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)
Anna Avebury was born of Ukrainian parents in Bradford. She now lives in St Albans where she is a member of Ver Poets. She writes on a variety of subjects including nature, memory, and art.
A corner of the artist’s room Gwen John
Here, the air is cool and still,
curtains motionless at the window
as sunlight flares through,
stirs the scented posy on the table.
A wicker chair holds out
its arms, pink parasol folded
like her heart by its side;
blue dress, her abandoned pride.
Drowsy in mid-summer heat
Paris hums beneath.
poem selected for John Cotton’s Ten Liners 2023, published by Ver Poets, St Albans
Publications:
Dress Rehearsal, self-published, £2.50 (proceeds to Open Door – local charity)
Ver Poets anniversary anthologies; Locked Down, Poetry Space, 2021
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
Daphne Gloag lives near London. Many poems have appeared in magazines etc, especially since she retired from medical publishing. A third book, Beginnings, is due in 2013. The end of the title poem won a Second Light competition first prize.
Daphne Gloag’s third poetry collection, Beginnings, was published by Cinnapress Press in 2013. The end of the title poem won a Second Light competition first prize.
That Volvo must be doing 70, I said
as we drove home from the museum. Words
as bridges, the road smooth as thought, sun low,
its brightness undone. Not so much traffic now.
Words as cushions. The engine’s so quiet, you said.
It was a kind of peace.
What did you like best today? I asked you. –
Well, the wise men – their huge star – on that ivory…
oh look at that, I knew that car would pull out.
My silent agreement merged with the quiet.
Long as memory it seemed, the road:
it could have gone on for ever, knowing nothing
of the souls it carried.
Today, I said, won’t last for ever
but our poems will remember it.
Clarity of being, bright surfaces
plain to see. Nothing to explain, except the comfort
of the banality of breath, except the ease
of words and silence
smooth as our speed,
except the way
two beings were held together by their hidden life,
just as in the galaxies
what cannot be seen
holds together the luminous stars.
*Invisible matter – dark matter – is generally thought to be the main reason for the gravity holding the galaxies together.
Poem published in earlier version in Ambit and, as part of the long poem sequence Beginnings, in the collection Beginnings and Other Poems.
Publications:
collection, Beginnings and Other Poems, 2013, Cinnamon Press, £8.99
collection, A Compression of Distances, 2009, Cinnamon Press, £7.99
collection, Diversities of Silence, 1995, Brentham Press, £4.50
Daphne Gloag at poetry p f
enquiry to Second Light
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Elaine Briggs lives and works in France as a translator. Poems have received prizes in Segora and Hungry Hill competitions. A collection has been long-listed by Cinnamon.
A harp is a made thing,
the heartwood of Homer, an ode.
It’s a flightless wing
with speech in its keys
and strings taut and resonant
open for winds to frisk at sea.
It’s the prow of a boat
where Orpheus turned helmsman
set a rhythm
for oars to dip and rise
and the water that streamed from their blade
outsang the Sirens’ wolfish howl.
You stand alone, your frame
spindly as the African lyre you cradle.
Then, in Afghan headgear worn for a crown,
you swell – wind and breath
sing to me the Muse’s song
and the rage of Achilles is re-made.
Address:
Tours, France
e-mail Elaine Briggs
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Poet, song-writer, novelist and co-founder and organiser of the popular Fourth Friday music and poetry event at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden, Hylda has published a narrative poetry sequence, a novel and one poetry collection, Sayling the Babel.
Hylda served on the Second Light Network committee (see more... link below).
there’s daffs, a quid three bunches
new season’s spuds, thirty pence a pound
six limes fifty pence. fresh crimson chillies
capers, cardamoms, cumin, puzzles of ginger
eddoes, mangoes, melons, ackie, chow chow
pale dimpled breadfruit, manioc rough as bark
fans of skate on marble, shark fin, turbot
huss, bass, goat-fish, ink-fish in a bucket,
Goes well with custard, want some parsley with it ?
His rubbers slub a nifty riff, Here George,
he scuds a mullet; rhythm’s pummelling on
from Blue Beat City – Rap and Ragga, Reggae
Hip-Hop, Ska; Not like the old days
is it, Mrs Lady? He winks, you won’t remember,
cabbage, cod on Friday, forever Crosby
crooning Easter Bonnet on the wireless.
Poem published:
Reaching Peckham (pamphlet and CD), 1996. Set to music and performed at Dulwich Festival;
in anthology What Poets Eat, ed. Judi Benson, Foolscap, 1994;
performed on BBC’s The Food Programme
Publications:
Sayling the Babel, poetry collection, Hearing Eye, 2007;
Inspecting the School, novel, LibEd, 2000, avail from Seven Ply Yarns, c/o 148 Crystal Palace Road, London SE22 9EP. £9.00 incl p&p;
Reaching Peckham, 1996
Hylda at poetry p f
enquiry via Second Light
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Joolz Sparkes is co-author of London Undercurrents, with poet Hilaire, published by Holland Park Press, which uncovers London’s unsung heroines north & south of the river. Her poems and short stories are published in magazines and anthologies.
I am doing the walk you do when you’re in Soho –
the walk that says I’m a Londoner see?
Not a tourist. Don’t mess with me.
I do the walk past Soho Square at 9pm
on my way to late night jazz,
it’s been raining and the pavement
is something I don’t want to see
but the filth, oh how the filth, it beckons to me.
– There! –
See how quick it went?
What was it; a mouse?
Nah, the thickness of that slubbery tail, says
eugh [shivers] a baby rat’s in the house.
– There it is –
hunkering next to the railings
gnawing that scrap of a thing
… it’s, it’s looking back at me
little black eyes all lit up like bling.
A dirty evil smudge
the shape of infestation,
nasty filthy claws like the clattering
of lies told down the police station.
Rat, rat. Definitely rat.
It’s doing the walk you do when you’re in Soho.
Poem first published in South Bank Poetry Magazine, Issue 15;
published in Some Kind’a Soho by David Russell and Daniel Saunders published by Central Books 2021
Publications:
London Undercurrents, Holland Park Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-9073208-2-8, £10.00
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
June Webster is a poet and short story writer. Her poems have been published in South Bank Poetry, DulwichOnView, Morley Poets A First Anthology, Lighten Up Online, SecondLightLive, Dreich Magazine & Haiku Journal. She was short-listed for the Plumstead Poet Laureate.
It’s colic, they said,
it’ll pass, first three months
it’s normal, some do, others don’t.
Each time I held you close.
tiny legs curled tight to belly,
your screaming pain mine.
I soothed the spasms
until the meds took over
when cries hushed.
I placed you in your cradle.
It’s her age, they said,
it’ll pass, teens, always a worry.
You stayed out late,
danced till dawn, run wild
on the heath, gave me cheek
then hugs to allay my fears.
The day you celebrated adulthood,
you came home drunk and sick,
while the meds worked
I placed you in your bed.
It’s an auto-immune disease,
it will pass, just a few years,
but it stayed, held on tight,
took a piece of you little by little.
Every twinge of your torment,
mine as I sat by you.
holding on, squirming
until the meds took over,
and irrevocable peace
placed you in your final crib.
Publications:
Morley Poets: A First Anthology, 2018, Morley College, £6.99
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Patricia Helen Wooldridge composes much of her poetry while walking in Hampshire. She has a D.Phil in creative writing from Sussex University and her poems have been published in many poetry journals.
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too? (Emily Dickinson)
With herring-gull grey
knitted in to her jumper,
she spent her last years
living by the sea.
She could be seen standing
on the shoreline staring out,
even though there was nothing there,
there could be.
Hardly anyone noticed,
for she liked to be up at first light
fuelled by the crying gulls,
which never made her think of death
but only about being alive.
Poem published in ARTEMISpoetry, May 2016
Patricia Helen Wooldridge on poetry p f
e-mail Patricia Helen Wooldridge
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Stevie Krayer gave up university administration to have more time for writing and, since moving from London to Wales in 1993, has published six books, including three poetry collections, and an anthology of Quaker poets (co-edited with R V Bailey).
Thar she blows!
telltale trace
on the horizon. No
leviathan – behold
the speck of god-dust
that takes away
the weight
of that mighty
unaccounted for
dark mass
(well, maybe). Load
it up with all
your unanswered
questions, scientists!
If only
it could take
away our own
darkness – but
even if we
conscientiously put out
our garbage, there’s
no celestial dustcart
to call; and
where
could it be taken?
Out in that desert
no benign
kites and gulls
wait.
Poem published in New Monkey, 2014
Publications:
New Monkey, 2014, Indigo Dreams, ISBN 978-1-9093574-7-1
A Speaking Silence (anthology, co-edited with R V Bailey), 2013, Indigo Dreams, ISBN 978-1-9093573-0-3
Questioning the Comet, 2004, Gomer, ISBN 1-843233-46-0
Voices from a Burning Boat, 1997, University of Salzburg, ISBN 3-7052-0132-8
The Book of Hours by R M Rilke (translation), 1994, University of Salzburg, ISBN 3-7052-0432-7
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet