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 Sherry is a Writer and Management Consultant. She lives in Winchester but travels widely. Her first collection, Safe Passage, was published in 2014.
My love who promised the earth
then pawned it all away
my love shouldered like Goliath
with the belly of a mollusc
my love with a cavalier’s exfoliated thighs
and the swaggering hips of a toreador
my love who adored my classic clothes
then recommended froth and flowers
my love with the feet of a ballerina
and the strut of a petulant brat
my love who liked my symbolic phrases
then told me not to play mind-games
my love with Blue Beard’s hooked nose
in the baby face of a petit ingénu
my love who appreciated my honesty
then devalued me for being naïve
my love who made me writhe and pant
then fled when I expected the same
my love with eyes like brackish pools
which obscured an Arctic mind
my love who hijacked my freedom
but clung limpet-like to his own
my love who chided me for vacillation
then revealed each endgame in his book
my love with the evasive tongue
which accused me of lying by omission
my love who scorned my secure life
then grabbed one for his own
my love with generous Gemini words
underscored actions of Scrooge
my love who promised to always be there
then scarpered when things got tough
my love whose past killed our present
contaminated my future.
That love who left me on a Pyrrhic fire
but missed this harpy eagle flying hope.
Publications:
Failing to Find Old Sarum, 2019, Mudfog Press, ISBN 978-0-9927930-1-2, £5.95 (free p&p)
Safe Passage, a Memoir in Poetry and Prose, 2014, Ashbrook Publications, ISBN 978-0-9927930-0-5, £7.95 +p&p,
(proceeds after costs to Alzheimer’s Research UK, www.cpibookdelivery.com)
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Cathy Whittaker tutors in poetry and memoir and runs/co-runs various creative writing workshops – see www.openmindwriting.com. She is published in several anthologies and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
hardly ever used, made of oak
stuffed with letters,
square, sturdy pigeon holes
for sticking bills in and old invitations
not replied to.
He never sat there for long
too busy looking after the Herdwick sheep
he was failing at making a living from,
a dream gone wrong.
On days when the rain didn’t stop
he made angry attacks on forms
searched for cheque books
shouting we can’t afford to use electricity
go out, pay for petrol.
So my mother would search for jobs
for him in the Whitehaven News,
and he’d refuse to do any of them.
Bad days when we kept away.
He wouldn’t stay crumpled
in his utilitarian chair
even though it stormed outside.
He’d take his crook, shrug into a torn anorak,
whistle the dog, stride up the intake
to count the sheep cropping the grass.
At his happiest outside alone,
debts, loans, jobs, pensions, wills,
all falling away
into the mist and rain
crossing the fells.
Poem published in This Place I Know, a new anthology of Cumbrian Poetry, Handstand Press
Publications:
15 poems in Quintet and other poets, Cinnamon Press, ed. Jan Fortune
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
Hilary Menos was born in Luton, read PPE at Oxford, took an MA in poetry at MMU, & has worked as a student organiser, journalist, food & arts reviewer, organic farmer, dramaturge & builder’s mate. She lives in France and is editor of The Friday Poem.
Here I am, again, in these auction rooms
browsing the silverware section for old spoons.
Jam spoons, salt spoons, teaspoons with wrythen knops
(a mint boxed set complete with sugar nips),
a George III shell-bowled sauce ladle,
a silver christening spoon with nail-head finial,
a dozen apostle spoons, each saint with his emblem
finely wrought at the tip of a grooved stem,
even repoussé berry spoons – Victorian bling –
each one a perfect treasure. All these darlings
laid out like pale corpses on velvet or silk
or rubber-banded tightly, shank to shank,
begging me to buy them, no matter how dear,
and tuck them up at home in my cutlery drawer.
Poem published in Fear of Forks, 2022, HappenStance
Publications:
full collections:
Red Devon, 2013, Seren
Berg, 2009, Seren
pamphlets:
Fear of Forks, 2022, HappenStance
Human Tissue, 2020, Smith|Doorstop
Wheelbarrow Farm, 2010, Templar
Hilary Menos website
The Friday Poem
e-mail Hilary Menos
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
‘Tightly-wrought sequences and lyrical pieces … poignant and often surprising’ (Katherine Gallagher). Jane McLaughlin writes poetry and fiction. She has been widely published in magazines/anthologies; her first collection is Lockdown (Cinnamon 2016).
The silver hook slips to and fro.
Dark head bent over red sweater,
in the next seat she nets
a fine white band. Fingers arched,
thumbs steady. Turn of the wrist.
The train gallops the latifundios,
Cordoba fades behind golden hills.
Slant orange sun descending
paints white villages, backlights her hair.
The work grows, precise as frost.
Her small bones and tendons learnt
this craft from women whose maths
was in their heads, patterns
of chequered mesh, stars, flowers,
eloquent as a Moorish ceiling.
It does not need words: the yarn
is hooked into its own language.
In the lexicon of human gestures
her movements mean this and nothing else:
I am making lace.
Flowing like high cirrus
it will trim an alb, perhaps,
or christening robe. Maybe
hem a sister’s wedding dress.
A rite begun, tissue of spider’s breath.
Highly Commended, Torbay Open Poetry Competition, 2015
Publications:
Lockdown, 2016, Cinnamon Press,
link
The Abbot’s Cat (e-novella), 2014, Cinnamon Press,
(Kindle, avail from Amazon) link
Quintet (poetry), 2005, Cinnamon Press
Quartet (short stories), 2004, Cinnamon Press
twitter &MclaughlinJane3
at Facebook
Jane at poetry p f
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Jenny Hamlett has an MA in creative writing, has facilitated writing workshops and was Poet in Residence for Cassies, a garden on the Isle of Wight. She organised Penzance Poetry Society Stanza and is the current Treasurer of Moor Poets in Devon.
Kinlochleven
Discovered late evening
the fall
is the colour of a woman’s hair
as she strides
her last few years.
This sheer beauty
offers no pulling back
from the uninhibited
plunge
down vertical rock
a snatching of time,
hurling it
into the pool.
If seconds were iron bars
she could jam
in the cog wheels of a mill
she could not keep them,
against this grey fall.
Better to turn away
climb
one slow, hard step
after another towards
the winter pass
at Lairigmor.
in collection Playing Alice, Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017;
previously in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 7, 2011
and Words in Air app, 2013
Publications:
Playing Alice, 2017, Indigo Dreams Publishing, ISBN 978-1-9108343-2-9
Talisman, 2009, Indigo Dreams Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9561991-9-5
The Sandtiger, 1994, Longman, ISBN 0-582-12169-8
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Katherine Gallagher (Australian-born) is widely-published; translator, tutor, committee member of SLN; London resident since 1979. The most recent of her collections is Circus-Apprentice. Formerly Writers Inc Education Officer, she also writes poetry for children and has poems in numerous anthologies.
Katherine is a tutor for Second Light Network and serves on the committee (see more... link below).
September 3, 1939. Early evening
and the sea soughs, sways –
a sketchbook washing calm,
its ribs carrying the meticulous rainy births:
portraits from her many lives.
She has always loved the coastline,
come back to it, the waves’ fringed-grip:
daily swimming the Channel, testing herself
against its heave and push.
Ahead, Dover’s scribbly-white cliffs,
and beyond, the hills of Tenby –
its beach’s curve, her childhood’s
patch of sand. She has tested this sea’s glass
and painted herself into its mirror
like a cloud passing over. She has more
interiors to match and place, place and match
as again she gives herself to the water,
its moody mountains surging,
pacing her – the archetypal swimmer
planing darkness, with the coast
clearing and Paris-Meudon behind her.
Poem published: Mslexia; Circus-Apprentice
Publications:
Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems, Arc Publications, 2010, ISBN 978-1-906570-42-2. pbk £11.99;
Circus Apprentice, Arc Publications, 2006, ISBN No. 1-904614-02-7. £8.99;
After Kandinsky, Vagabond Press (Rare Objects Series), 2005, (details from Katherine);
Tigers on the Silk Road, Arc Publications, 2000, ISBN No. 1 900072 47 5. £6.95;
Fish-Rings on Water, Forest Books, 1989, ISBN No. 0 948259 75 2. £6.95 incl p&p(UK);
Passengers to the City, Hale & Iremonger, 1985, Sydney, 1985, ISBN No. 0 86806 212 x. Hardback. £9.00 incl p&p(UK);
more on Katherine’s web-site... and poetry p f Poem Cards.
Address:
49 Myddleton Road
Wood Green
London
N22 8LZ
tel: Tel: 020 8881 1418
web-site
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Marg Roberts has been reading and writing poetry for about 15 fifteen years. She lives in Leamington Spa and loves cycling, gardening and family.
Those moments when you open
to this morning’s blue and its retreating clouds
this symphony of sparrows endless
fluttering of feathers of feeding.
Those moments when under your shade
a baby is soothed in her mother’s arms
school kids scoot skateboard trudge
office workers balance coffee-to-go
croissants under heavy or light shoulders
hearts gay weary counting days to
weekends. And above pigeons like angels
almost suspended skilled at drifting
at dozing in your branches after gorging
on blossom. And Paul asleep in his tent
under the ticket machine water bottle parked
on top of his unfinished thriller smell
of his last smoke. All this being breath
non-breath this earthiness this sky
this mix
and you a part of it.
Marg Roberts blog
e-mail Marg Roberts
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Born in California, now living in Sussex. I am drawn by imaginative associations… memory, landscape, ideas, paintings, words. Writing, for me, is a tool for seeing; making connections, refining perception, always a search, some kind of amorphous truth the goal.
1
As Eve
The clay-lady steps forth
innocent as the child whose hands fashioned
arm-paws, hair-cape, the apple
she raises high as a chalice.
Her awkward radiance proclaims
a miracle: the first apple!
Salt-shine sprinkles her frock. A smile
cracks wide her face, emits kiln-light, and in its glow
we too see miracles:
a lump of clay – and look –
2
In Amsterdam
A clay-lady moves through
pewter streets. Her salt-freckled frock shimmers;
she leans high into her apple.
The burghers’ narrow hammered houses
cannot contain this fire-fangled clay. A smile cracks
wide her face, emits kiln-light.
3
In New York on a winter afternoon
The apple-woman sits
in the pewter chair, moon dimming in her lap.
Dusk filters through the gritty window,
absorbs, effaces
her salt-grey skirts, the strong dough-grey arms.
Her fire-fangled yearning salts
the moon with light.
Poem published in ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 8, May 2012
web-pages on poetry p f
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Nadine Brummer Has had poems published in many magazines and in many anthologies. First full collection ‘HalfWay to Madrid’ (Shoestring Press, 2002) was made a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
That night, finding him in my bed,
within kissing distance,
I wanted to take the stare
off his face – those eyes
all bulge and goggle.
Then I saw their depth, a look
that could take me anywhere
backwards in time. I recalled
an aquarium under the sea where
I’d pressed my face to the glass
of a wolf-eel’s tank, mesmerised
by a little reptilian head
with eyeballs lifting off
like spaceships that settled
into an expression beyond
a seal-pup’s dopey smile
or the pout of fish –
like that of some new-born child
you swear has been here before.
The frog was like him,
but when he gulped and a mouth
smelling of weed or bull-kelp
came close to my lips
I flinched and held out my hand
to stop his jump and touched
a spasm of green, a creature trying
to slither out of himself.
I’ve been so often trapped
In flesh that didn’t feel mine
I wondered what he could see
when he gazed into a pond;
he took my sigh as a signal
to kiss. I loved him best
the moment before he changed,
a small, crouched, alien thing
in need of a body.
Poem published: Poetry London, May 2003
Publications:
What Light Does, Shoestring Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-910323-90-8 £10
Any Particular Day, Shoestring Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-907356-66-7 £9
Out of the Blue, Shoestring Press, 2006, ISBN 987-1-904886-31-0 £8.95
Half Way to Madrid, Shoestring Press, 2002. ISBN 1-899549-70-6 £7.50 (Poetry Book Society Recommendation)
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Niki Strange won second prizes in the Sussex Poetry Competition 2019 and Second Light 2021. Published by Lighthouse, Flight of the Dragonfly, The Storms and Hedgehog, she was Arts Council funded poet in residence for Macmillan’s Horizon centre, 2020.
into an open top car,
careering on corniche roads
in the Cote d’Azur’s brûlée noon.
No factor 50,
for the facts of my melanoma
are of little consequence.
All is shadow-less velocity.
I am heliotropic to the blazing sun,
lit up, let loose.
Letter by letter,
I am matter transported.
Written reckless.
I can write myself
sprung from a high board,
suspended in defiance
of Earth’s pull,
my balance restored.
Lost nodes, radiated breast,
sleeved right arm
parts of this new entirety
that tucks, revolves
then plunges
as steel into the
quenching water.
Written stronger.
Second Prize in Second Light competition 2021;
poem published in Stickleback XXXI (Hedgehog) and Flights e-journal (Flight of the Dragonfly Press) 2021
and nominated for Forward, Pushcart and Best of the Web prizes.
Publication:
Body Talk, Flight of the Dragonfly Press, 2022
Close Up – poems on cancer (anthology), Orchard Lea Books, 2022
Niki Strange website
e-mail Niki Strange
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Sarah has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway and has been widely published. She won the Awel Aman Tawe poetry competition and has been a runner-up in the Mslexia competition three times. Her debut pamphlet, Inklings, is out now.
I wait, quickening,
reflecting light,
holding darkness.
Will a hand break my skin,
rise out, bearing a knife?
Feel the fingers of a child,
stirring. Dog tongue;
ticklish, urgent.
Indents of rain
or tears –
a wish-bone, drifting.
Look down
to see my bed
ribbed with light,
soft and rich -
all the bright coins.
When the moon is high
lie on the bank,
come close,
smell wet clay,
breath, returned.
Sense your unborn
coming up,
her daughter
and her daughter,
each ripple
clear as plainsong.
Votive wombs were offered to the gods to help with fertility problems in Etruscan times. They were left by sacred pools, much like coins are thrown into wishing wells today.
Publications:
Inklings, 2013, Flipped Eye, ISBN-10: 1-905233-39-6 £4
Sarah Westcott blog
e-mail Sarah Westcott
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Thelma Laycock is a poetry tutor and the founder of Gabriel magazine. Her work is widely published and has been translated into Hebrew, Italian, and Romanian. Her most recent collection is A Difference in Direction (Indigo Dreams, 2015).
It was often like that
if he came in first and she followed,
not so bad the other way round
but on a Friday or Saturday night
not totally unexpected
I could hear his key in the lock
heard the shaking, bronchitic cough
so I knew it was him:
I ran half-way down the stairs
seeking my usual shivering place
where they couldn’t see me
in case it blew over
But that night it was loud;
her Auntie Elsie’s clock, a wedding present,
came sailing through the air, lay broken,
I raced out to intercept his flying fists –
my little sister close behind me –
two soldiers in blue pyjamas
in the crossfire of battle
In the morning at school desks
we re-lived the night
dipping our pens into deep wells of ink
seeing Mam’s moon-pale face,
the purple fingermarks at her throat.
in collection, A Difference in Direction, 2015, Indigo Dreams; in anthology, Her Wings of Glass, 2014, Second Light Publications.
Publications:
collection, A Difference in Direction, 2015, Indigo Dreams, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-909357-61-7;
collection, A Persistence of Colour, 2011, Indigo Dreams, £5.99. ISBN 978-1-907401-49-7;
pamphlet collection, Chameleon Days, 2007, Feather Press, £3.50 (sold in aid of Lakota Link), ISBN 978-1-84175-277-8
web-pages on poetry p f
e-mail
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Zoe Brooks worked with disadvantaged inner-city communities before returning to her native Gloucestershire. ‘Fool’s Paradise’ won best poetry ebook EPIC 2013 awards. Collection ‘Owl Unbound’ (IDP) published 2020. Director at Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
My grandfather and uncle
both returned to the earth
with untimely haste.
Although they worked it,
broke its back
for snow to bite into,
dragged sedge from ditches,
clawed back
lambs from snowheaps,
they did not inherit it,
unless it was
in the length and width
of a man’s form.
And it claimed them
early,
reaching up through the chest,
pain filling the arms,
which had gathered harvests.
And still they loved it
and still they cursed
on cold wet mornings,
as it worked
like ringworm into their hands.
In death
they shall inherit the earth.
Until this time
they have been living
on borrowed land.
Poem published in Owl Unbound,2020, Indigo Dreams Publishing
Publications:
Owl Unbound, 2020, Indigo Dreams Publishing, ISBN 978-1-912876-36-5
Fool’s Paradise, 2012, White Fox Books, ISBN 978-09572341-0-9
Grandchildren of Albion, anthology, New Departures, ISBN 978-0902689145
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet