.
Give me orange and magnolia to bathe away
my scent – when it’s Woman-Ready-for-a-Man,
I’d just as soon my body said "Only if I say".
And when I choose to go against the master plan
by coating earthworm lips with New Dawn Rose
or copper pink, grape or cherry blossom balm,
it’s no more a disguise than wearing clothes.
Or would you have me naked? No deceitful lines
between my vulva and the twitching public nose?
Hirsute and unscented may be truth of a kind,
but there are worse things, when you feel exposed,
than silk and oranges, and roses, to hide behind.
Poem published: The Interpreter’s House, Nov 03, ISSN 1361-5610, and
nominated for Forward Prize, 2004;
Discussed in Mary Michaels’ article How Does Your Poem Smell?, in Connections, Spring 2005 edition.
Strix Varia published Anne’s reflection on the writing of Body Language in their PoetSpeak series.
Collection: The Last Parent, Second Light Publications, 2019, ISBN: 978-0-9927088-3-2, £9.95 (Book Club offer £40 plus feedback).
Collection: The Janus Hour, Oversteps Books, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-9068561-6-8, £8.
Anthology: Ten Hallam Poets, Mews Press, 2005, ISBN: 1-84387-123-8, £7.99.
Glossy illustrated postcards: 2 of Body Language and 2 of Melting into the motorway on the inside lane, £1, from Anne.
20 Clovelly Way
Orpington
Kent
BR6 0WD
tel: 07850 537489
Anne’s web-site
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Maureen Weldon’s awards include: Highly Commended, SWWJ, Elizabeth Longford Trophy Poetry Competition, 2006. Her work is published in: Crannog, Poetry Scotland, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Coffee House. Autumn 2014, first pamphlet collection to be published by Poetry Space Ltd.
The young woman winks at me
she will carry on and on,
seventy is no age at all.
Not like the nineteen fifties
a carbon copy of your Mum,
who always wore respectability,
the pleated skirt, the short tight perm,
the purple rinse.
But the young woman in a miniskirt,
or hotpants, with good legs and small
shapely breasts. Who along the way
acquired four husbands, one daughter
and a disappointed heart.
Until you, old poet-man
took her by the hand and she knew,
that sure as the stars dance in the heavens
seventy is no age at all.
La Valse: runner-up in the Wirral Poetry Festival International Poetry Competition 2023
judged by David J. Costello, and featured reading at the prize-giving event.
Publications:
The Waking Hour, 2021, Red Squirrel Press. £6;
Midnight Robin 2014, Poetry Space Ltd, ISBN 978-1-909404-14-4
Breakfast at Kilumney, 2010, Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 978-1-9063573-1-3. £5;
Earth Tides, 2002, Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 1-90303-12-9. £4;
To Change These Hours, 2004, Kite Modern Poetry Series, ISBN 0-907759-39-4. £5.95;
Of Crossed Wires, 1996, Wire Poetry Booklet Series, ISBN 1-900462-60-5. £4;
Leap, 1993, Envoi Poets Publications, ISBN 1-874161-01-1. £5
Address:
3 Byrn Emlyn
Pentre Halkyn
Holywell
e-mail Maureen Weldon
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Veronica Zundel is a freelance writer for the Christian market, and has written poetry for over 50 years. She graduated (Dist.) in 2019 from the Poetry School/Newcastle Un. MA in Writing Poetry. Poems published in Magma, The Alchemy Spoon, Mslexia.
The Dresden Philharmonic are playing Jewish violins,
salvaged somehow – who knows? – from the ashes of camps,
force-played by the inmates for their torturers’ amusement
If I forget you, O Jerusalem
and rebuilt by this Israeli man, speaking French, in whose eyes
is the clarity of devotion. He has done this for twenty years.
On one fiddleback, a swastika and ‘Heil Hitler’ had been drawn
Let my right hand lose its cunning
but who’s to say if the music dragged from these guts
is disturbing the dead, or lament, or the dare of resurrection?
Who has the right to tell?
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I forget
poem based on a YouTube video
Poem published in Magma 75, 2019
Publications:
Going Out, Hodder 1990
Faith in her Words: six centuries of women’s poetry, Lion 1991
The Time of our Lives, BRF 2007
Crying for the Light, BRF 2008
All I know about God, I’ve learned from being a parent, BRF 2013
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet