Nov 30 2024
London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2024
ISSUE 54 of LONDON GRIP NEW POETRY features poems by:
*Stuart Henson *Sian Meades-Williams *Michael Mintrom *Tony Dawson
*Ray Miller *Biljana Scott *Giorgia Caso *Kate Noakes
*Kathy Miles *Anthony Wilson *Heather Walker *John Bartlett
*Edward Lee *Jackie Wills *Lee Campbell *Jennifer M Phillips
*Paul McGrane *Briege Duffaud *Abu Ibrahim *Pam Job
*Gareth Writer-Davies *Julian Dobson *Kathy Pimlott *Janet Rogerson
*Kate Hendry *J R Solonche *Jayne Stanton *Vivienne Tregenza
*Maria Isakova-Bennett *Gareth Culshaw *Philip Dunkerley
*Jena Woodhouse *Damen O’Brien *Sarah Davies *Barry Smith
*Bernadette Gallagher *Lydia Harris *M. Anne Alexander *Jock Stein
*Nick Cooke *Stephen Claughton *John Greening *Nancy Mattson *Lee Fraser
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
Contributor Biographies and Editor’s Notes are also included.
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A printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Winter 2024-25
London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Send up to THREE poems & a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or included in the message body
OUR SUBMISSION WINDOWS ARE NOW JANUARY, APRIL, JUNE & OCTOBER
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Editor’s notes
No trigger warnings this month! Indeed – in contrast to Graham Buchan’s shockingly violent (but necessary) poem of witness in the September posting – the concluding poems in this issue could be seen as safe and rather predictable. Non-religious readers might even find them bland or naive responses to the Christmas season. Yet oddly enough some aspects of their content might have been threatening to authority figures in the Roman world of the first century. Any claim that real divine power might reside in a lowly peasant child would be a challenge to a culture which bestowed god-like status on its emperors. Even if the hopes invested in the Christ child in the manger were false they could represent a dangerous focus for resistance to the powers-that-be. So how much more dangerous if they should contain a wedge of truth that could undercut and subvert the status quo?
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We have lately been thinking about the relative transience of on-line publications compared to print ones. Should our website ever disappear – e.g. by falling victim to hackers – the last fifty-odd issues of LGNP would effectively be lost. As an insurance policy therefore we have assembled an archive which readers can download onto their own laptops and thereby give a measure of permanence. This can be accessed as a zip file at LGNP archive
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Once again we have the sad task of marking the loss of some poets. Fleur Adcock was internationally recognised and her death in October was widely reported; but the passing of Hugh Underhill, an accomplished and widely published poet with several collections to his name, has probably not caught the attention of national media. Hugh’s poems appeared from time to time in the early issues of LGNP; and a glimpse into his work is provided by Matt Riches’ thoughtful review of (what proved to be) his last collection.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Stuart Henson: Three Octonaires on the Vanity & Inconstancy of This World
My Love was all the world to me
but she proved false. Inconstancy
thy name… And yet this truth I know:
affections ever come and go;
Love bound decays and turns away.
Was it a blessing we were spared
a lifetime shackled to a word?
That neither she nor I can say.
*
Love at first sight: deep mystery;
bright mirror-ball of ecstasy!
That such a spirit clothed in flesh
could dance on earth, enchant, enmesh,
delight… Almost beyond belief
that she—or he—truly exists at all.
No creature born so fair could fail
to banish grief—until it speaks.
*
I sent my Love a Valentine.
She sent it back ‘Access declined’.
Yet still I pressed my losing suit.
Like litigants in some dispute
each hired a brief to state the case.
‘My client’s constancy is evidence…’
‘His importunity brooks no defence…’
Thus love, and money, go to waste.
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Sian Meades-Williams:Yesterday's confetti We still live down the road from the town hall and I wonder if that will always be true. I need the ivory stone to be there, standing firm, bolstering the promises that tumbled out of us. I had carried inky-eyed anemones, ribbon tight, and gauzy silk wrapped around me like a web. Kisses and rings were exchanged for all that we had: everything we needed and nothing at all. On Saturdays I sit in the Turkish cafe over the road, swirling egg yolks through white folds of yoghurt. I watch the gathering of fuss: heels, hats, handbags, hoping to catch a glimpse of hem or veil, a snatch of joy. That May day, rose petals congregated in the cracks and we began again, somewhere in the middle of our lives. Past a parade of lipstick-red buses two hearts lifted each other home. Sometimes after dinner on a drizzly Sunday we leap down the steps, arms hooked, waving an umbrella like a bouquet. Stealing yesterday’s confetti, pinching ourselves.
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Michael Mintrom: Philip Larkin’s Whitsun Haiku
Rich estuary odour
London-bound afternoon train
stopping all stations
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rusting cars, swamp birds, junk yards
plucky fledglings pairing off
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wildflowers swaying
cheerful guests dabbing tears
mystical wedding
*
shopping spree dreams ascending
window reflections, laughter
*
Euston, fairy lights
taxi splashing, night rain
last stop: paradise
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Tony Dawson: Three haiku Through a glass darkly Paul of Tarsus must have had Cataracts like me If age brings wisdom I am younger than I thought Let’s wait one more year The happy youngster Then became a teenager All of a sullen.
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Ray Miller: Choka A choka is not that string of rocks round your neck or a dangerous type of sexual adventure when your cheeks blow blue as you gasp out the safe word. A choka isn’t a serial killer like The Boston Strangler nor a last minute winner the opposition scores against the run of play. It isn’t when your missus has been unfaithful with your brother and they run away together leaving you to look after five screaming children. I’ll tell you what’s a choka – Japanese poem, alternate lines of seven and five syllables. No restriction as to length, could last forever without using any rhymes! Those Japanese are well-versed in forms of torture. I could carry on, but have you suffered enough? Do you recall the safe word?
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Biljana Scott: Otherwise From the toybox he pulls a big voice twice his size a stabbing index two hate-filled eyes and a hovering heel Otherwise! From the toybox he pulls a broad broom to generalize indelible ink for telling lies a fire blanket to muffle cries From the toybox he pulls A twisted blade: Apologise! then clicks the lock shut with a that’s-how-it-is. And that’s how it will be until someone (but who?) decides otherwise.
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Giorgia Caso: 2024 Missouri You can’t leave me now my husband utters, in a gentle voice, holding my shaking hand. He wipes a tear from my face as if it would comfort me to know I won’t be able to escape the fists thrown right into my left arm, now bruised like an apple. We both heard the news: the Guardian empathises with my watery eyes. What can it do but send me the patience and strength I need while I wait for her? Two months left, two months left. I haven’t felt more alive than when my love pushed me against the flowery wall with his hands like those of a fighter. I am both his loyal supporter and adversary. Two months left, I say over and over again. I caress the only reason I have left to live.
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Kate Noakes: Huldremose woman Birthing a child or two or more is nothing as to this pain. He’s killing me, just as he
always said he would. Drunk, sword swinging in place of his usual fists, he hacks at
my feet and legs trying to break one again, smacks the blade against my ribs. I hear
a crack. Now my arm hangs by flesh alone. Blood is pouring from me onto the tamped earth
floor of our home. Curious how yellow bone is. This is the death he’s promised me for
years. I’m crumpled in my linen shift, the red spreading. My mouth is fixed in a final
scream as he strangles me to make sure. I’ve waited all night for the dawn. He rouses himself, sore headed and roaring,
half-panics at the sight of me, but knows well what to do. Carefully he wipes me
clean and finds fresh linen. He dresses me in my best clothes, my blue plaid skirt,
red shawl and two sheepskin capes, pinned so gently with a bird bone. He even
places my horn comb in my pocket. Why do I need my comb? My head’s shaved
against the lice. The story is forming. I left him, and to avoid the dogs was running through the bog
barefoot. He adds my hairband and amber necklace. The story is a good one with
my arm hidden under the skins. I could have broken it when falling. All day I lie
ready to depart. He paces, muttering and keeps the cloth at the windows, lights
a fire, chops more wood and covers my blood with dry leaves. Night comes quickly in winter. He shoulders me, steadying himself with a stick and
finds his way through the heathland to the bog. The moon has forsaken me, lights
his way. One heave and I splash into the black water. He pushes me away with the
willow stake. I sink to rest for centuries in this makeshift tomb of heather roots. He lives, a free
chieftain. So many times I tried to run, but there was always something. Home
was too far north to go. There was great water. Funny now all that wet and my
gold ring glinting.
Huldremose woman is a Jutland bog mummy from the 200s BCE.
She can be found in the National Museum of Denmark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldremose_Woman
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Kathy Miles: The Serpent Tempts Eve with Magic Mushrooms She gentles the bruise beneath her ribs where the joints were welded. The bones feel frail, as though they've been badly assembled; an Airfix kit with pieces missing. She's constantly counting teeth, breasts, toes, as if she's been short-changed in this new build. Knowledge has given a woman's hunch for when she's being fleeced. Her mouth tastes mushroom stalks, sour rasp of serpent's tongue inside her throat. She's sucked him dry; his skin is sloughed on the ground. She thinks he looks old, wrinkled, a snake-bite that's lost its venom; she's drunk him of cunning and now he rots, transmutes to soil and sugars. If she's wild, it's from tripping out on witch's hat and fly agaric. She roots for truffles, obsessed by the scent, fingernails turning to compost. She'd put her hands together if she could, push away the earth with a prayer, get down to the core of things in this garden of slime-moulds and lichen where she's been dumped as a helpmate. She spores three sons, two lineages. Her daughters learn to fruit themselves, spread thighs apart, lure men with their peaty smell, swell in the ripening months. A voice in her larynx is thumping out gospels. She ignores this destroying angel, scriptures she will not swallow lest she die. Kathy Miles: Psychiatric Ward Here, all cutlery is plastic. Nurses check my sharp edges, hip-bones piercing through jeans, the cutting edge of my tongue. Eyes are examined for splinters of light. There are tissues everywhere, in case we break, tears leaking from each pore; they mop us up with brushes, sweep us under the carpet, away from visitor's gaze. At four we flock to the pill trolley, seagulls at a feast, our clockwork running down, anxious for oblivion. There is nothing we want more than this. People ask if I'm ok, as if I have stigmata. I say I'm fine, try to hide the whale which is breaching in my head, its flukes of thought slapping my brain. The hippocampus is asleep now, his tail curled tight round memories, safeguarding them from harm. Now is the hour we've waited for, when the ward is holding its breath, the duty nurse walks in silent shoes, checks each occupant has not escaped. She doesn't know the bodies here are empty; we've flown from our beds, nightgowns floating like parachutes, riding a broomstick of dreams, shouting this freedom to the air as if we were truly mad, not just pretending.
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Anthony Wilson: Carnage
i
We get back late from the hospital.
Dive into some reheated food and a drink and watch
news of rising death rates
in places we do not recognise.
The morning brings rain, brutally strong coffee.
One drugged fly on the windowsill.
ii
I stand in for a minor royal
at an event no one is watching
only to discover, when I arrive, the cathedral is packed.
A senior Scottish poet has also been drafted in.
We try to find small talk while we wait to go on,
each thinking the other is being paid a higher fee.
Backstage it is carnage.
No one is talking and the children are feral.
iii
Dry toast for the patient. And rest. No radio.
The news reaches us through our hands, our lips.
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Heather Walker: Unsaid It tasted of resentment, burnt-edged tomatoes, wilting, curling bacon that snapped and flew off the handle across the table, bread fried to within an inch of its life and saturated with the fat of our argument, beans congealed like long held feelings, mushrooms hard, pent up with anger, hash browns over-crisp, chips on their shoulder and sausages browned-off with it all. You banged down the tomato ketchup, it bled between the cracks, a river of hurt meeting greasy lies, egg with lace edges like a frock I once wore, the yoke, deep as sunrise. I looked at you, but you had turned away back to the frying pan, shoulders hunched, tight as a drum, and I said nothing because fire was raging within me.
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John Bartlett: Canary in the coalmine
after breakfast you
rip the sheets off the bed for washing
tell me I’m too demanding so
I walk the Esplanade home
the air is salty industrial
the footpath smells of dog piss
three days I wait for your call
can a city confuse and comfort too
the message you leave is teary
your canary died
was this the canary in the coalmine
I’d been looking for
that night I sleep peacefully
I dream I’m strangling your canary
sometimes murder is the only way out
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Edward Lee: And the Past Slips Into the Present I was with another lover when they finally came for you, your address found in the words I used to secure this hotel room they found me in after you revealed my location, not willing to suffer alone, the blame for your pain someone else’s, and yet, mine too, in that way that pain has many parents.
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Jackie Wills: A neighbour and a darn It's my first chance to commiserate we stand apart in the street her dog pulls at its lead she looks at a crucifix on a roof, offers it her sorrows. She's planning to move. I see chalk paths cross her eyes certain as stitches. Refocussing, she looks at my elbow I like your darns. I lift my arms, turn around a neighbour found it on a wall it's Sisley, mohair, warm. I'm not sure why I twirl and boast - we talk of repairs, woodworm, gulls nesting between chimney pots. I feel useless, she says. Our time of life lifts us above the pavement until everything passes underneath. Perhaps we shiver like saints, perhaps we're blurred to people below – who knows – but I'm in my mended jumper, she can see the Downs, we wish ourselves luck.
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Lee Campbell: Popped ‘Anne Campbell’s birthday today, June 4th’’ just now on my Facebook feed popped up. Yesterday was my birthday, June 3RD. Happy but sad birthday. First birthday since Mum popped off. When I blew out my candles, I wished that Mum had for my birthday popped round. I’ll do like I often do and say to myself, ‘Where’s Mum?’ She’ll be back soon. She’s just popped out’.
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Jennifer M Phillips: Grandmothers after the War Some things could always be counted on. Sundays, you would expect a cup of sweet and stolid Christianity from church ladies in felt hats in the front pew like a row of somber multi-colored puddings. Mrs. Kilby at the organ in her hat resembling a pith-helmet expecting shelling should her rhythm falter or her notes fall flat; an ancient soprano, fervent and wavering on through the garden alone, hoping to ambush Jesus to stroll up for a natter and a sing, not minding the dew long since having fled those roses. The distilled urgent prayer, from lives of scrubbing, for those ailing or heartsick, for the uncreased pillowcase beside them, the war-heaped cemetery mounds and Friday morning flowers in the metal vase, cosseted me round like their constant knitting of cardigans and socks and children's scarves, shaping love out of bits and pieces of their lives.
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Paul McGrane: peanut butter sandwiches
any time I phone she’ll claim
her microwave is broken
and the oven too
though none of that is true
it’s just she can’t remember
how they work
so she’ll eat on the sofa
food she hasn’t had to cook
mostly peanut butter sandwiches
and smoky bacon crisps
while catching her reflection
in the dead television
and she should stretch her bones
but the front door key stays firmly
in the door and every time I call
she’ll say that everything is fine
but she’d like to be herself again
she’d like to be herself
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Briege Duffaud: Bad Daughter She made them stop the bus on a Seniors’ outing and I thought, God, typical! I mean, these buses were, like, running to a deadline, sad old souls hungry for their lunch. That young volunteer, the driver, he must be effing silently. I sat tight and cringed. She’d stopped the whole proceedings to empty out her chequebook in this smart boutique, skipped back beaming like a happy teenager with a ribboned paper bag, must have squandered three weeks pension. But it seems they were ok, the driver and the seniors. They applauded. I was younger then, less tolerant. Long- face, she used to call me. Among other things. The dress she bought was nothing like the stuff I’d always seen her wearing: navy skirts, the well-cut beige and brown I gave her sometimes for a birthday. (Aged-lady style, she must have hated that, well how was I to know?) This dress was a rainbow made of silk. I was shocked how young she looked that week, like age was moving backwards. I stayed the five-day budget deal, flew home on Monday. Too soon, as always. On Thursday the landline, spewing out bad news … For two years, carers draped her helplessness in navy, beige and brown. Suitable, I guess they thought, for a stricken body hoisted daily between bed, commode and wheelchair. I was busy then with children, husband, work. Travelling cost the earth. My last visit I brought flowers, diabetic chocolates, photos of her latest grandchild. It was not enough. Nothing, ever, was enough. Why did I not think to drape around her shoulders my Monsoon peacock shawl and light her face with gladness in those dark dying days?
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Abu Ibrahim : The Day Breaks The day breaks like the hatching of an egg Light cracks through the dark Not for you or for me the day breaks but only for itself It rises with a prayer: may tomorrow outlive me not on my watch will the world end
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Pam Job: On Nights like These On nights like these when the world is in flames beyond my windows, I try to concentrate on the blood in my palms and fingers, to feel it pulse and know I have not died. Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, they used to say, not knowing I was terrified to pass the turn before the top of the stairs, to face the lion’s mane axe and the spears with their monkey tail trim. Sleepless, I don’t want to dive into my silo of dreams of fermented years, so I write poems in my head where I am freed to inject my own humiliating truths into the hearts of others. On nights like these, I stand on a high place in my mind and feel dizzy. To ease my breathing, I begin the climb up the dark hills at the back of our lost house, and this time I notice each stone on the path. When sleep won’t come, I rehearse the names of all my friends still living like a litany. In the end, I re-animate my dead and compose a puppet opera, jiggling their strings in time to my music, watching them snap back into life.
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Gareth Writer-Davies: A Lack Of Sleep Will Be The End Of Me and I am awake, in the middle of the night fretting that I am naked in residential streets no matter no chaffy gossips peeking through curtains calling police there is no sex-feast in public gardens nor five fingered shopping I am fresh, clean shaven like a film star Adam my only weapon words of narration as if in a documentary, an approaching man who grows larger and larger (with a microphone) what went on here and how do you feel about it?
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Julian Dobson: Doppelgänger I’m your first child’s first smile. Frozen sunshine on a magnolia bud’s unfolding pink. The last time you harvested tomatoes: I keep them firm as the day you picked them, redder. I’m the blues of an all-night drive, your Bach cantata, love song. A language you gave up learning. Your wallet, medic, news and weather, guru. I’m your face and fingerprint. Friends you never see. Your estranged brother, raising that glass in a Venetian hotel, but not to you. I’m a small black slab that will outlast you. Were you more than this, and did it matter? There’s too much here for anyone to decipher.
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Kathy Pimlott: Meeting myself coming back Do you have the tickets? There aren’t any tickets for this. Remember that Parian funerary
angel with one snapped-off wing? Such elegant sorrow. We have to fly south-west like her,
lop-sided, over Stonehenge, over counties that smear into greys. What have you packed? Oh, books – Beautiful Losers, Lawrence, the trenches – plenty of
cigarettes, the scent of lemons. We’ll need perfume. But no greves, no pauldron. If I find
you in armour, I’ll have to leave you behind. All we need is mini, midi, maxi, mascara,
eye-liner, lots of it, waterproof. How will we know we’re there? How cold the Atlantic is. How far it’s come. How far out
it wants us to go. Now, stand, back to forever, head half-turned, waiting for the right pull,
then push ahead, breathless and salty, given over, until we’re beached on shingle, scoured,
half-drowned.
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Janet Rogerson: When I Met Today I met myself coming back flamenco branches bent for drama and we hugged awkwardly, we knew how we were. I said, I wouldn't go back that way there's a problem on the road, we nodded as if I understood and traffic slow-moved through us. I said, here's a great line, and we wrote it down. Seriously, I said, things have been quiet, to which I replied, each day is a death, do you want nothing to be written on the tombstones? I know, said I, we have a yard full of blank ones already, we shook our head. I hear you still listen to that song every day. Yes, different versions I reply, a little defensively. It's fine, I take my face tenderly, you! We didn't really have much to talk about. So how is everyone? Good, pretty good. I'd better go. I'll walk back with you.
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Kate Hendry: Scaredy Kate Sings Herself To Sleep
Dear Lord and father of mankind
Forgive our foolish ways
which are these –
fretting over her aching back
bolstering it with hot water bottle and teddies
taking paracetamol, though they don’t help
wondering over and over
if it’s age, or weeding the garden or
Reclothe us in our rightful minds
which is what she’d like
the Lord, or her own father,
or practically anyone, to do –
find her real, sensible mind.
Is it in the shed with last year’s seeds,
sprouting in the dark?
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire
O still, small voice of calm
which is exactly what she doesn’t own
so busy is she watching for disease,
nipping it in the bud, waking,
again and again, to check if it’s back.
Kate Hendry: At Home In Ward One
The ward’s bustling like the hairdressers
before Christmas. Each chair’s taken by women
with more hair than me, each one
strapped by the wrist to a drip.
From my reclining chair in the corner
I listen to a voice across the bays recount
a family history of breast cancer.
My doctor’s throwing everything he’s got
at me, all in one go!
It’s my last session.
Eight out of eight! Nurse Kirsty says.
Well done!
If you need me, just shout.
I’m so at home, after months of cannulas
and chemo, yelling for help’s as easy
as yes, please and just a trim, thanks
over the whirr of hairdryers and Heart Radio
at Horizon Hair and Beauty.
Five hours unfold as leisurely
as a cut and colour. Women free
pink parkas and black duffels from hooks.
I’m the last to be unplugged.
It’s early evening, mid-October
when I’m transferred from Ward One
into darkness. Street lamps switch on,
casting circles of silver light,
like stepping stones on the river, six feet apart.
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J R Solonche: Cancer My friend, Yvonne, is a poet. She has cancer, so she’s been writing “cancer poems.” They are very, very good poems. They have been published in The Hudson Review and JAMA. Congratulations, I said. Please don’t say that. I wish I didn’t have to write them, she said. I understand, but you do, and you did because you must, I said. Still, I wish it weren’t such a must when there is so much else to write about, she said. You do write about so much else, I said. Yes, but it all smells of chemo, she said. Even the roses, even them.
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Jayne Stanton: Aubade for the morning after surgery
This is neither death nor day bed;
swing the legs over its knife edge.
Let slippers find their feet.
The bathroom’s not far.
Trust in muscle memory.
It thrives on ritual.
This is neither prayer nor begging bowl;
force-feed it breakfast cereal.
There’s light at the end of the hallway.
Jayne Stanton: Checking for signs
lead flashing re-caulked,
bay-window water-tight again
but still listening for
the telltale drip
drip
drip
can’t stop
can’t stop
checking the plaster for
new watermarks
along the fascia scar-line
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Vivienne Tregenza: Rain
rose petals delicate rain
Words on the fridge door
of our first home
On our wedding day
I threw rose petals in your hair
which you shook
to make me laugh
We laughed a lot that day
Then came the delicate rain
our ark dipping under a wave
as you tried to keep us steady
Me bailing out like crazy
Now the rain has seeped
into the earth and the rose
petals are dry. Potpourri.
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Maria Isakova-Bennett: Nonchalance
i
I sit outside from early morning.
Two blackbirds appear at ten.
I give them few words of encouragement,
don’t know why they return,
heads to one side, all shaky for a few minutes
in a blaze of sunshine.
When the day warms, I greet the sun
like an almost-lost lover:
he appears after months as though
he never hurt me by leaving,
sure of my delight at seeing him,
sure of my missed you,
love you, come back soon,
when it was he who lured me.
ii
I wouldn’t have noticed you, I think,
if you hadn’t foisted yourself on me
when I was younger and prettier
and happy to bare my skin.
But I don’t say anything – after all,
he may stop passing through. I wait—
my heart beating like a blackbird’s.
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Gareth Culshaw: The Neighbourhood Blackbird It’s the blackbird that shapes the morning. Threading light out of its beak to give the sun a circle to shine through. I rest on a bench. Centuries been since Pontus Pilate creased the sky with my death. My footprints raise the winds to erase my steps. Wounded feet, unsure of tarmac, brick and slabs, hobble the bones like a branch keeping the blackbird singing. Wooden slats grill the sores. Split my skin like egg yolk film. Turning the street into a slippery path for people to follow. Forgotten clouds return. Move away the light as I sit. A delivery van brings bread to a shop. A sign trapezes the breeze. The blackbird sings. Medicates the wounds that unwind off my skin from here to Jerusalem.
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Philip Dunkerley: Corvid Rook, blackness manifest, taking off from a shingle roof. You are ur-crow, all crow, pure essence of crow. Rook from the first rook, rising in ragged disorder, blackness going your own way night-in-day darkness. Rook in flight, ghoul, spirit, strange revenant, dark lord, embodiment of indifference, blackness become crow.
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Jena Woodhouse: It is winter, and the hunters It is winter, and the hunters clad in camouflage and motley linger in tavernas by the road to warm their frozen limbs, where chimneys emit incense-wisps of olive-wood and almond smoke, and from the juice of roasting flesh rise sacrificial fumes. It is winter, and the mountains are besieged by bitter, sleety cold; small, soft creatures of the forest tremble at the strangers’ tread; the wild boar grows uneasy, sensing imminent, remorseless lead, bewildered that the stalkers take such pleasure in his death—
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Damen O’Brien: The Cuts
The squeal of a pig
is not all of the pig.
When I was damp and
blind and full of my
mother and the push
of my brothers
and the sky burned,
the grass crowded
and the air was eager,
I never knew I was
a pig. When I was
all rough and tumble
and slurry and nudge,
skitter and snuffle,
potato peel and
carrot end wisdom,
I never knew I
was a pig, but that
was before the trucks
came with news
of my purpose.
Now I know myself
in the steel of the
holding pen. I am
curl and trotter,
pink and pork, spotty
bacon, swine and
sausage. My house
has all blown down
and I am the sum
of my parts. You have
made me into a pig.
Is the death of a man
all of a man?
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Sarah Davies: Ursus We cannot distinguish between the sane and insane, in the way that, at a distance,
there is no way to distinguish between a sun bear and a man in a sun bear suit. I have looked closely at your ideas, as I have looked closely at the neck of the bear,
that amberpiss collar, where the head of the actor might sit, to be covered by the
head of the bear. In your bear self, I can’t see you in the eyes. I asked the bear to dance by means of gesture – the bear danced, a gracefullish riot
and no clumsier than the average person. It showed a marked liking for waltz tunes or death metal. To the latter, it shook itself,
to the former, it performed complicated figures on the straw/shit concrete. I asked the bear to say hello – it waved. We took this as proof of humanity, but apparently,
bears can wave too, especially, when mimicking the people constantly waving to them,
often throwing treats. The sun bear or the sun bear man or woman ate holding food in their hands too, or
their costume paws. I couldn’t say if the sun bear thing was performing indicators of being a person such as complex algebra, meditating on existentialism, as its expression seemed to be
that of a regular member of the species. That isn’t to say that you aren’t in the bear costume, or that in fact, you are a sunbear
not a woman. Or in fact any of this is true. The sunbear is licking honey from its paws, from a hive of sound that it had found in
the womb of a tree and ripped out, comb and all. The predominant flower here is pale but persistent violet. I can imagine the honey tasted
like that, can imagine they liked it; the sunbear and the sunbear person – all that sweetness. No difference between, really, not a hair, not a whisper, not a diagnosis. Sarah Davies: Jaffa This is for the children – at home in the dead groves, the safe zone nothing, dig in my nails, oil and juice, the spray of orange, orange. Deflection of dreaming, wreckage of orchards. Burning, there are no orange groves. Now there are no oranges in the market, and if there were, orange would taste like dust. Through hybrid and graft, we divide – both owning more/less half – more money in diamonds. No separate word in English. The word for orange grove is orange grove. He eats an orange – swallows, his voice was never loud enough there was nothing to be done, and he reminds himself that yes, he cares. He has no idea of the perfume of horror, as if horror hasn’t existed till now. Haifa becomes Jaffa, the skin and peel so thick, transportable, from small sun to big sun, the shamouti orange changes, is grafted to the sweet orange from Spain – the sour orange from China. Yes, here is a poem about growing oranges.
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Barry Smith: Magnoliaeflora
I did not think I would ever pick up my pen
and sit down to write a Christmas poem,
especially in this year of war in Palestine,
of images of the rubbled blocks of Gaza,
of hostages held deep in underground tunnels
beneath the massacre of the innocents above,
with wrecked hospitals and medieval siege
where even the Church of the Nativity is a target,
yet the Georgian streets of this cathedral city
are still strewn with scattered flecks of light,
ribbons emblazoning trees and lampposts
although the darkened doorways of the shops
play host to huddled forms of homeless sleepers,
while the bronze figure of St Richard proffers a blessing
on the steps approaching the West Door of the Cathedral;
and in the morning, even though it is damp,
unseasonable weather rather than
the bleak midwinter of Rossetti’s carol,
I look out across my garden on this Christmas day
and see that topping the dark evergreen leaves
are the first perfect, milky-white coronets
of Camellia Magnoliaeflora’s glimpse
of unfurling spring in the turning year,
so I reach for my pen and write down these words.
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Bernadette Gallagher: The Day Light Left My Life Colour seeped from the pictures on the wall all that remained — gradations of shade. Outside, the trees, tall and dark, no sense of brown or green. A dark shade against a lighter shade of dark. Camellia dressed in dark even the blue ceramic pot held no blue. Bernadette Gallagher: Cill Rialaig Why is it when I don’t church frequent too much these days and yet I call his name? When something touches deep — a stone that marked where one soul lies or after scribing pebbles in the wind. Why is it when I don’t church frequent and yet call his name?
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Lydia Harris: these words start in the top left hand corner of the page I want to be they flow fed with blue black ink as the Sanquoy ditch is fed by the Burn o Cheor and the burn is fed by rain from the hills the words on this page witness to the algae with the lichen on the wall at Boniface they are saturated with the colours of carpets and embroidered hangings reds and greens rich as garnets and emeralds they are geometric sometimes sometimes figurative they are yarn twisted from nettle fibre a girl plucks them from an apple tree these words are little souls I bear them but they leave no memoirs or diaries
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M. Anne Alexander: The Priest’s Stone This peat retains souls: no dust rises from here to join the clouds. In fifteen hundred centuries, only once did fools try to move the stone but warning wolf-like winds fiercer than any before made them cease. Instead, tyrants set a track across the river’s path, for stagecoaches to pierce through: as wild animals, folk could be mown down if they crossed the line from the cliff tops where they’d been forced, crushed. Where that river gushes into the sea, the lost laird’s home stood, his clan’s homesteads nestling along the bank up towards the Priest’s Stone, cut off. No dust rises: stone and peat hold … and even dark waters … retain souls.
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Jock Stein: Breath of Hope
‘. . . that beautiful, beautiful, beautiful God
was breathing his love in a cut-away bog.’
from ‘The One’ by Patrick Kavanagh
Love salted with God’s tears, as peat is milled
and plugs are pulled on carbon sinks,
while bogs are ruled by beautiful theology
which poets cull from colour, call from suck
and squelch of muddy boots.
Love halted in arrears, as bogs are filled
with good intentions, stable doors are shut
and firms decide to plant a hundred trees
to grow their corporate bark a ring or two,
as if they cared two hoots.
Love faulted with our fears, as hope is killed
and writers shake dystopia. The guts of bogs
may quake, as nations grab their short-term goals
and nature feels the acid breath of power
dissolving ancient roots.
Love vaulted over years, as we rebuild
the power of breath, if we respect the bogs
and lay that three times beautiful upon our land,
while One who triples into earth and wet
keeps time, and grows new shoots.
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Nick Cooke: The Doubt This morning I was whole, an aching flower nuzzled by the bees. You had laid down what I could only reject: an ultimatum to banish doubt from my soul’s last corner. And for an instant lying there, still whole, as the light trickled, then flowed through the leaky shutters, and I looked round as it caught your shoulder and had never seen so perfect a thing, I could have believed it simple to declare myself a convert - Yes, now and forever - an untrembling amen.
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Stephen Claughton: Self-portrait with Nude after Dame Laura KnightElla’s standing on a towel completely nude, her hands up behind her head in a pose of half-hearted surrender, while Laura, paintbrush in hand, looks neither at her nor the easel, but instead at mirrors she’s angled somewhere out of frame to show them both from behind, as she paints herself painting Ella, though looking askance like that might mean someone’s come in, making Ella more vulnerable in the same way that Laura’s clothes— the scarlet jacket, the sensible thick green skirt, the broad-brimmed black felt hat— have stripped her barer still. Perhaps it’s cold in there. Ella’s flesh looks raw, rose tints like slaps to her rear. As an artist herself, she must know the point is to make it real, to get the skin tones true, her contours accurately mapped. But will she forgive those feet, red insteps and grubby heels, planted so hard on the beach towel they might have taken root? Stephen Claughton: The Nativity after Piero della Francesca
Joseph looks unimpressed,
the only one sitting down,
at right angles to the rest
on a makeshift packsaddle stool,
legs casually crossed,
right ankle on left knee,
turning away, distracted by the ass,
its braying head thrown back,
Hee-haw! among the angels.
First the Annunciation and now this,
like a party he didn’t want,
sprung on him by surprise
with uninvited guests.
He detaches himself from the tableau,
refusing to pose for the shot,
and concentrates instead
on the things he knows about:
such as the stable they’re lodged in,
unstable would be more like it—
walls crumbling, roof propped up,
a tuft of grass on top,
the lapped planks overlain
with lichen, or maybe moss.
And the painting itself looks unfinished,
the foreground bare in parts,
left—like the future—blank.
Contrast the background detail
so lovingly filled in:
Sansepolcro in the distance,
its cluster of towers standing proud,
and the white road, under a cliff,
that winds through the Tuscan hills.
Piero, himself a craftsman,
also had the sense
to stick with what he knows,
making it happen now in the Apennines
among the familiar haunts
of his own nativity.
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John Greening: Magnificat Translated from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Magnifikat She climbed the hill, quite heavy now and almost immune to any comfort, hope, advice until that pregnant older woman, tall and serious approached and in her face lay all there was with no need to explain, so suddenly she felt relaxed at last. The two, both full, hugged awkwardly and then the younger said: I feel now I’ll exist from this day, love, into eternity. Without attending to its bright allure, God pours the rich man out his vanity yet also needs such femininity and fills it from his very farthest era. To think, it’s me he’s chosen from them all, for me dispatched from star to star such orders. So praise to him and raise him high, my soul, and sing aloud: the LORD.
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Nancy Mattson: The silent midwife senses the cries of an infant about to be born in a shed (tunnel, corridor, hospital ruin) A teenage girl’s in labour but her mother is nowhere (all phone lines gone) The man hiding her, frightened by her pains, too ignorant to help, runs out and batters doors until he finds a woman who says she knows what to do (can he trust her) He hears her whisper to the girl and repeat five notes as the pains rise and subside A two-note phrase for breathing in one elongated note for holding on two, more urgent, for pushing out She strokes the girl’s throat, belly, legs into rhythms of holler and groan sob and sigh, and slowly the womb releases, the birth canal softens and the infant slides from safety into cold sharp air The midwife sees a crown of hair and catches slippery life in her seasoned hands No one will ever know what the midwife whispered to the girl too young to be a mother The man told me later how he watched her wipe away the girl’s blood from the howling boy how she swaddled him calm gave him to the man to hold as she eased out the afterbirth She slipped away leaving no afterstory (what was her name)
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Lee Fraser: Once Wrapped In Light, Now In Cloths Baby Jesus: No grand cloak. Dribble on the lips that spoke the world to life. Once wrapped in light, now in cloths, one starry night. Baby Jesus, king in rags; later friend of scallywags. Holy highness left so much. Bathed and burped by human touch. Baby Jesus, king on high, now with sleepies in his eye. Heaven swapped for dusty town, infant curls Instead of crown. Baby Jesus: Throne to hearth. Few would worship. Some would laugh. Priests and rulers didn’t know; simple shepherds got it though. Baby Jesus, champion. Born in flesh to save our skin. Tiny hands would heal, embrace and stretch to free the human race. Thank you Jesus, Lord of all. The least of these are not so small that we’re not worth what you went through. The biggest Christmas gift was you.
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Anne Alexander began writing poetry as an outcome of counselling and has thrived as a member of Enfield Poets. Her poetry generally explores restorative relationships with significant landscapes. The Priest’s Stoneis set at Strathy on the north coast of Scotland. Her latest publication is Waterways, Literary Waves Publishing, 2024 www.poeticvoices.live/portfolio/alexander-anne
John Bartlett is the author of twelve books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He was winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and his latest poetry pamphlet is In the Spaces Between Stars Lie Shadows (Walleah Press)
Lee Campbell is an artist and Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts London. His first chapbook Slang Bang is due from Back Room Poetry in November 2024 and debut poetry collection See Me: An Almost Autobiography is forthcoming with London Poetry Books. His chapbook Queering the Landscape has been shortlisted for the 2024 Broken Spine Chapbook Poetry Competition.
Giorgia Caso is a third-year student of English literature and creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire. She is Italian and also speaks French and English. Her dream is to become a successful writer but more realistically she would like to work in a publishing house.
Stephen Claughton’s poems have appeared widely in print and online. He has published two pamphlets, The War with Hannibal (Poetry Salzburg, 2019) and The 3-D Clock (Dempsey & Windle, 2020). He reviews for London Grip and The High Window and chairs Ver Poets. Links to his reviews, poems and pamphlets can be found at: www.stephenclaughton.com.
Nick Cooke has had around 60 poems published, in a variety of outlets, print and online. He has also published around thirty poetry reviews and literary articles, as well as five short stories. In addition, he has written a number of novels, stage plays and film scripts
Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales. He’s a neuro-divergent writer, and has four poetry collections to date. His most recent won the Backlash Poetry Prize 2022.
Sarah Davies is a poet from Merseyside, exiled in Bedford. She has been published in a range of magazines and looks forward to the day she can spend more time writing.
Tony Dawson is an English writer living in Seville. He has published three poetry collections: Afterthoughts ISBN 9788119 228348, Musings ISBN 97819115 819666 and Reflections in a Dirty Mirror ISBN 9781915819949 as well as a selection of flash fiction,Curiouser and Curiouser ISBN 9788119 654932.
Julian Dobson’s poetry has appeared in journals including The Rialto, Stand, Acumen and Ink Sweat & Tears, in anthologies and on a bus in Guernsey.
Briege Duffaud lives in West London. Her poetry and fiction have been published in Acumen, Orbis, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Ireland, French Literary Review, and others.
Philip Dunkerley lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire, where he runs a local poetry group. A fair number of his poems have made their way into magazines, webzines and anthologies – London Grip, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen and IS&T, among others. He reviews for Orbis and has translated poems into English from both Spanish and Portuguese.
Lee Fraser lives in ?tautahi, New Zealand. She was a linguist in Papua New Guinea and Kenya in her 20s, collided with domesticity in ?tautahi during her 30s, and has since rediscovered health through poetry. She won her regional poetry slam in 2023 and 2024 and had 18 poems published in 2024.
Bernadette Gallagher, author of The Risen Tree, (Revival Press, 2024) her debut poetry collection, lives in County Cork. Her work has been published in various journals including Agenda, Crannóg, The Stinging Fly, The North, and Southword. She was a recipient of the Culture Matters 2024 Poetry Award. bernadettegallagher.blogspot.ie
A Bridport and Cholmondeley winner, John Greening’s work is best represented by The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022 (Baylor, ed. Gardner). He has edited many poets and anthologies. Next year sees an Arnold Selected, a book of essays, A High Calling, and his Rilke. John Greening (poet) – Wikipedia
Lydia Harris has made her home in the Orkney island of Westray. Her second collection Henrietta’s Library of the Whole Wide World was published by Blue Diode in spring 2024.
Kate Hendry is a poet and teacher living in Scotland. Her first pamphlet, The Lost Original, was published by HappenStance Press. Her second, MX SIMP, was published by Mariscat Press. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets
Stuart Henson’s A Handful of Wasps was shortlisted for the 2023-2024 Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year award and will be published by Shoestring Press in March.
Abu Ibrahim is an award-winning poet and spoken word artiste from Nigeria
Maria Isakova-Bennett, from Liverpool, has a Peggy Poole Award (Judge Vona Groarke), and a New North Award (Judge, Clare Pollard). Writer-in-Residence for Mersey Care, NHS, Maria creates the hand-stitched poetry journal, Coast to Coast to Coast. She has five pamphlets, the latest is an o an x (Hazel Press, 2023)
Pam Job has been shortlisted in The Plough, Plaza, and Ironbridge poetry competitions this year and hopes to move it up a notch next year. She was placed second in Frogmore Press competition and published in the anthology, as well as in Artemesia anthology, Lunar Rainbow. She enjoys writing poetry in the peace and quiet of the Essex countryside
Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England & America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His poetry collections are Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge, The Madness Of Qwerty, A Foetal Heart, Bones Speaking With Hard Tongues and To Touch The Sky And Never Know The Ground Again. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com
As a result of winning the Geoff Stevens Memorial Award, Paul McGrane’s first collection Elastic Man was published with Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2018. A second collection British People in Hot Weather came out with Indigo in 2021. Paul is the co-founder of the Forest Poets poetry collective in Walthamstow and runs Poems Not Bombs poetry open mics in Walthamstow and Soho.
Nancy Mattson moved to London from the Canadian prairies in 1990 and continues to learn from people she encounters. Her fourth full poetry collection is Vision on Platform 2 (Shoestring Press, 2018). She co-organizes Poetry Above the Crypt at St Mary Islington.
Sian Meades-Williams is an author and poet living in London. Her recent poetry has been published by Dust and Fawn Press. She is the author of several non-fiction books and her historical novel-in-progress, Belville, won the 2022 Yeovil Literary Prize.
Kathy Miles lives in West Wales. Her fifth collection of poetry, Vanishing Point, was published in April 2024, and she is the winner of the 2024 Frogmore Prize
Ray Miller is a Socialist Aston Villa supporter and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment
Michael Mintrom lives in Melbourne, Australia. Recent poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Landfall, Meanjin, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Westerly.
Kate Noakes’ most recent pamphlet is Chalking the Pavement (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). Her last full collection is Goldhawk Road (Two Rivers Press (2023). She lives in Bristol and when not writing is a printmaker. Further details at www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com
Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning Australian poet. His prizes include the Moth Poetry Prize, the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition and the Magma Judges Prize. His poems have been published in New Ohio Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Mississippi Review and other journals. His latest book of poetry is Walking the Boundary
Jennifer M Phillips is a bi-national immigrant, with three chapbooks, Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity, A Song of Ascents, and Sailing To the Edges (forthcoming, 2025, as is my collection Wrestling With the Angel) . Phillips’ work appeared in over 100 journals, and is twice-nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Poetry Prize.
Kathy Pimlott has three pamphlets with The Emma Press, the latest being After the Rites and Sandwiches (Nov 2004). Her full collection, the small manouevres, (2022) is with Verve Poetry Press. She lives in Seven Dials Covent Garden, home of the broadsheet and the ballad
Janet Rogerson has a pamphlet with the Rialto, a PhD from the University of Manchester and has published poems in various journals. She lives in the North West of England.
Biljana Scott was born in Switzerland to Scottish-Serbian/Croatian parents. She was educated in the UK, has worked internationally and now lives in Orkney. Recent poems have appeared in Tears in the Fence, Long Poem Magazine, Acumen and 14 Magazine.
Barry Smith is the director of the South Downs Poetry Festival, author of the poetry collections Performance Rites (Waterloo Press) and Reeling and Writhing (Dempsey and Windle/VOLE Books) and editor of Poetry & All that Jazz magazine.
Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 38 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley
Jayne Stanton has written commissions for a county museum, University of Leicester’s Centre for New Writing, poems for International Women’s Day, and a city residency. A pamphlet, Beyond the Tune, was published by Soundswrite Press (2014).
Jock Stein is a minister and musician living in Haddington whose poetry on all the Psalms can be found in Temple and Tartan: Psalms, Poetry and Scotland and obtained through www.handselpress.co.uk. There is always more to life and poetry.
Vivienne Tregenza, a prize-winning Cornish poet from Mousehole, published in Cornish Modern Poetries (Broken Sleep) and many other journals and anthologies. Her first collection has been accepted by Indigo Dreams to appear in 2025.
Heather Walker writes poetry and short fiction and lives in London. Her work has been published in various places, including Popshot, Banshee Lit, Ink Sweat & Tears and Witcraft. She is currently working on a novella-in-flash.
Jackie Wills’ last collection was A Friable Earth (Arc 2019). In 2023 she won a Cholmondely Award for her work.
Anthony Wilson is the author of six collections of poetry, the most recent of which is The Wind and the Rain (Blue Diode, 2023). Anthony is also the editor of the anthology Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015). anthonywilsonpoetry.com
Apart from Greece, where she lived and worked for a decade, Jena Woodhouse has spent time in Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Russia. She has published five poetry chapbooks and two longer collections, as well as adult fiction and stories for children.
Gareth Writer-Davies was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014, 2017, 2024) and Prole Laureate (2017) . He won the Wirral Festival Poetry Competition (2023) and was runner-up on the Spelt Poetry Competition (2023). His collections are Cry Baby (2017), Bodies (2015), Wysg (2022) The End (2019) and The Lover’s Pinch (2018).
Uncareful Owner | Wear The Fox Hat
03/12/2024 @ 17:10
[…] great articles, stories, music, etc.I also have to say thank you to Michael at London Grip for highlighting my review of Hugh Underhill’s most recent book again in the latest issue. I wish it was for better reasons, but sadly the world lost a fine poet […]