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The Spring 2022 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:
*Tim Suermondt *Mark J. Mitchell *Rustin Larson *Stuart Pickford
*Emma Lee *Alan Cohen *John Grey *Charlotte Gann
*Hannah Linden *Richard Manly Heiman * Janet Hatherley *Teoti Jardine
*Julia Duke *Jim C Wilson *Robin Houghton *Ken Anderson
*Gale Acuff *Kerrin P Sharpe *Alicia Stubbersfield *John Harvey
*R. Gerry Fabian *Deborah Morgan *Raymond Miller * Rizwan Akhtar
*Edward Lee *Geoffrey Winch *Ann Pedone *Mary Mulholland
*Martin Bennett *Eugene O’Hare *Jane McLaughlin *Christian Ward
*Michael Gould *Gordon Wood *Amanda Joshua *Jack Crow
*Prue Chamberlayne *Sophia Butler *John Bowen *Murray Bodo
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
Biographical notes on contributors can be found here
London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG new poetry Spring 2022
SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October
Editor’s notes
An empty cricket ground at the close of play – maybe at the end of the season when a sense of sadness is only faintly tempered by the expectation of play resuming in six months or so. This image is especially appropriate for a particular poem in the pages which follow (readers will easily detect which one); but a similarly uncertain sense of loss hovers over the rest of the issue. There are poems in which people lose (or at least mislay) themselves due to illness, poems where lovers lose each other (though maybe not forever) and poems where refugees lose homes and families and must thereafter achieve and sustain a balance between regrets and hopes. Our contributors handle these difficult subjects sensitively and with craft, avoiding predictable responses as they offer oblique and moving observations and some unexpected consolations. We hope readers will enjoy this selection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Tim Suermondt: The First Poem of The New Year
It tells me to make it cheerful—
“There’ll be plenty of Sturm und Drang
to keep both of us busy.”
I take It outside, content with the mild
January weather, a light jacket sufficient.
I point out the names of neighbor’s dogs
and buy us each an ice cream, two scoops
on the cone—what could be more cheerful?
We walk the streets, talking about current
events, music, the bar Dante now closed
down—ambushed hard by the plague—
how so much has changed many times over,
and moonlight. “End with the word moonlight,”
It says, “that would be nice.”
We cross the expansion bridge after midnight,
waving to the city—“Hello” in the moonlight.
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Mark J. Mitchell: Masked
At non effigies meos iambos
But you shall not escape my iambics —Catullus
The mask can fog his glasses, cloud them. Eyes
aren’t glass. He rubs his words—not meant to show—
like stones, small pebbles—the kind you might throw
to tease a girl out late. He often sighs.
The mask slips down his nose. It’s time to choose
a fresh one. Someone whose life he can’t share—
plucked from history, from dead gods, from news
he hasn’t read. A life he’d never dare.
This one’s tighter—like flesh, fresh cut. He tries
to shift it sideways, to line up small holes
with large light. But light slides where it flows
and loose words drop, one by one while he dries
his glasses. The mask fogs them. Clouds his eyes.
He dreams cataracts, old age, holey shoes
for skin that clings to him now. He must wear
the mask until her story gets told—blue
eyes, white hair, new sex, old death. His to bear.
Old Plato called this painful work a lie.
He’s as dead as anyone. What’s he know?
The face slips aside. His own starts to show.
Frightened, he scribbles fast, whiles there’s still light.
The foggy mask can’t cloud his glass-gray eyes.
Mark J. Mitchell: The Pink Lady, Misplaced
The Pink Lady walks down Fillmore Street
with her hard-shell suitcase limping behind,
hitting every crack. Looking up, she reads
each awning slowly. She sounds out store names
as if the words were foreign. Crooked signs
bother her but they don’t nudge that vital fear—
She’s lost. This is not her street. Faces confuse
her, swimming past the holy case. Where
are the dead machines? The chlorine that feuds
with dryer sheets? Why is the gold shop named
in strange letters? Papers offer her news
from nowhere. She finds this slope too steep.
Only ballast in the case stiffens her back,
holds her barely balanced. What does she seek?
All that was once here. The comforting names
born before she was pink. When she lived facts.
A light changes. Her ears—sharp, fierce, alert—
catch the rinse whine of that wobbly machine.
She turns. She smells it, six blocks from here—
that lonesome safe harbor for shipwrecked names.
She and her pink case roll home. They’ll stay clean.
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***
Rustin Larson: The Navy Coat
I keep water in an old cider bottle.
I pour into my glass at bedtime,
sip some and turn out the light.
I'm restless inside. The cat
makes a bed of my ankles.
I dream about cities underground,
piazzas with no moonlight,
no music, empty.
In the dream, in the room I had taken,
there was a wardrobe cabinet.
My father's uniform looked like
it would barely fit a frightened 12 year old.
These were the children
we set sailing into the night
to fight the monsters.
On the enemy shore, a werewolf walked
in the moonlight.
All the cats stayed inside
and whispered the words “wintergreen”
and “peppermint” to the mice.
The wind rushed
through the bare branches,
and little footprint pools of snow melt
reflected the stars.
A father, hat to boots in navy blue,
walked searching
for his boy.
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Stuart Pickford: Mapping a Route
There’s the squeaky boardwalk, the stile
with the wonky leg, stretches of field
like a lawn where you look up
at clouds throwing together a sky.
It’s quiet as Christmas but running
is not locked down. Paths rise
in my mind, branch out: a track
meets another that leads to a lane.
The Nidd’s settled into the gorge.
At the bottom of Gates Hill Fort,
the skunk cabbages earn their name,
their flowers cupped by candlelight.
Soon Himalayan balsam will resume
its invasion. I contour along the ridge,
imagine the Great War firing range
shelling downy birch and larch;
the Norfolk Regiment, on the slopes,
training for D-Day: I see a body
finally reached by the tide, lifted,
as if still breathing, and washed clean.
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Emma Lee: A Splash of Colour
The breeze teases a plastic bag
against Curve's windows, the dark
interior turning them into mirrors.
The pigeons are absent: the city centre
coffee houses are where the food is.
The leaves on the trees in St George's
rustle in conversation, a celebration
that the planning application to fell
them failed. The buildings are quiet,
nothing's open this early as I return
from running errands before my day
gets underway. The air is damp
with anticipation of the rain
the swollen clouds have yet to release.
Everything loitering backstage
waiting for a signal the show will start
but the traffic lights on Rutland Street,
the only splash of colour, are red.
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Alan Cohen: Flight
Flight, to my mind, has nothing to do with wings
We lift off from the ordinary
Into the impossible or absurd
Things that we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or sing
Remember, imagine; the spoken or written word
I have never envied a bird
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John Grey: The Leap
She will not now be leaving in less than a week.
Nor will she be travelling south day after day.
Yes, hers will be a house nobody lives in.
But don’t go looking for the previous occupant down the highway.
Instead, head for the river on this day in the short summer.
There was a crossroad for a moment that linked bridge to current.
Under yellow sundown surface, the shadow of shredded clouds,
you will see the sorry trail the nomad took.
Yes, she started out many times but sometimes a wall
turned her back, a wall the size of a mountain.
Or the monk in the monastery barred the way
with the ominous threat of religion.
She couldn’t dig a hole in the ground,
or climb a ladder and keep on ascending,
so she tried what was feasible, a featherless flight,
from a rusty railing into a watery postcard.
There went the droop-headed young woman you passed on the street,
the ticket seller at the Bijou who struggled when counting out change,
the least wanted in the nest, you saw fledging on a doorstep
of a thrift shop on Main Street on a Saturday night.
The cops have been by, the body dragged out,
but there’s something to be gained by warming yourself
in the cold, lapping chill, of another’s drowned misery,
like a memory where you recall what you weren’t even witness to.
See the colour of the water now that stars’ seeds have settled,
the drowning of rocks, as the current rolls over,
the bridge above, like a giant’s hands that can’t hold onto anything,
the bank where you stand, a shadow previously unimagined.
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Charlotte Gann: Cargo
What if it started with my young, Danish
great grandmother – whose name I’ll never know,
who was, I have been told, banished back
to Denmark after the tragic, suspicious death
of her second daughter. Say, she left these shores
and that was that, fate sealed. What if, in her
leaving my child grandmother, the blow was dealt?
My grandmother, of course, never recovered
from losing her sister, from losing her mother.
Locked away, like an orphan in a book,
in a red-brick English boarding school
she grew up, and pretended (I imagine), then
passed her broken heart on to my mother.
Under cover. Who put it away, locked in her
chest, and closed forever.
When I came along, small number five,
my mother passed to me her broken heart.
Under cover. Keep this deathly dark, she
didn’t tell me. Keep it sealed. Learn from me.
It needs to be carried. It’s the greatest shame
you can ever imagine. Now it’s yours to hide
and cart. Keep it quiet. Keep it dark. Your
broken heart. Mistake it for a host of other
sharp conditions – circumstantial, as your life
unfolds. Soldier on. And pass it on. Pass it on.
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Hannah Linden: Childhood
Today, the only job I have is keeping
the blackbird quiet. At first, when it
ached, it lay quietly in its box so
it was easy. I fed it milk-soaked bread,
pretended it was my baby. Being
a mother is easy. I stroked feathers,
put scaly toes between my fingers,
felt, at last, that I belonged.
The bird was lucky. It lived so I took
it to school with me. That was when
the trouble began. The teacher didn’t
understand how to teach a bird. The
blackbird tried to tell the teacher
about flying. It hopped up to the window
and sang to the sky. But the teacher
heard the song as a lie.
An unsinging bird is a heavy load.
I wondered if I’d misunderstood
the instructions. Surely if I was
doing the job right, it wouldn’t
feel so hard. My pockets filled
with feathers and my mouth
was a soft down away from naked
terror. My bare boneness hollowed.
I was a fragile nest holder longing
for a tree or a gap in the hedgerow.
This was no way to inspire eggs.
The blackbird pecked at the only
bit of me that was still soft, a hidden
underpart of resistance. A hole grew
to the size of an open beak, its song
so sweet the whole sky replied.
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Richard Manly Heiman: Released with Meds
Out on the ether road
I saw you -
angel with frayed pinions
a listless smile
and a broken neck.
Like a child,
ephemeral and elfin.
Someone dropped you.
You fractured.
There wasn’t glue
to knit you back together.
Words tumbled down
your chin like pages
torn from a thesaurus.
Whatever they did
in there
only scrambled you more,
only cantilevered a mind
too fragile for this world,
like Ophelia's,
eyes wide and fever bright
with a void behind
like a dispersing nebula,
leaving a white dwarf
for remains.
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Janet Hatherley: The many heads of silence
If I cut off one head
another springs back.
I throw away your toothbrush,
remember all that work—
the three implants,
the gargling with salt water.
At your grave
I think about your teeth,
white and still,
none of them needed anymore.
I sit on someone else’s bench,
read the plaque—Maggie and Albin,
listen to the parakeets,
a streak of green flashing above
the garden I have made.
It’s only small, six foot six
by two foot six.
Pink and gold leaves clothe the earth
between the flowers.
I take out my secateurs, dead-head a few
although I know it’s too late
for anything to grow back.
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Teoti Jardine: Yearning
May the bird of Paradise
pluck out my eyes.
Make me blinded to
all that is not real.
Come Peregrine Falcon,
swift the hardness from
my heart. Leave only true
love beating there.
Oceans, drown me in your
deepest depths. Let me
taste the bountifulness of
complete surrender.
Let this stirring of such
ancient longing, become
my steed of constancy,
for evermore.
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Julia Duke: Easter Triptych
The pruning season
takes on a dark meaning in
virus-ridden days.
The world is waiting,
uncertain if or when life
might find its rebirth.
Is resurrection
to be scorned? The daffodil
does it every year.
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Jim C Wilson: Miss Smith At Home
Miss Smith’s unmarried niece with
cool constraint clicks on
The Morning Service. Miss Smith
doesn’t hear but nods
brittly amidst the tower-
ing darkness of her
heirloom furniture. Just so.
Grandpapa was a
missionary and took cold
baths. Grandpapa’s long
gone, like Nanny. Miss Smith’s dry
lips shape themselves in
a silent conversation.
Such times! Her false teeth
click shut. Miss Smith’s unmarried
niece serves pale Earl Grey,
dutifully, on the hour.
Old hands, wrinkled and
dry as heather, cling to the
china. Then Miss Smith
needs a tissue. At five to
twelve the postman calls
with circulars; the tall clock
ticks on as Miss Smith’s
unmarried niece tidies the
tea things away then
tries to beat life into a
cushion whilst Miss Smith
is dancing with a fine young
man and the band plays
like a child’s music box
winding slowly
down.
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Robin Houghton: Threat
The church is without power in winter
candlelight spreads its gloom while the hot air
of sermons and hymns warms the faithful
long summer days are best for the curious like us
to visit push open the metal-screen doors
Please Keep Closed So The Birds Can't Come In
here's a table with the latest appeal Help
Save Our Medieval Tympanum then the parish
newsletter a smiley Tradecraft brochure
browse the noticeboard with its list of services
the flower rota a welcome from the rector
a pocket-sized leaflet About the Church (50p)
which I skim and replace then pretend I've read
how the tower was struck by lightning in 1739
how villagers reused the flint same as they did
two hundred years before we pause to examine
the locked console of an organ or is it
a harmonium a broad pedal to work its bellows
the church is without power without statuary
or stained glass but on the sad end of a pew
sits a single post-it note so low to the floor
I have to bend to read it: We know
you have been stealing the money envelopes.
You will be caught.
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Ken Anderson: Stolen Moment
I was reading at a concrete picnic table
under tall pines by the campus lake late one airy afternoon
when a veil must have dropped from the face of the sun,
for the sky suddenly brightened to a bar of buffed gold.
A quiet Asian Indian appeared out of nowhere,
a mysterious Krishna in slacks and madras
who asked —in a voice as soft as the finest sari’s shiny silk—
if we could speak. I said I had to study, but thanks.
Sunlight gilded the astral burst of pine needles,
and the sparrows hushed their festival of happy songs.
An odd stillness fell on the grove
as if somehow we had stepped out of the world
into an ancient temple’s inner chamber.
The trees became pillars, the boughs a vaulted dome.
The resinous scent, like incense, deepened the spell. He said
I knew just what it was about. I answered yes,
then, smiling, judged it was to preach.
He raised a hand in a gesture of goodbye or peace,
and I thought of what it must be like, the touch
of his smooth, bronze skin— the palm on my brow,
his fingers casually draped on my arm
to guide the way. I faced the factual book.
The trees sighed, nuzzled by a breeze.
But when, on second thought, I turned to call,
he had strolled into invisibility. The sun set its seal
on the day’s mirage. The laconic dream faded.
So, I thought, we send away the messenger of god.
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Gale Acuff: Cross
Miss Hooker's my Sunday School teacher and
swears that Jesus died for my sins so that
when I die myself I'll go to Heaven
instead of Hell to live forever and
forever but if I have to be straight
I'd rather not die at all and told her
so after class this morning, and she said
Gale, I'm oh-so disappointed in you
which made me cry, I'm only ten years old
but then she explained that I've got no choice
because God created us and not we
ourselves or something like that so we prayed
together did Miss Hooker and I and
then I went home, I walk to church and back
so on the way I was thinking out loud
that if God was any kind of a god
or is that any kind of a God then
couldn't I just live forever down here,
on earth I mean, and I wouldn't even
want to be good, just the same old good and
bad, and when I came to the avenue
where I have to cross with all its traffic
I stopped as usual but didn't look
both ways before I waded in and now
I'm dead, or maybe dreaming, or risen.
Gale Acuff: I don't want to die and go to Hell no
matter how long I might live, I'm ten years
old now and getting older and somewhere
near the end is the end, mine anyway
and I don't even know when the end will
begin for me--I could die tomorrow
or next week or month or maybe not for
another ninety years and all that time
anticipating what's to come, nothing
more to come except if in the After
-life there's more of the same that I have here,
eating and sleeping and even going
to church and Sunday School and regular
school and Scouts and Burger King and shopping.
Maybe when I'm dead I'll wish I could die.
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Kerrin P Sharpe: hoopla
six lemon tulips from the bride’s bouquet
stand on tippy toes in a deep glass vase
drink with guests in the sea side living room
become flushed lean north doze on their stems
banter coarse singing speeches I’ve known him
longer than any other woman someone in
a rabbit skirt with so much to say the microphone
passes out the sea wrestles a wilderness of bottles
and cans it’s the shortest day only the tulips notice
the swell open the front door there’s surf everywhere
the bride rushes to rescue the spluttering tulips
her ring swims round and round her finger
hoopla the next lucky wave
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Alicia Stubbersfield: Mistake
From the Manchester Evening News ‘For Sale’ columns:
Designer Wedding Dress, size 10. Unused. Bought in error. £500
The error was all mine, to fall in love
during that velvet heatwave spring.
The wedding would be fairy-tale:
a mediaeval country church,
then the fifty-pence-a-week cottage
down the valley like Laurie Lee’s peapod.
Not my mother’s idea of a happy ending
though she went along with it,
bought my cream crepe Ossie Clarke,
bodice edged with floppy lace,
linen boots with Beardsley embroidery.
When he left me for window-dresser Philip
my mother had been right all the time.
It was still illegal so I couldn’t tell his mother
when she came to my door, the evening sky
cracking open with pathetic fallacy as I said
I’m sorry. I made a mistake.
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John Harvey: College Days - a story
The street in New Cross
where I went to college
is littered with time wasted
time lost
Windows boarded up
posters torn down
my hand reaching back
in vain across the years
It was all so long ago, another age;
when visiting your ladies’ place of residence,
a guest at your hall formal,
meant wearing suit and tie,
accepting warm sherry from a tray,
before gliding inexpertly round the floor,
longing for the waltz when I could hold you close;
and later, in the guise of a chaste good night,
pressed up against the roughcast of some darkened wall,
kiss until our mouths were numb.
All that first year we sat across
from one another in lectures, spent
evenings in the library, studying;
lived in each other’s thoughts,
each other’s gaze; when time and space
allowed, in each other’s arms.
Time spent envisaging a life together,
everything down to which newspapers
we’d subscribe to, which books we’d read,
how many children, what make of car.
We thought of it as love and most probably it was:
it had, after all, along with the all-too obvious pleasure
a few requisite moments of pain.
“I love you” …
it seemed so easy to say and to believe
and when, at the end of that year,
suddenly, as if without a word, it was over,
why did I feel that surge of freedom
while you, I discovered many years later,
feeling discarded, fell into depression
and something like despair?
Good friends saved you – that
and your Northern stalwartness,
your natural strength and pride.
You found someone else to like,
to love, or likely he found you.
Cherished you for what you are,
loved you, I trust, as you deserved.
We chose the paths we took
and in the end the paths took us.
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R. Gerry Fabian: Determining Depths
When we were a summer item,
we would walk around the lake path
until we came to the cove.
If there was no one there,
we would take off our shoes
and wade up to our knees
and gently kiss until just
before it became erotic.
Then we would finish our walk
Now, so many years later,
on a summer day,
I revisit our walk,
wade into the cove water
and wonder how to measure
the degrees of sadness
that memory evokes.
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Deborah Morgan: Text
I love the sound tyres make on a dry road,
have pulled over, eyes shut, trying to determine
the direction of every passing vehicle.
Your last text, how I make you cringe,
how the thought of being with me
makes you want to be elsewhere, made me cry.
The speed of what must be a lorry rattles my car,
and I’m a seed in an apple, dark and narrow,
a half-closed eye, eased out with a knife,
tossed away, taken on a journey
I could never have imagined, not even now,
with everything passing.
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Raymond Miller: Pillion
Lovers should come with a log book like
this motorbike you sat astride, your ex- fiancé
riding pillion. One arm curled
around your waist, the other holds a jug
of beer. Your auburn hair’s swept off your face
before you settled on the fringe.
Teenage curves press against the cheesecloth
shirt, blue denim tightly squeezes thighs,
then flares from 1978,
dating you as surely as a number plate.
I only know his name was James and he played
rugby at your college. You told me once you’d dabbled
in light bondage, then called the wedding off
and fled – too young to be tied down, you said.
I caught you on the rebound or reverse.
It doesn’t hurt that I weren’t first, but sometimes
I pull over and wonder, at all this mileage
on the clock, when the wheels have almost stopped
and the engine is barely ticking over,
what it was like to be your previous owner.
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Rizwan Akhtar: Now Love
sign of continuity … some space a text a mere letter a
cryptic silence ensues traffic capers as usual over there
a city’s crowd no one knows what you write except those
continuous stares from all sides like a language instead of
tongue and palate combination long ago I killed the poet
the stutters and inflections verbose hubris all sedimented
after that woman who was a mirror in background left me
kept inventing her as a part-time muse simulating mediocre
conclusions copy pasting from all sorts of sites aching
to prove that love is now a beep a flick an emoji an icon.
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Edward Lee: Stillborn Possibilities
Somehow
we went from secret lovers
to falling in love, you
getting there before me,
me, when it finally arrived
in my chest, mistaking it
for guilt and ending us
so I might stay in a life
I did not want, and not be responsible
for you leaving the life
you did not want either,
only realising my mistake
years later when I saw you on the street,
arm in arm with the man
you did not want but obviously decided
to stay with, your body tight with distance,
and my heart seeming to pierces my ribs
with sharps points of regret
and stillborn possibilities.
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Geoffrey Winch: Lunch Breaks
played solitaire
on his pc became bored
so people-watched instead
read her book
went for a walk
chatted with a friend
after tv
further details undisclosed
while making sandwiches
for next-day’s lunch
(kept a lookout to ensure
he wouldn’t be caught in the act –
his line-manager would not have been
enchanted and she’d have dismissed him
on the spot)
(ensured her job was secure
by taking exercise with her boss –
not overly enamoured naughty
quite nice – boring chat – late
getting back)
side by side overnight
in the fridge
cheese with a taste of pickle
ham with a mustard tang
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Ann Pedone: Two poems from a sequence In Bed With Susan Sontag
An Exit
1. Last night a woman called me at 2 AM. She said she needed to
blow off some steam. We talked about that hotel in Saugerties
and she said she liked my voice.
2. I still don’t have cable but I know how many hours ahead
Paris is.
3. And you are the first person I text as soon
as I wake up. That should make you feel very erotic, right?
4. I came to New York to see the beautiful things and to be
beautiful in return. And now my only visible fault is that
nothing here is ever going to be autobiographical.
An Entrance
Is poetry an animal or a machine? I think it was
Willm Carlos Willms who said the thing about it
being a machine. If I had paid more attention in
that 20th century lit class, then I would know
the answer. But as a failed grad student w/$75,
000 in student loan debt, I am
no longer obligated to give the right answer.
So here is my answer. Poetry is neither a machine
nor an animal. It is a 32 yr old woman in a studio apart
ment three blocks from Columbia who is out of milk
and is not going to be able to write anything
tonight unless you get over here right now and fuck her.
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Mary Mulholland: Kiss
There's a stone in the yard, olive-brown,
covered in bumps. It's skulking away.
A man once took me boating on the Thames.
He wore a Harris tweed three-piece, a flat cap,
brought a wicker-hamper picnic, we saw kingfishers.
With a dart of his hand, he caught a newt,
slipped it into his mouth.
Another crawled after me one dark night
clutched me from behind in passionate amplexus,
croaking his love.
And here you come, all puffed up important,
driving the quad as if you’re at Goodwood.
O the toads I have kissed.
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Martin Bennett: Sea-Change
Along the coast-road that overhangs
Amalfi a man yells at a woman,
The woman yells at the man:
The distance taking up their anger
As only distance, being distance, can:
Takes it and assisted by sea and air
Rubs it smooth and silent
Then hands it back to them,
A bead of miniscule azure
For him, for her
Fine-spun lapis lazuli,
Then vice-versa
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Eugene O’Hare: Nina Simone
Nina Simone, it is nightime
at the end of the world
& i watch you stand barefoot
in an enormous yellow field.
do you know i am watching?
i have come to thank you
for astonishing me when i was 15.
this is no small matter. i was so low
back then. you understood the violence
i had already seen better than the others.
isn’t it beautiful here in this field-
just the two of us together at the end
of the world? you barefoot
there at the centre, me on the fringes
watching in awe; thankful for the life i had
now i have seen you.
portentously, you raise your shining open mouth
like a fine glass to the sky,
and the moon decants her best-kept light
through the graceful stem of your throat.
will you sing when you finish
thirsting for the last moon on Earth?
what will you sing here in this
yellow field at the end of the world?
something from Carnegie Hall, 1963?
The Black Swan? The Twelfth of Never?
i like being here with you. Nina, can you imagine
how much worse everything would have been
without music, without the beauty of faces?
Nina, this is a special night. the jewels of ancient Nubia
swing on your ears to the sound of Bach’s number 6
in D minor. i wish i could follow you down the halls
of your head, hatted and gloved, long after we are gone.
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***
Jane McLaughlin: The Empty Pavilions
The pitches of South London spread wide, green and unused
except by processions of cloud-shadows, roaming pigeons,
and sun reflecting off poplar leaves and seagulls’ wings.
Long low buildings that speak of summer, shady verandahs
behind white picket fences, bare now of deckchairs,
silent but for the breeze that seems to carry the voices
of the absent players, the keen bats, the sharp fast bowlers,
Black, Brown and White, who filled the warm days
with ferocity or elegance or just not on form today, mate.
Of shouted appeals, low curses, calls to run or stay.
The pavilion steps are resonant of long afternoons, long drinks,
of scattered applause, character assassination and the odd snore.
The unfolding pattern of white-clad figures, shifting,
answering each other’s challenge, chasing the red ball
to the boundary, taking catches, walking before the finger goes up.
There is always melancholy in cricket, a sense of elegy
for players no longer there, lost too young or gone in war,
for the seasons they remember in the winter months,
for matches played in warmer islands, hot plains of the South.
The pavilions dream in these unfulfilled weeks
of days when the players will come back. The groundsmen
mow, roll and water as they ever did, keeping wickets pristine,
the grass trim and green for the first ball; it is all waiting.
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Christian Ward: Playing Badminton On The Moon
The shuttlecock shed its feathers,
becoming clean like a rocket prepped
for launch. You offer iced tea while
getting a replacement but all I ever taste
with you is dehydrated lemonade.
Don't you know how cratered we've become?
Lob after lob brings failure. Our lack
of interests makes each swing heavier
and I almost want to call it off, but, watching
your smugness makes me hit harder. There
is nothing more satisfying. I go for the win,
letting the sun spectate for the remainder
of the match. You are almost weightless
by the time I go for the final point but hold
your weight down, convinced there must be gravity
in this almost unknown place we've reached.
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Michael Gould: A Red Balloon
All a child really needs is a red balloon –
it was my zaydee
who appeared to have an inside track
on red balloons which he brought with him
every time he visited us;
a poor, beaten man from the old country
who sold buttons in the garment district
until zippers came along, and then
he went broke.
Zaydee stayed with us at the end of his life
sleeping in the summer room
when the June bugs were in season
crunching underfoot; but when he died
I didn’t attend the funeral; too young
they said.
Balloons were made of thick, sturdy rubber
then, and you had to pull and stretch
their necks to get some air into them
before you started to blow, and you blew
with great, heaving puffs
got red in the face
and your cheeks puffed out too.
I used to dream of going up, up
and away in a helium-filled balloon;
sometimes I still do.
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Gordon Wood: An Edinburgh Old Town barber shop
(From a distant time when cigarettes were smoked almost everywhere)
Stop half way down this narrow defile,
arrowing steeply between high buildings,
as gloomy as any ancient forest.
Stop, listen and you may hear
the scissors click and gossip
about time’s hot towel stifling
his scissors’ tick-tock telling.
He was Italian, known to all as Alfie.
His clockwork cuts were punctuated
by his comb’s sober recitatives
and decorated with the florid arias
of his scissors – Alfredo at La Scala?
Or heroes of Milan’s San Siro? –
for he clipped and talked Italian football.
Cigarette firmly clamped in mouth,
the ash might droop, but the voice’s passion
glowed a winner’s kiss towards his lips.
With final ash-fall and a floor swept
clear of Mediterranean epic deeds,
past time lay combed and tastefully
pomaded in his reliquary of telling.
The descent of the close is easy,
but if you pause where hair falls,
you might add a pebble of remembrance
to an old cairn of words, crowned
with a curl – of cigarette smoke.
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Amanda Joshua: How to unclog your dishwasher
In the aisle they keep the cleaning supplies
I walk backwards into a lady who is also looking
At dishwashing liquid
When I start up a startled string of apologies
She says You’re all good
And I want really bad to believe her
Even when she doesn’t know I don’t know
How to unclog my dishwasher
And the water has seeped into the cupboard beside it
Besides it doesn’t really matter that the home my mother worked herself to the bone
To make, to own,
Is growing into disrepair because most days
It feels too big and I feel too small to repair
The cupboard, the roaches that won’t seem to leave no matter how many
Different supplies I seem to buy from this aisle
None of these things exist to her because she doesn’t know
My boyfriend dumped me two weeks ago,
The same week my grandma died by herself in a different country
Because I was writing an exam I thought was important for a future
She is no longer in because I wrote the exam instead of flying home when she said
I bought you a sari. I can’t wait to see you in it.
In the aisle they keep the cleaning supplies
I am clean of all of this
I am all good because I am in a place that, by definition I suppose, says
I am trying to clean it all up
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Jack Crow: Kind Times
the times
when you were kind
are left behind
a shelf that you put up
the ceiling that you lined
a cupboard that you fixed
are remembering you
still...
you drove
a hundred miles
to load the last stuff
from my flat
coughing back
the smoke
of fags
with your shopping bags
and your hammer drill
and
of course
you voted Tory
believing that the poor make
themselves
that they don't take
their chances
and they miss the boat
that they should get on their bikes…
it was like you
had fallen from an airship
that floated
somewhere overhead
slipped or tripped
and been left behind
by the rest of the rich
who then sailed on
to look down on another country
but you tried to get back
everything you did
in business after business
was done to get you back
it was not for lack of graft
you drove endless miles
delivering dog food to Carlisle
arriving with a smile
and a fag
in the cab
of your van
then you got ill
when you needed it the most
your private health care
wasn't there
and the shrunken state that you believed in
had no hand to help you
but on the morning of the day you died
the times when you were kind are left behind
and are remembering you still
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Prue Chamberlayne: Bodies bend to car tyres
jets rock the chassis, thrum a beat,
enwrap me in a blur of suds,
figures distant as a dream
whose eye-flicks surf the mafia boss —
fast as a dance, small, lean, all dark,
worlds barred by inequity —
is that crazed speed to earn the work?
Treks through Bosnia, a lurching dinghy —
I feel exposed as in a shower,
am I imprisoned in my rich pickings?
What if glass broke, collapse gushed faster,
could I cross deserts with so few possessions?
At my note and thanks, despite soaked limbs,
and barely stopping, those black eyes brim.
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Sophia Butler: Where No One Accepts Responsibility
People scramble into dinghies,
escaping desperate days on land,
in camps where life is an affliction,
and a stretch of sea gives hope.
Wild weather riles sombre sea as
flimsy vessels are thrown around
like bath time toys, at mercy of
lawless children.
Engines fail, boats burst, deflated
like misplaced optimism. The
English Channel a cold, bottomless,
grave where babies’ bodies float,
ripped from arms of despondent
mothers and fathers craving lost
lives, leaving behind political
battlegrounds where no one
accepts responsibility.
Desperate dreams throw caution
overboard. Young brides, Dover
bound, lost—White Cliffs unseen,
only chalk coloured froth of watery
lace trailing, veils of suffocating,
bubbling breath from unwanted
human beings. Followed again by
those, preferring death to purgatory.
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John Bowen: A Dream Of Almond Eyes
Essex, October 23rd 2019
The light from his phone
had died hours ago.
The scrape of boots on metal,
of bodies shifting position,
the grunts and curses, quiet now.
The smell from the bucket,
the only reminder he was not alone.
She was somewhere near.
Like a cat, he paws the air
till he finds her and places
his blanket over her body;
delicate and respectful, careful
not to appear too intimate.
He tries for some words of comfort,
though he knows she cannot hear.
She’d pressed against him for warmth,
but had soon moved away.
Earlier, she’d texted her parents,
apologising for letting them down.
He reaches for her bag.
Her phone has her face
on the home-screen.
He stares at it till the last
one per cent finally goes dark.
He holds the phone to his lips,
and murmurs a prayer
that when the air runs out,
he will see her face again
in a dream of almond eyes.
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Murray Bodo: Saint Francis in the Poppies
I saw the souls of the unborn
dead, their tiny poppy
petals waving at me
in Assisi’s summer sunset
I heard Saint Francis singing
“They are not dead who go
down into Sister Earth
They blossom into herbs
and bright colorful flowers”
I saw the innocent children
nailed to the floor with bullets
their hands unable to wave
like Christ nailed to the tree
I heard Saint Francis singing
“God’s love redeems our evil
and waves new trees that blossom
in Christ’s forgiveness and theirs”
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Gale Acuff has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine
Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of Poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.
Ken Anderson was a finalist in the Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the 2012 Ferro-Grumley Award and an Independent Publisher Editor’s Choice. His novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. An operatic version premiered June 16, 2009, at the First Existentialist Congregation in Atlanta.
Martin Bennett lives in Rome where he teaches, proofreads and contributes occasional articles to the magazine Wanted in Rome.
Murray Bodo is an American Franciscan Friar who lives and ministers in inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio. His latest book of poems is Teaching the Soul to Speak, published in 2020 by Tau Publishing. In 2021 Franciscan Media published his book on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary and in 2022 will publish a 50th Anniversary Edition of Father Murray’s first book, Francis: The Journey and the Dream.
John Bowen is a retired Social Worker, who lives on the border of South East London snd Kent. he has written poetry for many years but only recently started to submit them for publication. He currently has four in print and half a dozen more accepted for publication in the coming months.
Sophia Butler writes “Originally from Birmingham, England, I am a secondary English teacher who has worked in various Auckland schools and I’m currently teaching part time which allows me time to follow my passion for writing. I have recently written a series of poems, inspired by Birmingham. Three of my poems have been published in Dreich 10.”
Alan Cohen was a poet before beginning his career as a Primary Care MD, teacher, and manager, and has been living a full and varied life. He’s been writing poems for 60 years, is beginning now to share some of his discoveries, and has had 155 poems published in 81 venues over the past two years. He’s been married to Anita for 41 years, and they’ve been in Eugene, OR these past 11.
Prue Chamberlayne lives in London and the Aveyron in France, and has a background in languages, comparative social policy, biographically-based research and rural development in Uganda. Recent poems have been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, Scintilla, and Stand. Her first collection Locks Rust was self-published 2019.
Jack Crow works as an van driver and occasionally as an actor. He has spent years struggling with poetry but recently found his “voice”. Now the voice won’t shut up. He is currently wrestling with “the dance of the first and the last” ,52 poems to save the world!!!!) Jack Crow is a pseudonym.
Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration in the landscape and people of England, Wales and the Netherlands, from diverse artworks and quirky ideas. She has poems in Fifth Elephant (Newtown poets anthology), the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine Twelve Rivers and Indigo Dreams’ The Dawntreader. Conversations is her first poetry pamphlet, from Dempsey & Windle
Gerry Fabian is a published poet and novelist. He has published four books of poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound. In addition, he has published four novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, Seventh Sense and Ghost Girl. His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com. He lives in Doylestown, PA
Charlotte Gann is an editor from Sussex. She has two books from HappenStance: Noir (2016) and The Girl Who Cried (2020). Her pamphlet, The Long Woman (Pighog), was shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Award. At the moment she’s exploring developing a project called The Understory Conversation: https://theunderstoryconversation.com
Michael Gould is a Canadian New Zealand writer who turned from criticism (“Surrealism and the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening”, 1976) to poetry late in life. His poems have appeared in publications, both academic and popular, in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
Best known, perhaps, as a writer of crime fiction, John Harvey is also a dramatist, poet and sometime publisher. Recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Nottingham and Hertfordshire, in 2020 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths College
Janet Hatherley lives in London and has had poems in several magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Stand, Coast to coast to coast, Brittle Star, London Grip and Spelt. Recently shortlisted for Nine Pens, Maytree’s Three Trees Portfolio and commended for Roger McGough Award, she won third prize in Second Light competition.
Richard Manly Heiman lives in California’s Sierra Nevada Gold Country. He works as a teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. Publications include Riggwelter, Rattle, and (forthcoming) the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons. His URL is www.poetrick.com. Richard is inspired by ancient art, nature, and waking dreams
Robin Houghton’s fourth poetry pamphlet Why? And other questions was a joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2019. She co-hosts the Planet Poetry podcast with Peter Kenny, and blogs at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk.
Teoti Jardine is Maori, Irish and Scottish. His tribal affiliations: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011. His poetry published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Te Panui Runaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, JAAM and Aotearotica. He and his dog Amie live in the township of Aparima Riverton on the beautiful southern coast of New Zealand.
Amanda Joshua has writing published or forthcoming in Starling, Sweet Mammalian, The Friday Poem, blackmail press, Kate Magazine, Sour Cherry Mag, Turbine and Poetry NZ. In her spare time, she likes to read and contemplate dropping her law degree.
Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests.
Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, London Grip, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His play Wall was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.
Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and “Ghosts in the Desert” (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), was Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com. FB: https://www.facebook.com/EmmaLee1. Twitter @Emma_Lee1. IG: @emmainleicester.
Hannah Linden is from a Northern working class background but has lived in Devon for many years. She is published widely including or upcoming in Acumen, Atrium, Magma, New Welsh Review, One Hand Clapping, Prole, Proletarian Poetry, Spelt, Stand and the 84 Anthology etc. With Gram Joel Davis, she won 1st prize in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Compound Poetry Competition 2015. She was highly commended in the Prole Laureate Prize in 2015 and long-listed in the Rialto Nature Poetry Competition 2018. She is looking for a home for her debut collection, Wolf Daughter. Twitter: @hannahl1n
Jane McLaughlin’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has received awards, commendations and listings in national competitions including Torbay Poetry prize, National Poetry Competition longlist, Bridport and Mslexia. Her collection ‘Lockdown’ won the Cinnamon Press debut collection competition, judged by Matthew Francis, and received excellent reviews. Jane also writes and publishes short stories, one of which was included in ‘Best British Short Stories of 2018’ and has been made into a short film.
Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment
Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he’s unemployed. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.
Deborah Morgan teaches creative writing in Liverpool. Her first novel, Disappearing Home was published by Tindal Street Press. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and featured in Spelt magazine
Mary Mulholland’s poems have been published in many magazine, such as, AMBIT, Perverse, MIROnline, and in several anthologies. She was recently highly commended in AMBIT’s 2021 Competition, shortlisted in Live Canon, 2021, and twice placed in Sentinel. Her collaborative pamphlet (with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo), All About Our Mothers is published by Nine Pens and her forthcoming pamphlet, What the Sheep Taught Me will be published by Live Canon
Eugene O’Hare was shortlisted for the poetry prize at the 2021 Belfast Book Festival. His plays are published by Methuen. He lives in London.
Ann Pedone is the author of the forthcoming books The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press, Spring 2023), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53, spring 2022) as well as the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books, 1992), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press, 2020), DREAM/WORK, and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including American Journal of Poetry,Narrative Magazine, Juked, Carve Magazine, Abralemin, JuxtaProse, and Menacing Hedge. Ann graduated from Bard College, and has an MA in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate and teaches in a local comprehensive school. He is married with three children. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish, was published by smith/doorstop.
Alicia Stubbersfield’s fourth collection, The Yellow Table (Pindrop Press 2013) was described by Andrew McMillan as a ‘book that cuts the crap, cuts the pretension and is smart enough to wear its learning lightly.’ She now lives in Cheltenham and tutors for The University of Gloucestershire and Arvon.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest: “Josephine Baker Swimming Pool” from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can be recently found in Wild Greens, Discretionary Love and Stone Poetry Journal. Future poems will be appearing in Spry, BlueHouse Journal and Uppagus
Jim C Wilson started writing poems in the early 1980s. Since then, five collections have been published and his poetry has featured in some 40 anthologies. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow and taught Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University from 1994 until 2019. More at: www.jimcwilson.com
Geoffrey Winch is retired and lives in Felpham, West Sussex. He is an active member of several creative writing groups, and his most recent collection is Velocities and Drifts of Winds (Dempsey and Windle, 2020)
Gordon Wood is a retired teacher of German and lecturer at a College of Education. Now lives near Edinburgh. Enjoyed fourteen years as a freelance contributor to the BBC German Service. Still finds some solace in ancient languages.
Feb 28 2022
London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2022
*
The Spring 2022 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:
*Tim Suermondt *Mark J. Mitchell *Rustin Larson *Stuart Pickford
*Emma Lee *Alan Cohen *John Grey *Charlotte Gann
*Hannah Linden *Richard Manly Heiman * Janet Hatherley *Teoti Jardine
*Julia Duke *Jim C Wilson *Robin Houghton *Ken Anderson
*Gale Acuff *Kerrin P Sharpe *Alicia Stubbersfield *John Harvey
*R. Gerry Fabian *Deborah Morgan *Raymond Miller * Rizwan Akhtar
*Edward Lee *Geoffrey Winch *Ann Pedone *Mary Mulholland
*Martin Bennett *Eugene O’Hare *Jane McLaughlin *Christian Ward
*Michael Gould *Gordon Wood *Amanda Joshua *Jack Crow
*Prue Chamberlayne *Sophia Butler *John Bowen *Murray Bodo
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
Biographical notes on contributors can be found here
London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG new poetry Spring 2022
SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October
Editor’s notes
An empty cricket ground at the close of play – maybe at the end of the season when a sense of sadness is only faintly tempered by the expectation of play resuming in six months or so. This image is especially appropriate for a particular poem in the pages which follow (readers will easily detect which one); but a similarly uncertain sense of loss hovers over the rest of the issue. There are poems in which people lose (or at least mislay) themselves due to illness, poems where lovers lose each other (though maybe not forever) and poems where refugees lose homes and families and must thereafter achieve and sustain a balance between regrets and hopes. Our contributors handle these difficult subjects sensitively and with craft, avoiding predictable responses as they offer oblique and moving observations and some unexpected consolations. We hope readers will enjoy this selection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Mark J. Mitchell: Masked At non effigies meos iambos But you shall not escape my iambics —Catullus The mask can fog his glasses, cloud them. Eyes aren’t glass. He rubs his words—not meant to show— like stones, small pebbles—the kind you might throw to tease a girl out late. He often sighs. The mask slips down his nose. It’s time to choose a fresh one. Someone whose life he can’t share— plucked from history, from dead gods, from news he hasn’t read. A life he’d never dare. This one’s tighter—like flesh, fresh cut. He tries to shift it sideways, to line up small holes with large light. But light slides where it flows and loose words drop, one by one while he dries his glasses. The mask fogs them. Clouds his eyes. He dreams cataracts, old age, holey shoes for skin that clings to him now. He must wear the mask until her story gets told—blue eyes, white hair, new sex, old death. His to bear. Old Plato called this painful work a lie. He’s as dead as anyone. What’s he know? The face slips aside. His own starts to show. Frightened, he scribbles fast, whiles there’s still light. The foggy mask can’t cloud his glass-gray eyes. Mark J. Mitchell: The Pink Lady, Misplaced The Pink Lady walks down Fillmore Street with her hard-shell suitcase limping behind, hitting every crack. Looking up, she reads each awning slowly. She sounds out store names as if the words were foreign. Crooked signs bother her but they don’t nudge that vital fear— She’s lost. This is not her street. Faces confuse her, swimming past the holy case. Where are the dead machines? The chlorine that feuds with dryer sheets? Why is the gold shop named in strange letters? Papers offer her news from nowhere. She finds this slope too steep. Only ballast in the case stiffens her back, holds her barely balanced. What does she seek? All that was once here. The comforting names born before she was pink. When she lived facts. A light changes. Her ears—sharp, fierce, alert— catch the rinse whine of that wobbly machine. She turns. She smells it, six blocks from here— that lonesome safe harbor for shipwrecked names. She and her pink case roll home. They’ll stay clean.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Alicia Stubbersfield: Mistake From the Manchester Evening News ‘For Sale’ columns: Designer Wedding Dress, size 10. Unused. Bought in error. £500 The error was all mine, to fall in love during that velvet heatwave spring. The wedding would be fairy-tale: a mediaeval country church, then the fifty-pence-a-week cottage down the valley like Laurie Lee’s peapod. Not my mother’s idea of a happy ending though she went along with it, bought my cream crepe Ossie Clarke, bodice edged with floppy lace, linen boots with Beardsley embroidery. When he left me for window-dresser Philip my mother had been right all the time. It was still illegal so I couldn’t tell his mother when she came to my door, the evening sky cracking open with pathetic fallacy as I said I’m sorry. I made a mistake.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Gordon Wood: An Edinburgh Old Town barber shop (From a distant time when cigarettes were smoked almost everywhere) Stop half way down this narrow defile, arrowing steeply between high buildings, as gloomy as any ancient forest. Stop, listen and you may hear the scissors click and gossip about time’s hot towel stifling his scissors’ tick-tock telling. He was Italian, known to all as Alfie. His clockwork cuts were punctuated by his comb’s sober recitatives and decorated with the florid arias of his scissors – Alfredo at La Scala? Or heroes of Milan’s San Siro? – for he clipped and talked Italian football. Cigarette firmly clamped in mouth, the ash might droop, but the voice’s passion glowed a winner’s kiss towards his lips. With final ash-fall and a floor swept clear of Mediterranean epic deeds, past time lay combed and tastefully pomaded in his reliquary of telling. The descent of the close is easy, but if you pause where hair falls, you might add a pebble of remembrance to an old cairn of words, crowned with a curl – of cigarette smoke.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Prue Chamberlayne: Bodies bend to car tyres jets rock the chassis, thrum a beat, enwrap me in a blur of suds, figures distant as a dream whose eye-flicks surf the mafia boss — fast as a dance, small, lean, all dark, worlds barred by inequity — is that crazed speed to earn the work? Treks through Bosnia, a lurching dinghy — I feel exposed as in a shower, am I imprisoned in my rich pickings? What if glass broke, collapse gushed faster, could I cross deserts with so few possessions? At my note and thanks, despite soaked limbs, and barely stopping, those black eyes brim.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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John Bowen: A Dream Of Almond Eyes Essex, October 23rd 2019 The light from his phone had died hours ago. The scrape of boots on metal, of bodies shifting position, the grunts and curses, quiet now. The smell from the bucket, the only reminder he was not alone. She was somewhere near. Like a cat, he paws the air till he finds her and places his blanket over her body; delicate and respectful, careful not to appear too intimate. He tries for some words of comfort, though he knows she cannot hear. She’d pressed against him for warmth, but had soon moved away. Earlier, she’d texted her parents, apologising for letting them down. He reaches for her bag. Her phone has her face on the home-screen. He stares at it till the last one per cent finally goes dark. He holds the phone to his lips, and murmurs a prayer that when the air runs out, he will see her face again in a dream of almond eyes.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Gale Acuff has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine
Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of Poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.
Ken Anderson was a finalist in the Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the 2012 Ferro-Grumley Award and an Independent Publisher Editor’s Choice. His novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. An operatic version premiered June 16, 2009, at the First Existentialist Congregation in Atlanta.
Martin Bennett lives in Rome where he teaches, proofreads and contributes occasional articles to the magazine Wanted in Rome.
Murray Bodo is an American Franciscan Friar who lives and ministers in inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio. His latest book of poems is Teaching the Soul to Speak, published in 2020 by Tau Publishing. In 2021 Franciscan Media published his book on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary and in 2022 will publish a 50th Anniversary Edition of Father Murray’s first book, Francis: The Journey and the Dream.
John Bowen is a retired Social Worker, who lives on the border of South East London snd Kent. he has written poetry for many years but only recently started to submit them for publication. He currently has four in print and half a dozen more accepted for publication in the coming months.
Sophia Butler writes “Originally from Birmingham, England, I am a secondary English teacher who has worked in various Auckland schools and I’m currently teaching part time which allows me time to follow my passion for writing. I have recently written a series of poems, inspired by Birmingham. Three of my poems have been published in Dreich 10.”
Alan Cohen was a poet before beginning his career as a Primary Care MD, teacher, and manager, and has been living a full and varied life. He’s been writing poems for 60 years, is beginning now to share some of his discoveries, and has had 155 poems published in 81 venues over the past two years. He’s been married to Anita for 41 years, and they’ve been in Eugene, OR these past 11.
Prue Chamberlayne lives in London and the Aveyron in France, and has a background in languages, comparative social policy, biographically-based research and rural development in Uganda. Recent poems have been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, Scintilla, and Stand. Her first collection Locks Rust was self-published 2019.
Jack Crow works as an van driver and occasionally as an actor. He has spent years struggling with poetry but recently found his “voice”. Now the voice won’t shut up. He is currently wrestling with “the dance of the first and the last” ,52 poems to save the world!!!!) Jack Crow is a pseudonym.
Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration in the landscape and people of England, Wales and the Netherlands, from diverse artworks and quirky ideas. She has poems in Fifth Elephant (Newtown poets anthology), the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine Twelve Rivers and Indigo Dreams’ The Dawntreader. Conversations is her first poetry pamphlet, from Dempsey & Windle
Gerry Fabian is a published poet and novelist. He has published four books of poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound. In addition, he has published four novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, Seventh Sense and Ghost Girl. His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com. He lives in Doylestown, PA
Charlotte Gann is an editor from Sussex. She has two books from HappenStance: Noir (2016) and The Girl Who Cried (2020). Her pamphlet, The Long Woman (Pighog), was shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Award. At the moment she’s exploring developing a project called The Understory Conversation: https://theunderstoryconversation.com
Michael Gould is a Canadian New Zealand writer who turned from criticism (“Surrealism and the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening”, 1976) to poetry late in life. His poems have appeared in publications, both academic and popular, in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
Best known, perhaps, as a writer of crime fiction, John Harvey is also a dramatist, poet and sometime publisher. Recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Nottingham and Hertfordshire, in 2020 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths College
Janet Hatherley lives in London and has had poems in several magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Stand, Coast to coast to coast, Brittle Star, London Grip and Spelt. Recently shortlisted for Nine Pens, Maytree’s Three Trees Portfolio and commended for Roger McGough Award, she won third prize in Second Light competition.
Richard Manly Heiman lives in California’s Sierra Nevada Gold Country. He works as a teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. Publications include Riggwelter, Rattle, and (forthcoming) the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons. His URL is www.poetrick.com. Richard is inspired by ancient art, nature, and waking dreams
Robin Houghton’s fourth poetry pamphlet Why? And other questions was a joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2019. She co-hosts the Planet Poetry podcast with Peter Kenny, and blogs at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk.
Teoti Jardine is Maori, Irish and Scottish. His tribal affiliations: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011. His poetry published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Te Panui Runaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, JAAM and Aotearotica. He and his dog Amie live in the township of Aparima Riverton on the beautiful southern coast of New Zealand.
Amanda Joshua has writing published or forthcoming in Starling, Sweet Mammalian, The Friday Poem, blackmail press, Kate Magazine, Sour Cherry Mag, Turbine and Poetry NZ. In her spare time, she likes to read and contemplate dropping her law degree.
Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests.
Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, London Grip, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His play Wall was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.
Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and “Ghosts in the Desert” (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), was Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com. FB: https://www.facebook.com/EmmaLee1. Twitter @Emma_Lee1. IG: @emmainleicester.
Hannah Linden is from a Northern working class background but has lived in Devon for many years. She is published widely including or upcoming in Acumen, Atrium, Magma, New Welsh Review, One Hand Clapping, Prole, Proletarian Poetry, Spelt, Stand and the 84 Anthology etc. With Gram Joel Davis, she won 1st prize in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Compound Poetry Competition 2015. She was highly commended in the Prole Laureate Prize in 2015 and long-listed in the Rialto Nature Poetry Competition 2018. She is looking for a home for her debut collection, Wolf Daughter. Twitter: @hannahl1n
Jane McLaughlin’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has received awards, commendations and listings in national competitions including Torbay Poetry prize, National Poetry Competition longlist, Bridport and Mslexia. Her collection ‘Lockdown’ won the Cinnamon Press debut collection competition, judged by Matthew Francis, and received excellent reviews. Jane also writes and publishes short stories, one of which was included in ‘Best British Short Stories of 2018’ and has been made into a short film.
Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment
Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he’s unemployed. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.
Deborah Morgan teaches creative writing in Liverpool. Her first novel, Disappearing Home was published by Tindal Street Press. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and featured in Spelt magazine
Mary Mulholland’s poems have been published in many magazine, such as, AMBIT, Perverse, MIROnline, and in several anthologies. She was recently highly commended in AMBIT’s 2021 Competition, shortlisted in Live Canon, 2021, and twice placed in Sentinel. Her collaborative pamphlet (with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo), All About Our Mothers is published by Nine Pens and her forthcoming pamphlet, What the Sheep Taught Me will be published by Live Canon
Eugene O’Hare was shortlisted for the poetry prize at the 2021 Belfast Book Festival. His plays are published by Methuen. He lives in London.
Ann Pedone is the author of the forthcoming books The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press, Spring 2023), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53, spring 2022) as well as the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books, 1992), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press, 2020), DREAM/WORK, and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including American Journal of Poetry,Narrative Magazine, Juked, Carve Magazine, Abralemin, JuxtaProse, and Menacing Hedge. Ann graduated from Bard College, and has an MA in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate and teaches in a local comprehensive school. He is married with three children. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish, was published by smith/doorstop.
Alicia Stubbersfield’s fourth collection, The Yellow Table (Pindrop Press 2013) was described by Andrew McMillan as a ‘book that cuts the crap, cuts the pretension and is smart enough to wear its learning lightly.’ She now lives in Cheltenham and tutors for The University of Gloucestershire and Arvon.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest: “Josephine Baker Swimming Pool” from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can be recently found in Wild Greens, Discretionary Love and Stone Poetry Journal. Future poems will be appearing in Spry, BlueHouse Journal and Uppagus
Jim C Wilson started writing poems in the early 1980s. Since then, five collections have been published and his poetry has featured in some 40 anthologies. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow and taught Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University from 1994 until 2019. More at: www.jimcwilson.com
Geoffrey Winch is retired and lives in Felpham, West Sussex. He is an active member of several creative writing groups, and his most recent collection is Velocities and Drifts of Winds (Dempsey and Windle, 2020)
Gordon Wood is a retired teacher of German and lecturer at a College of Education. Now lives near Edinburgh. Enjoyed fourteen years as a freelance contributor to the BBC German Service. Still finds some solace in ancient languages.