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)
Jan Bay-Petersen, a New Zealander, worked in agricultural development and lived for 20 years in Taiwan. She began writing poetry after she moved to Cambridge. She has published in several poetry journals and won the 2013 Poetry Society Stanza Poetry Competition.
The closer we live to our gods, the more we need games.
Luck isn’t random: it chooses and fondles, then flits,
while we phantom midges soar high on the breath
of the gods or are drowned in their spit.
If our buzzing offends, if we stick in their throat,
they may take as amends what we don’t want to lose,
and you pay with an arm and a leg. Let us pray.
Playing games gives a hint. They’re a rear-vision mirror
to show what is coming up close from behind.
They won’t stop the truck, but maybe you’ll pause
a significant tick while you’re sending a text
so your paths don’t collide. If you’re ten over par,
if your darts hit the wire – give the blind date a miss.
Don’t ask for a raise, not today. Catch the bus.
Wait till you throw double six, till your horse
gallops home, till the ball draws a line
from your boot to the goal, till the Queen, King and Knave
join the cloverleaf Ace. Though you can’t read the stars
you can tip them like Braille and the rhythms are good,
your sails belly and fill, the duck’s entrails are pink.
There’s a cat and he’s black and you’re blessed. Take the trick.
Poem published in The North, 50
Jan Bay-Petersen at poetry p f
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
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
Carla Scarano D’Antonio is an Italian teacher, poet, short story writer and painter. She contributes reviews to London Grip, Write Out Loud, South, the High Window, Woking Writers Circle website, Tears in the Fence, Pulsar and other magazines.
‘Words dry and riderless’
Sylvia Plath, Words
The echo of the inexpressible
appears among lines
carving what I don’t know yet
configuration of signs.
Are words good enough?
We feel to use them literally.
What’s my pleasure in using words?
I encounter them on a journey
of recovery,
reimagining the past
in a memoir of self-discovery
turning at last
to the bottom of the pool.
Poem published in Acumen, 102
Publications:
Negotiating Caponata, Dempsey & Windle, July 2020
A Winding Road, Chiaroscuro, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9569264-1-8 (self-published)
Carla Scarano D’Antonio website
Carla Scarano D’Antonio blog
e-mail Carla Scarano D’Antonio
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Wendy French is Chair of Lapidus, an organisation which promotes creative words for health and well-being, a facilitator for writing groups in healthcare settings and she works with Poet in the City to promote poetry and emotional wellbeing in secondary schools.
Wendy serves on the Second Light Network Committee. (see ‘More’ link below)
A red bathmat destined for charity
lies in the moon’s path.
An empty bottle of gin floats
upright on bubble-less water.
Dressed in her best Harris Tweed
the colour of heather she’s dying
as she soaks in the bath. Her stale breath
and sauerkraut mouth will suggest
to the pathologist who teaches the art
of dissection that one’s own grief
isn’t so easy to stitch. In the half-lit orchard
moles bury themselves in the lawn.
Publications:
Splintering the Dark, Rockingham Press;
Sky over Bedlam, tall-lighthouse;
We Have a little Sister and She Hath No Breasts, tall-lighthouse
web-pages on poetry p f
e-mail
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
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
Jo Peters lives in Yorkshire and has been published in various magazines and anthologies and has been successful in several competitions. Her pamphlet Play was published in 2015 by Otley Word Feast Press.
Driving, I caught a glimpse
of Botticelli’s Venus
wearing blue jeans
walking over Otley bridge
where the swift Wharfe
had swirled her ashore.
She knows the mill girl
who dawdles by the forge
as the muscled smith
leans his back against
a massive flank to tip
up the feathered fetlock.
She smiles at the lad
herding his flustered sheep
across the bridge
who will take his thirst
to the barmaid at the Black Bull
when the selling is done.
She sees the nursemaid
in Tittybottle Park turn,
push her charge up the hill
to New Hall where
the gardener’s boy once
threw her a rose.
The goddess steps
aside as the young folk,
now uniformed, homework
downloaded, throng up
to Prince Henry’s School where
the desire lines of courtship abide.
The invisible wind strews no roses,
but it whips her hair,
her glorious corn-coloured hair
that lifts, streams away
from the perfection
of her oval tilted face.
Poem published in Surprise View, Poems About Otley, Otley Word feast Press, 2015
Publications:
Play, 2015, Otley Word Feast Press, ISBN, 978-0-9927616-5-3
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
Elizabeth Soule studied English and Philosophy at Nottingham University and taught English for many years. She is a member of the Suffolk Poetry Society and has had work published in the Norwich Writers’ Circle Anthology.
In a starless chill before dawn
we stood by the water’s edge,
tiny points of candle-light,
as a solitary flute sang out our misery
to the vastness of a dark sea.
Some had crouched over the radio all night
and guessing the worst,
had woken us
to stumble from tents to our hopeless vigil,
while hundreds of miles away
another kind of darkness rumbled over the frontier,
grinding the dreams of Spring
beneath remorseless tracks.
Then in bitter, barren silence
one by one each candle was extinguished,
our futile tribute
to those who dared to dream.
But hope and freedom are seeds that will not sleep
and the dust of dreams is fertile ground.
Small bright shoots split stone
Shatter concrete,
their progress more inexorable
than any trundling tank.
The brave gardener whose fearless tending
of improbable seedlings
gave us back belief,
now returns himself to the nurturing earth
and reminds us
that when the darkness seems most complete,
dawn is not so far away.
Poem published in PEN anthology Write to be Counted, 2017
Elizabeth Soule’s poem, December 2011, a Memory of August 1968 (for Vaclav Havel) was selected as Second Light’s ‘Poem of the Year’ from those on the home page for 2017/2018.
Listen to the poem here
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet