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Recently I found myself idly wondering who I think I’m writing for when I’m working on a poem. Motoring journalists or restaurant critics might be able to visualise their target audience with reasonable accuracy; but it is harder to conjure up a picture that fairly represents the small but variegated section of the population which reads poetry magazines. Yet it is only from this latter group that I can expect to get any attention. A poem about my grandfather’s vintage Daimler (even with its fluid flywheel fluently described and its pre-selector gearbox turned into a telling metaphor for loss of free-will) is unlikely to come to the notice of a reader of Practical Classics. Similarly, the chances of my sonnet on a soufflé appearing in the BBC’s Good Food Magazine are vanishingly small since its editor would probably calculate that a casual browser would be more inclined to pay to read a page of prose than to invest in something shaped like a poem.
There may be poets who can see a particular editor or a competition judge as a real person with whom they are in communication rather than as an anonymous ambusher to be outwitted. Others, perhaps, have someone from their poetry workshop in mind when they are composing (Alice/Arthur is really going to enthuse/quibble about this!). Alternative author-imagined consumers of poetry might include a fond parent who must be reassured or an over-critical teacher who must be refuted. It would also be interesting to find out whether such notional audiences are thought of as readers or hearers….
… but instead I want to suggest that most poets are essentially writing for themselves and for the satisfaction of solving whatever poetic puzzles are set by the current theme, tone and form. Generalising from my own experience, I believe we’re all hoping for one of those where did that come from? moments which yield mouthfuls of crisp or chewy consonants or sweetly chiming internal rhymes. As one draft succeeds another aren’t we simply seeking to persuade our inner consciousness to whisper back a clinching, perfectly expressed image, analogy or metaphor? And we’d love it to be startling enough to knock us off our chair – as happens to the protagonist in Tirzah Garwood’s curious engraving The Man Who Was Answered By His Own Self which Is this issue’s header image.
Sam Szanto: The Young Man on the Train
sits alone at a table for four,
red-haired and too big for his skin,
tapping a pen on the plastic,
tap tap like a child’s heart.
When his phone rings, I stare at my half-formed poem
so I don’t appear to be listening. It’s his father,
for whom he’s been saving the seats.
‘Where are you?’ he asks, smiling.
His dad will get on at the next station,
I ascertain. ‘With Tanya?’ The young man’s face
has the smell of sour milk. We draw in
to Polegate and no one gets on.
The phone rings. ‘Whatever, I’m not bothered,’
the young man says, several times, voice limp as a dead fish.
He calls a sibling or a friend: ‘He’ll have told Tanya
I’m on the train and she’s refused to sit with me,
she does this kind of thing.’ At Lewes, his dad calls again.
He seems to believe he’s on a different train.
‘You don’t have to come, honestly,
I’m not bothered. Do your thing.’
At Haywards Heath, the halfway point,
the train gets busier
and a middle-aged lady tries to sit
at the young man’s table.
‘Sorry, I’m waiting for people,
they’re getting on at this station,’ — although no one’s
on the platform or moving down the train.
‘You sure?’ she asks. ‘Where are they then?’
At Gatwick, a volta, the train full of tanned people
and huge daylight-bright suitcases. The young man has to
share his table with three women
speaking a different language. He stares at his phone.
.
At Victoria, he gets up and our eyes meet.
I want to say maybe Tanya isn’t entirely to blame
and his dad will need him more one day.
I close my notebook and leave the train.
Back to poet list...Forward to next poet
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Joseph Blythe: The Strange Serenity of a Train Platform on a Winter’s Night
Only the heaves and sighs of struggling engines
forced to do the tiny journeys between northern nowhere towns.
An orange glow from the timetable. The next train from
platform 2 is delayed by six minutes. Delayed by what?
Has the darkness become impenetrable, a lake of oil?
A young girl has air pods in, her head down, hands in pockets.
I am watching the tracks for signs of movement.
There is nothing in the world beyond this floodlit platform
except the other one over the lines, uninhabited.
A train pulls in at platform 1. No one gets on. No one gets off.
It waits, then breathes closed and moves on through the dark.
The wind follows behind it, rushing to fill the space
and the silence. The air is cold to the touch.
The orange light flickers. We both keep waiting.
Barbara Howerska: Sister Rosetta Tharpe
is rocking the platform with rhythm and blues.
She’s stepping back and sideways, with her white electric guitar,
turning and moving with the beat.
She’s a sassy woman
winter coat and high-heeled shoes
singing on an old railway station; she’s rocking
rainy Manchester 1964.
She’s singing Didn’t it Rain children.
Driving that guitar with motion and a cool, strong voice.
The rainswept audience
on the other side of the track
are clapping, swaying, cheering.
Young people wearing duffle coats, stare adoringly.
Rosetta’s jewelled collar is catching the light.
She’s been rocking since the thirties.
Born of gospel, between church and nightclub.
Growing music, seeding music halls of fame.
This train is a clean train, this train.
This train is a Jesus train, this train.
Somewhere back in time
when life was only black and white
she sang.
Ross Jackson: In the hardest half hour
my quarter opened bedroom door
chink of moon
my brain empanelled in this wood crafted room
first train of the day soaks up water, takes on coal
half an hour’s thinking time
to luxuriate
play with a chain of iambs
plans revolve in my cerebellum’s
triple-barrelled chamber
I should get up and write
the script for today
but this hardest half hour’s
infected by procrastination
next to the skin
I pat the dog-eared Oblomov
on my bedside table
well, ‘time, time and the dividing of time’
as my late father used to say
proverbial gristle not easy to cut through
by a blade not so keen
in the hardest half hour
time, time and the dividing of time is a mangled version of Daniel 7:25
Rosie Jackson: Letter to a Fellow Poetfor John Freeman
Thanks for swapping books. I read yours
on the long train journey home, excited
to discover we are both fans of Jack Gilbert.
That Icarus poem of his you mention
is one of my favourites too –
the delicious But on which it hinges
so tiny and so huge: but life is not a failure
simply because we fall.
And as I look at the feel and structure
of your poems, I can see the affinity.
The way you too stand on everyday turf:
bookshop, woodwork lesson,
a woman cleaning linoleum.
Then how you open a shutter –
nothing grand – more a perhaps
than a certainty, more a stepping aside
than confrontation, welcoming
whatever blossom may want to drift
your way, your thought an emptying,
a listening, willing to be haunted
for years by something you’ve read
or seen: one line, one moment,
a talk with a stranger.
The exact personae are occasionally
a little puzzling, but I imagine
it’s your sometime wife,
or sometime partner, you sit with
as she’s dying, a greater love
borrowing your face to smile at her.
The same kind of love that spills
from Gilbert, a mix of eros and agape,
one leading into the other, the same love
that lies buried in the best poems
waiting to be opened like a seam,
the promise of coal shining there.
Not that you’re glittery – no bling –
the only name-dropping those
much-loved poets who fill your days,
your nights, your afterthoughts:
Rilke, Edward Thomas, Dannie Abse,
Anne Cluysenaar.
But it was turning the page onto your
‘Letter to Jack Gilbert’ that jolted me,
its title the same as a poem
I’d been planning. It felt uncanny,
as if I’d stumbled on something
I’d forgotten I’d written (that happens
sometimes), much as I’d been taken aback
when I came across Gilbert’s ‘Letter
to John Keats’, also the title of one of mine.
There are those, I know, who regard poems
which address other poets as writerly
indulgences. But I prefer to think of letters
between poets as a kind of celebration
of our shared inhabiting of the other world
that sits so patiently inside this one.
All that hot afternoon on the train, speeding
past newly green and yellow fields, I was lifted
into that space which can be reached only
through this world, when the world
is most fully itself as it leaves itself behind.
It was like coming back to that subtle,
remarkable moment of pause –
another tiny yet huge hiatus – when breath
changes from in to out and the mystery
of things starts to flow in a different way,
is experienced differently:
how life itself depends on it.
And I’m glad – if, frankly, a little envious –
to hear that Jack Gilbert heard your letter poem
read out to him shortly before he died,
gave it his thumbs up. God knows,
we all need some recognition at the last,
to boost us through the silent turbulence.
And please give my best to your partner,
I’m sorry we weren’t introduced.
So much smiling in her face, I kept
looking round to see if I’d missed something,
something that might lift my own face
out of its tragedy. Nothing extravagant,
not Gilbert’s avalanche of joy, just the kind of
simple things you’re so good at honouring:
the first swallow, the skin of an apple tree,
a clarinet playing faintly next door.
Angela France: Lao tóngfor Ann Drysdale
Yesterday it was a helleborine in the woods,
too late. The seasons continue to drift,
sending small flags of distress
up through the earth where people tread.
The other day there was a post online,
a humble-brag we’d have laughed about,
indulged in some just-between-us guilty gossip.
Today it was the leucistic crow.
It has come to the garden every day
since I told you about it, always alone.
We worried that it was rejected
for being too different, too eccentric.
Today it was with a black crow,
It has found a mate, it isn’t lonely anymore.
*
The ancient Chinese had a phrase, Lao tóng,
for ‘heart sisters’; women friends closer
than man and wife. We don’t have a word
for the loss of such a friend, nor a word
for the one left. Where is the language
for the ache of your boots in the cupboard,
the stick you oiled in the hall. There is no word
for my reaching for the phone to tell you,
the bone-deep pang of pulling back.
Norton Hodges: Nostalgiai.m. A.E. Housman
I have no blue remembered hills,
only the pavements I trod on my way to school,
and no lads who sadly marched away,
only the aunts and uncles who disappeared
one by one to cancer or old age.
I have no land of lost content,
only the gardens, long or short,
where I was sent while the adults
had their important chats
as lizards basked out in the sun.
But often, like him, I look back to find
somewhere so safe I was unaware:
playing toy soldiers on my grandparents’ floor
at the feet of indulgent grown-ups,
long ago, when the battle lines were clear.
Tony Dawson: Portrait of W.H. Auden at 58
In his final years, lungs racked with coughing
as he hacked his way towards his coffin,
Auden’s face displayed deep ingrained lines,
the products of unhealthy living and sure signs
of late nights spent on verse he loved to write.
His face hit by a spider’s web at the speed of light.
Jim Murdoch: What Survives of Stevie
I knew it was a good line the moment it hit me.
Quite took my breath away.
Before the ink was dry.
Even before I’d dotted the i’s.
Naturally I knew.
I settled myself with a strong cup of tea
and two custard creams not realising
(how ever could I?)
that that was that;
after so few years at t’face mulishly
(or, some would say, asininely)
ploughing my own seam
I might as well call it a day,
hang up my hard hat
and set the canary free.
I expect Philip felt much the same
when he wrote that rot about love.
Stevie Smith was born in 1903 in Hull, Yorkshire and Philip Larkin lived in Hull
Jeff Gallagher: ‘I Do Not Remember This Day’
William will be remembering some assault to the senses,
the stolen boat, that bridge, those d----d daffodils.
William remembers everything, chewing scraps of emotion
like a wasp, building a vast store of recollection.
William can wander beside lakes, beneath trees, his fine pen
pricking out smiles and stings to be carved into words.
William knows God. They exchange pleasantries in verse
and drink claret, asking each other important questions.
William fears progress. His tranquillity is disturbed by dreams
in which the rivers dry and the clouds are turned black.
I am the stem to his flower, hidden beneath the spritely dance
of his growing, patiently noting anything of significance.
I am the day to day, hidden by mob cap or bonnet, shy face
tilted towards the earth, recording all for posterity.
I am frightened of these hills, my fear pressed like a leaf
among receipts and prayers and household accounts.
I have tried to be a poet like my brother – but I am a woman
and must hide my true self beneath manners and corsetry.
I do not remember this day. There is nothing to write of
save for my brother laughing and crying to the grey sky.
Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon: Emerging Viragos
We are a tribe of late-comers
to the writing game. Women
who have spent our lives spinning
plates in home and hearth,
communities and workplaces.
We know first-hand of birth
and death, love and loss—
and how to comfort others.
We know less of how to make
our voices heard above men’s
growls. We fear being silenced
at this critical hour. This, our last
chance to speak our truths,
before earth’s soil claims us.
Lewis Wyn Davies: It goes a bit like this…
M’s up. She’s giving it her all. She’s twisting
her face like a pretzel as she reads. Her fingertips
stretch and shoot energy across the atmosphere,
through the wires and piping. Her voice is poised.
Her eyes are the perfect balance of focus and joy.
She’s doing this for everyone who craves the very
opportunity. And she’s faultless. Flawless. The best
she’s been. Her final line could spark a rivalry. Heat
radiates from her body as she looks down upon
her destiny. The clapping from her modest family
echoes around empty seats until a booming voice
calls out from the speakers: Thank you, M.
Now, please welcome, C! Suddenly, the big
metal exit doors burst open and by the time
C passes M on stage, the place is brimming.
C reads a solid haiku and the whole floor shakes
so hard it can be heard in the fields of a rural county.
Peter Surkov: After your send-off
After your send-off
I forgot you were dead.
I looked to see you sidling up
carrying a paper plate with sausage rolls,
eyebrow raised at our readings. ‘Do Not Go Gentle’? Really?
After your send-off
I thought of the photos
with the lifted gown, your prudent caption
don’t open at work. And how, days later, you freed yourself
of oxygen mask, walked down the ward, and died in a different bed.
Pam Job: Beached
Or, I could be sitting in my garden – not
in a deckchair
and the blackbird would come to sing me out
or the robin
and the dye would run down my face -
pink, not black, like his
and Rudy Giuliani’s
and I would remember Venice,
and Ezra Pound’s grave
and the snail trails, tracing my name
over his in San Michele
at the end of the row.
Michael Carrino: One Morning Late in March
On the shoreline's edge ice is melting, a thick mist
edges closer, a neighbor
from the north end of the beach
approaches me, announces his urgent need
to have a will. I nod and he goes on
about having his intentions
concerning possessions, money, and property
in firm order, unquestionable, who was to have what
and when. He mentions he is leaning
toward cremation, but is not sure
if his ashes might be kept
in an urn, on a mantle or table, or lifted
on a warm breeze, disappear over a seaside town
where he once was calm.
He asks if I know a lawyer. The ice
keeps melting, perhaps
a promise of a day
warmer than yesterday. I respond
with more than a nod and time eases past
steals the mist, leaving
a hint of sunlight.
Before our conversation is over
he tells me his life
has been unremarkable, most
desires elusive. All he wants
now if possible
is a clean plan. At least
have one clean plan in writing.
Alexis Deese-Smith: she did not stop for death
this one did not plan accordingly—
dressed unfashionably in hair and gown,
she arrived for death windswept,
curls blown astray, hems ragged
and muddy, boot laces undone.
she was late, if you can believe it,
nearly out of the breath she was fated to lose.
there was no note pressed with flowers
kissed to the kitchen table,
no handkerchief aching of rosewater.
in complete disregard for tradition,
she entered death alive, clawing at
the present tense with a heathenism
that rolled the romantics in their graves.
it’s why she’s never in their stories,
more banshee than spectre, bless her heart
and she’d do well not to look so pleased
roaming those godforsaken moors.
Ben Banyard: Cryonaut
Vanity, perhaps,
the desperation, with
money no object,
to be thawed, revived,
cured of your fate.
Or curiosity maybe,
the wish to
inhabit the future,
dwell in new times
where nothing makes sense.
Just a head,
in your case,
awaits a download,
the ultimate external
hard drive.
It takes faith
in human nature,
the Hippocratic Oath
stretched wafer-thin,
crystallised in ice.
John Bartlett: Within These Yearning Arms, I Have Enough *
*from JS Bach’s cantata Ich Habe Genug (BWV 82)
for Michael
1. In Manila’s Cathedral
of St John the Baptist
widowed mothers, like
stone angels, crawl on bare knees
to touch, revere the statue
of the Black Nazarene
2. I walk to the spot
above the beach where
we last met
strong Easterlies send windsurfers
scudding – here you vowed to return
to your love of running
3. In Lane Cove
I help you from the car
my arms around you
your limbs heavy against me
when did you become
this old man
I would weep if I could remember how
4. Now I touch this place
above the beach
on knees unbended
where love still lingers and
and in this revere
I have enough
Sue Wallace-Shaddad: Handover
I have long struggled to cut the nails
on my right hand, botching the task.
Now I have your manicure scissors,
their tiny sharp blades cut right through.
Such a useful legacy.
As I file with an emery board, I miss
dipping your fingers in warm water
to loosen the chocolate cake
of care home meals,
doing my best to calm you when
you recited I don’t remember,
stroking your hand, so knarled
with rheumatism. Womanly-wise
you would suddenly grasp my hand
and, in a gentle voice, ask after me.
Dan Burns: A Dream of Heaven
begins with a
forgiving hand outstretched,
and cricketers dancing
in the haze of a cloud.
Time never rots nor reeks --
even filth can be cleansed.
Where does stagnant water go,
if not skywards?
Pam Zinnemann-Hope: I walk through the door
The basement knows
and the rooms upstairs
and the hallway knows.
It’s in the empty air.
Is it a missing smell?
That’s how an animal
can tell.
I’ve seen it in a dog
who came every day
to visit our dog. He came
and he sniffed the path
the day after.
Then went away
and never came back.
The things in the house
are no longer cherished,
they’ve lost their meaning.
I stand in the hall and call,
Where are you?
Graham Clifford: His Plan
Some facts are irrefutable
like imperfections in skirting boards
or how an architrave felt wrong.
We know his plan is
to blow his brains out if she goes first.
He doesn’t own a gun
and he wouldn’t have the bottle, anyway.
She knows. She will have whispered
don’t be so stupid
smiling, suggesting that evening they have a Chinese takeaway
and another stiff Bacardi and diet coke
to take their minds off it.
This fact rips the lining in me,
like seeing an ape on TikTok
stroke a dead cat
it was allowed to own
only partly for scientific purposes.
Her plan is many more, bright Aprils
in aspic.
Philip Gross: Dear Words… Dear Silence…
Not him, not her, no way. They couldn’t abide
each other. With a passion. So it was no surprise
to anyone but them, the day they stumbled
into love. Words tripped, a sudden hush fell
on the room, mid sentence. Then the blurt
of truth. The moment, staring. Then the blush.
The years of easy marriage: how they’d fill
each other’s gaps, or be them, natural
as in-breath/out-breath. Then the first row.
One’s affair. (Reader, you think you know
which of them it would be? Discuss…)
Then how they mended into couple-ness,
to-fro, a well-consorted bickering, their faults
each other’s care, a kind of grooming after all.
Words left more unsaid, or like a clear stream
flowed unheeded and unhindered to reveal
the silent pebble bed. Speak gently now
of the skill of the old, making love with, no,
out of a tenderness towards each other’s
failings, which escapes the young. And last, the years
that must come, when one, when either, each one,
will miss the other like part of their self, being gone.
Andrew Sclater: An Evening Together
She walks in Jane Austen's withdrawing-
room, withdrawn among the chintz covers,
imagining debacles and dark French lovers.
Henry sleeps on his sofa, soaring
over fences on a thoroughbred,
cleaning twelve-bores in the boot room,
or casting for trout in a midgy gloom,
blind to the woman he wed.
His dogs and horses are wholly his, but she is not.
She is an undemonstrative Scot.
Stepping up breathless to the ball
at Mansfield Park, two hundred years before,
she's greeted at the great oak door.
The men she likes are tall,
and military, and dead. Henry sleeps
through dreams of pheasants taking flight
while she goes waltzing through the candlelight.
Her partner is another bore. Occasionally, she weeps.
Her antique books and candlesticks are hers, but he is not.
She is an uncomplaining Scot.
No matter the arthritis,
she wanders over lost demesnes.
The stucco in the stair remains
quite wonderful. How bright the light is.
How the shadows lengthen the pilasters.
And the gorgeous chandelier, my dear,
Murano glass! And, goodness, where’s the brigadier...?
Henry dreams of trade unions and industrial disasters.
The marriage is theirs, and yet it's not.
Too much has been lost. One hell of a lot
for an English sportsman and his unsporting Scot.
If she explains, he answers ‘Tommyrot!’
She would like to tell him... tell him what?
Last thing, he downs one final tot.
She leaves me crying in my cot.
She is an undemonstrative Scot.
This unlikely bride and groom
each undress in a separate room.
Andrew Sclater: At Home With The Parents
There was a sofa on which they did not sit
together. It was floral.
He lounged on it and crumpled it
while she sat straight in her chintzy chair
or lowered her head to write letters
in blue-black ink. He would pronounce
and she’d reply, subdued. They went on
like that till he dozed off.
At meals, they’d keep as far apart as they could.
The table was large and round, and stood
very central on a pillar pedestal.
Something formal and awkward about it all.
One day, out of the blue, she said
Two’s company -- three’s none.
It was strange for her to speak first.
Me there too between them.
Phil Wood: Prospective Parent For Space Boy
They are strolling along the shoreline,
side by side, not hand in hand,
not yet...and talking, about something
other than me. Not now, but soon.
I follow their footprints, which this tide
will rub out for sure. I lick my rainbow
lollipop, which is shaped like a rocket.
I give them space. Enough to hold hands.
Bridgette James: Journal Entries of a Failed Mother
February 2024 -- i am not a sanctuary.
i am the swirling champagne glass in my hand
that I hide under the sofa when my son walks in.
July 2024 -- i am a half-packed suitcase
i never go on holiday. My son won’t travel –
His doctor warns, deep-rooted fear of flying
is like debris in a blocked sink.
August 2024 -- i am a paper gravedigger.
To eradicate my son’s phobias, i list them on a Post-it
I bury in a pretend casket under the kitchen window
where creeping buttercup flower then die.
September 2024 -- i’m the flower-killer.
i never water things so i ignore the packets
of lawn seeds in the garden centre.
November 2024 – I’m a refuge-collector.
i sweep up carcasses of dead holiday
plans in my sleep. At night i trawl cemeteries
for headstone-gaps to bury my dead flowers.
December 2024 -- i’m stuck in the pattern
of the swirl stem of my broken wine glass
& shard glass clogs up my sink like debris.
January 2025 - My son says: aeroplanes kill people.
One crashed in Washington DC.
In my sleep ‘i cry me a River'
- the Potomac. It harbours corpses
of aeroplane passengers and my resolution
to try & be a better mum in the New Year.
Sue Norton: What Mum thought about Grandma
In her ninety-fourth year, Grandma slept in a single bed
downstairs. Stripping the sheets, we found them
darned, topped and tailed, a penitential patchwork.
New sheets Mum had bought, Grandma kept
For my old age. Untouched, they snoozed
in crackled plastic, saved, as she saved herself.
And for what? said Mum. She did nothing, but wore out
other people. Mum took the sheets, but chucked
five chocolate bars, gone mouldy in their foil. For pity’s sake
said Mum. She never enjoyed her life, and now it’s gone.
Dan Janoff: Visiting the Dead
My shrunken mother and I
huddle together
before his gravestone.
She grasps my hand,
her fingers like skeleton keys
from a foundling hospital.
I see her reflected
in the polished black granite
a ghost in the monument.
She complains of
small stones left by visitors
as dirty and messy.
She’d clean it and buff it
like she patted
and brushed my father.
As if a spotless memorial
could contain her loss.
Helen McSherry: You Tell Us Your Mother Is An ActressIn memory of Sarah Kelly
You tell us she is in London and lives in an apartment.
You tell us your mother will be famous,
and when she is, she will come home
and get you. Your granda is our lollipop man.
He used to be in the Navy and shouts all aboard!
before he ferries us across the road. Your granny
is the cleaner of our school, she keeps everything
shipshape. When you tell us you will become
an actress just like your mammy, I believe you,
because you have this beautiful jet black hair, and something
about you reminds me of Snow White.
On the day we go to school and you’re not there,
they tell us you won’t be back. They tell us, yesterday
was the last time we’d cross the road on your granda’s boat,
the last time your granny would clean our decks.
The day after the coffins (you had the wee white one)
were carried up to the altar in the church where we
made our Holy Communion, I go round to your house to look
through the blank windows and see if it’s true that glass can melt
and pebbledash can turn to slush. I don’t understand why
my nostrils sting when the fire has gone out, I don’t know why
I need to squint my eyes when there is no light.
They tell us your granda was found trying to get to your room,
they tell us you were found fast asleep,
they tell us they found your granny downstairs in the armchair
with an ashtray at her feet. They say, may their souls
and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.
And they tell us to say, Amen.
On the day of the funeral your mammy comes home to get you.
Someone tells us she isn’t an actress, but I don’t believe them,
because even when she cries and cries until her hair is soaked,
something about her reminds me of snow white.
Helen McSherry: Cycling Through Cathays Cemetery
On the days you go to your dad’s, I cycle with you
along the side of the Recreation Grounds,
bags on our backs with school books
and uniforms, creams for psoriasis.
We don’t stop to laugh at the geese
crossing the road over to Roath Park Lake,
we swerve,
they are just another obstacle in our path.
You, my middle child, lead us
through the side streets, thrusting out your arm
at each right turn,
you take us into the cemetery, the arching gates
too grand for our small cortège.
The three of you fly
down the hill between the graves. I slow
this gravel feels deadly under wheel.
Yew trees mark the sea of buried lives,
the rooks inhabit headstones and watch
as you reach that spot where you wait for me.
I suggest we visit the Irish Famine Memorial,
you lot worry you’ll be late.
As we file out the side gate, pause
for a break in the traffic, to cross over,
the coffin of our family unit becomes
almost too heavy for me to bear.
Rebecca Gethin: I called her Uncle Sandy from Champion the Wonder Horse
No one to ask now
what she was really like:
brown permed hair, clumpy shoes.
Tall. Thin as a strict word:
she seemed old, staid.
I wonder if she’d lost someone –
the war had only ended
ten years earlier. Perhaps that’s why
she took the job, looking after me.
I can’t have been easy:
prone to tempers, night frights,
faddy about food, sometimes rude.
The survivor, I was spoilt rotten,
as everyone kept telling me.
My Daddy won’t marry you, I told her.
She was dutiful. Meals on time;
washing, ironing; cleaned the house,
polished the silver. I never thanked her,
never felt grateful.
My friend and I threw
her jam sandwiches over
the wall. I hated mealtimes.
Her food made me gag -
fish pie, semolina.
When my father got engaged
to a young, pretty woman
Uncle Sandy called the sheets disgusting.
Upped, left. Abandoned, I scribbled
hate notes to her on the wall,
in indelible black felt tip.
Stephen Bone: Net Curtains
Their net curtains, each other Monday,
she'd take down. To be plunged with hands
encased in latex gloves – hospital grade –
into the Belfast frothed with Daz, a dash
of bleach and left to soak, until hygienic
as a Swiss clinic. A rinse of running cold,
then pegged out to dry, before rehung
to whitewash the dirty linen of their lives.
Jeff Skinner: Friday
Our lady of the aisles, I bring you these gifts –
anchovies bread the fine Italian oil
olives (Greek) a bar of dark chocolate
that’s good for the heart Each week
we chew the fat, confide, once in a while, spill
the beans. For some of us it’s a lifeline, you observe,
kindness changing hands –
wine milk red and green apples
My card hovers out there, above and beyond
the machine, seeking approval –
queuing couples mutter, their trolleys overflowing
like Christmas. Now you offer the ribboning receipt,
a free smile.
Cos Michael: Reading the smallprint
I spend my life on an escalator
trying to read passing posters
confused at whether it is best
to lean back and finish what's past
or forward, grabbing a preview
in the futile hope
that as I trip to the top
I might have absorbed
at least
one
whole
message
Neil Douglas: No onions
Three strangers, one with a barbed wire tattoo, walk into a kebab shop, High
Road, Lewisham.It’s Good Friday 2020. Black Cherry in bloom, sky blue, air clean
and people say they can hear birds instead of planes at daybreak. Three
strangers, one with a barbed wire tattoo, in a kebab shop. Three men unmasked,
ungloved, all standing adjacent. One man turns to another man, and he is close
enough to whisper something in his ear. Right in his ear. This man laughs and
touches the third man on the elbow. Touches him on the elbow. And the third
man, the one with the barbed wire tattoo, turns to Ali who is slicing his doner on
the rotisserie and says no onions.
Blue sky, blackbird song,
a barbed wire tattoo; fallen
blossom melts like snow.
Gareth Adams: Evening Stroll
Walking along the pavement
At night, in town, alone
You are lit by four lampposts
Maybe more.
Different versions of you
Split and merge in rhythm
At angles along the pavement
As you pass.
The lights play tag
With shadows of your self
Until you begin to wonder
Which one’s real.
What if one should slip away
When the light’s not looking,
Race you home, bolt the door
Lock you out?
Would you wander through
The spaces between
The ticking of the clock.
To try the door?
Katharine James: Exhibition
In a photograph from Hiroshima
a man’s shadow rests on a wall.
But there isn’t a man there to cast it.
It isn’t a shadow at all.
Özge Lena: Portal
Three steps backward,
two shadows on the snow,
one smaller. The black hole
of the barrel is a portal
to a parallel world
where children in dark
blue uniforms march
as they chant a loud
anthem of valour.
Three steps forward,
two shadows on the snow,
one smaller, hands up.
Frozen time on the spilt
honey of a street lamp,
the sound of the drill on ice,
an exploded hideout.
Three steps backward,
two shadows on the snow,
one smaller. Sudden crows
lift off with a single shot
that rips the frostbitten air.
Three steps forward,
two shadows on the snow,
one smaller, the one
that is collapsing down.
Ken Cockburn: Ballad
After torching the castle
he has returned,
penitent.
The lady speaks leniency
too soon for his liking
and to demonstrate
the depths of his remorse
he lays his head on the block.
Turning she nods sharply.
John Whitehouse: There will be bloodhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68895233
Cavalry horses Vida, Quaker, Trojan and Tennyson, bolted
one April morning, striking cars in central London.
The Four Horses of the Apocalypse, riderless loose on the street,
blood-smeared from breastbone to bridle.
Big Ben chimed a false hour. A sign to break free, acting out
their metaphors, red-eyed, sweating, snorting.
The animals get it, when there is something wrong with the world.
They prick up their ears to a shift in time and seasons.
The ground has slipped from under us. A general subsidence
alters the lie of the land. Even the stars are crooked.
Since we have chosen our leaders, portents hover in the fugitive sky.
A white horse, a black horse, a red horse, a pale horse.
Time to harvest red grapes from the earth. Pressed wine mutates
into rivers of blood, rising to the horses bridles.
John Whitehouse: The big tree
Even now, the big sycamore tree is growing,
seeds spiralling in the blue, like helicopters,
missions for the children, playing
in the Autumn light.
Double decker buses come and go
like clocks, collecting their blessings. Pre-
selector gearbox, the logos of London
Transport painted out.
Everyone knows the Big Tree. A mark
in the landscape, a destination in old money,
beyond time, cardboard tickets, red and green,
a hushed witness.
The driver throws a cigarette, trailing to earth,
he sweeps up, like a matador, into the high cab,
flicks the ignition switch, and some part of him
yearns for loneliness.
Swearing under his breath, over an unnamed
tragedy, the conductor stamps his foot upstairs,
frightening the passengers. He swings the ticket
machine as a murder weapon.
Under the shelter of the big tree, boys wheel
their useless prizes. Black Jaguars, smelling
of stagecoaches, walnut, and thick leather,
the odour of Sweet Afton Banks.
A Humber Snipe jousted me off my bike.
My father felt it, through the sighing of the tree.
He ran to me, expecting to find me dead:
My son Absalom, my son Absalom!
Foolish Absalom, misled by Ahitophel, joined
in battle with his father. Unhorsed by a low-
hanging fork in Ephraim’s wood. Slain,
for David to mourn.
The rumours of trees, bear witness to our wrongs
and rights. Zacchaeus, a known rascal, climbed
the Sycamore tree to see Jesus. Beyond hope,
yet finding something.
Colin Pink: Heading South
Mosab left Jabalia with death on his shoulder,
like a small child riding on their father
death clutched at his hair, the better to hang on,
he walked south, he walked and he walked,
soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint,
stripped him and beat him but no one
noticed death sitting on his shoulder…
later he began to walk south again, with death
still riding on his shoulder, and as he walked
death got heavier and heavier, pressing down,
what had started out light as a small child
had now become as heavy as a grown man,
he wondered when he’d be able to put it down
Mosab Abu Toha was awarded the Pulitzer prize for essays on suffering of Palestinians in Gaza
Vanessa Ackerman : Poems for Hagar
1.
On the holiest day of the year
I look at God square in the eyes
and roll an olive under my tongue
after all He didn’t hear Sarah,
not Sarah and not Hagar
and the olive is the knot
the doctor tied in my womb
fire, fire when they took you from me
for the rest of your life
you kept repeating, it was too soon,
the long sound of dust, interrupted
2.
I count four walls in my silence
Brushing your wet hair is one
The slope of a dream
A slope to nothing, to a gentle thought
And the wordless songs I sing is another
And everyday I am preparing you for mourning
Yes that’s what I am doing
Here are your prayers
Here are your cut out memories
And don’t forget my bones
And the heat and the sand
Where you will find all my loves
Huddled together
Like an old woman in rags
waiting for water
3.
I wasn’t wed to anyone
a black hole maybe,
a door to a universe
in which whole cities collapsed
the rubble and the debris
yes, that was my groom
and at my wedding
I drowned like a widow
and now when the waters rise in my dreams
I am not frantic,
I simply clutch my passport
see, this is victory
Behold the breath,
its birth at the back
of the tongue, dark
opening to the light
at the seat of swallowing.
This is spirit, soul, sigh,
exhaled in the warmth
of air, cloud on mirror.
Praise its huff before
the last gasp at the end
of words when it serves
as a mother of reading.
Hey, they say, hallel,hallelujah for Hashem,
The Name, the creator
of light in an outbreath.
This is the high five
of the body—fingers,
senses, dimensions—
this is the the, the ha
that deals in specifics,
the spark, the halation
that wakes the wonder.
.Sue Rose: MEM (mem)
Forty, as in the days
and nights of flood,
mem, king over water,
brings cold in the year,
belly in the soul, earth
in the universe. One
of the elemental mothers—
mem, aleph, shin: air,
fire, water—primordial
mem keeps mum,
clamp of lips at teat,
a murmur of mam,
mummy, am, immi,
names like mementos
recalling the mmm
of comfort and home.
Open as the half moon
of a breaker that looms
at the horizon, it’s used
in the middle or to start:
emet, truth, mikvah, bath
of rebirth. At the end
of words, it’s closed
as the womb, rachem,
ministering the mitzvah
of umbilical manna
for forty weeks, before
the gush and muscle
of metamorphosis
from the body’s muffle.
.
Vanessa Ackerman is an actor, writer and educator based in Cambridge,UK. She has written five full length plays and her poems have appeared in publications such as Propel, Marble Poetry, Icarus, Cephalo Press, Tears in the Fence, and Anthropocene amongst others. Her poem Antigone was a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee.Her collection Small Rebellions was a winner of the 2023 Dreich Classic Chapbook Competition.
Gareth Adams lives in the UK. he has returned to writing after a long hiatus.
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, on the North Somerset coast. His three collections to date are Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016), We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Hi-Viz (Yaffle Press, 2021). He edits Black Nore Review (https://blacknorereview.wordpress.com). Website: https://benbanyard.wordpress.com
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 (walleahppress). he lives In Southern Australia.
Joseph Blythe is from the north of England. He has short story and poetry publications present or forthcoming from Stand, Pennine Platform, Grist Books, Astrea, SwimPress, Allegro Poetry and more. From 2022-2024, he served as an editor at Grist Books. He is currently working on a novel about the fallibility of memory for his PhD. He holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and a Master’s in Creative Writing. He tweets, Instagrams, and Blueskys @wooperark.
Stephen Bone’s most recent poems have appeared in Black Nore Review, Snakeskin and The Spectator. A new edition of his first collection, In The Cinema (Playdead Press 2014 ) is due in 2025.
Dan Burns is a writer living in Sheffield. His work has previously appeared in Prole Books, Pulsar, The Dawntreader, and Snakeskin Poetry. In his spare time, he is a teacher.
Michael Carrino is a retired English lecturer at the State University College at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was co-founder/poetry editor of theSaranac Review. Publications include ten books of poetry, the most recent Natural Light (Kelsay Books), and The Scent of Some Lost Pleasure (Conestoga Zen 3 Anthology).
Graham Clifford is a British author of five collections of poetry. His work has been chiselled into paving slabs, translated into Romanian and German, can be found on the Poetry Archive, and is anthologised by publishers including Faber and Broken Sleep Books. Most recently his work has been included on Iamb and BerlinLit.www.grahamcliffordpoetry.com
Ken Cockburn is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh. He runs Edinburgh Poetry Tours, guided walks with readings of poems in the city’s Old Town. His most recent pamphlet is Edinburgh: poems & translations (2021).https://kencockburn.co.uk
Lewis Wyn Davies is emerging poet from Shropshire whose work has been published by Poetry Wales, The Pomegranate London, Dreich and Culture Matters, while he has also appeared in anthologies with Broken Sleep Books and Sunday Mornings at the River.
Tony Dawson is an English writer living in Seville. He has published widely in the UK, the USA and Australia. He has three small collections of poetry: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.
Alexis Deese-Smith is an emerging writer interested in navigating neurodivergence by building fractured spaces in which her autistic self might feel at home. Originally from the sunny state of South Carolina, she moved to the UK in 2023 in order to pursue poetry education and a gluttonous amount of cream teas. Most recently, she was chosen as a runner-up for The Classical Association’s inaugural poetry competition, listed as an Honorable Mention by Plentitutude’s 2025 Prizes in Nonfiction, and shortlisted for The Poetry Society Free Verse 2025 competition.
Neil Douglas worked as a doctor in London’s East End and graduated with an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College in 2024. He is published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, North America and Hong Kong.
Angela France has had poems published in many leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times, her fifth collection Terminarchy came out in 2021. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in community settings. She leads the longest running reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.
Jeff Gallagher is from Sussex, UK. His poems have featured in publications including Rialto, Eat The Storms, Acumen, The High Window and The Journal. He has been a teacher of English and Latin. He also appeared in an Oscar-winning movie.
Rebecca Gethin has written 5 poetry publications and 2 novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Her poems are widely published in various magazines and anthologies and she won the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages.
Philip Gross has published nearly 30 collections in 40 years of publication, the latest, The Shores of Vaikus (Bloodaxe, 2024). He won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009, a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and is a keen collaborator across arts
Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. Her first pamphlet, Scrambled Lives on Buttered Toast was published in 2024. She practices as a participatory arts facilitator, and believes everyone’s voice counts.
Norton Hodges is a poet. He lives in Lincoln.
Barbara Howerska is a Bradford poet, with two books published by Half Moon Press ; After the raging 2018 and The Widow Witch , 2019. She has done solo poetry shows at the IIkley Literature Fringe Festival and ran a spoken word night, in Bradford, which was featured on Radio 4.
Rosie Jackson lives in Teignmouth, Devon. Widely published, she has won many awards, including commended in the Troubadour Competition, 2024 and the National, 2022. Her latest collection is Love Leans Over the Table (Two Rivers Press, 2023). www.rosiejackson.org.uk
Ross Jackson is a retired teacher resident in Perth, Western Australia. Ross has had poems in many journals and poetry websites. A collection, Time alone on a quiet path came out in 2020 (UWAP). His latest collection is Suited to Grey (WA Poets Press)
A poem by Bridgette James was shortlisted for the Bridport in 2024. Another poem of hers won the Flash Fiction Summer Poetry Competition, 2024.
Dan Janoff: is a member of the Forest Poets stanza in Walthamstow since 2022, Dan writes poetry and short stories. He won the 2023 King Lear Poetry Prize in the beginner category and was Highly Commended in the Indigo First Collection Competition 2024.
Pam Job lives in Essex where she enjoys being part of a thriving creative community. She is widely published in magazines and has co-edited several poetry anthologies. In 2024, she won second place in The Frogmore Press poetry competition and was shortlisted in a seven further poetry competitions. She likes the adrenalin rush of sending poems off to be judged!
Katharine is a writer, theatre-maker and performer. She grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire and lives in East London.
Özge Lena’s poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Cambridge Poetry, The Trumpeter, The Gentian, The International Times, and elsewhere in various countries, including the USA, UK, Canada, Singapore, Spain, Iceland, Serbia, France, etc. Özge’s poetry was nominated both for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, then for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. Her ecopoem “Undertaker” is forthcoming in the Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology of Scarlet Tanager Books in the USA. Also, her poem “Here is a New Heart For You” was featured in the storefront of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Dublin, California, for the National Poetry Month 2024.
Helen McSherry is a Belfast poet living in Cardiff. Recently, her poems have been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, awarded 2ndplace in the Hammond House Prize, and have appeared in Poetry Wales, Cambridge Poetry Magazine and An Áitúil. Helen facilitates writing-for-wellbeing groups and was selected for the 2024 Literature Wales Writing Well Programme.
Cos Michael writes about life from an autistic perspective, sometimes referencing a turbulent childhood. Cos is a Londoner and has worked across the arts and charities sectors. She has had poems published by The Alchemy Spoon, The Ekphrastic Review, Wildfire Words, Atrium and Grindstone
Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.
Sue Norton has been published in various magazines and anthologies.
Colin Pink co-chairs the Barnes & Chiswick Poetry Stanza. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and four collections, most recently Typicity and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy.
Sue Rose has published three full-length collections with Cinnamon Press, a chapbook of sonnets paired with her own photos, and a book of tree photos and poems with photographer, Lawrence Impey. Her fourth collection will be out from Cinnamon Press in the summer
Andrew Sclater is a prize-winning poet from Scotland, now living in Paris. His new chapbook is forthcoming with Mariscat Press. He speaks three languages and translates poetry and prose. Formerly a plant scientist, landscape historian, teacher, and editor of Charles Darwin’s correspondence, he co-founded the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Jeff Skinner’s poems have been published in anthologies and journals, most recently in Poetry News, Paperboats; Ink, Sweat and Tears. He was commended in the last Sonnet or Not competition. He volunteers at his local food bank and in an Oxfam bookshop, listens to music, watches football, reads, writes.
Peter Surkov’s poems have appeared in magazines including The Rialto, Magma, Poetry Scotland, and Stand. He is working on his first collection.
Sam Szanto is an award-winning, Pushcart prize-nominated writer. Her poetry pamphlet This Was Your Mother was published by Dreich Press in 2024; another pamphlet, Splashing Pink’(with Annie Cowell), was published by Hedgehog Press.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad has had three pamphlets published: Once There Was Colour (Palewell Press, 2024), Sleeping Under Clouds’ , a collaboration with artist Sula Rubens (Clayhanger Press, 2023) and A City Waking Up (Dempsey and Windle, 2020).Website
John Whitehouse has had work published in: Stand, Acumen, and London Grip. His two collections are A Distant Englishness, (Clayhanger Press) and After a Short Illness, (Broken Sleep 2026).
Phil Wood lives in Wales. He has worked in education, statistics, shipping and a biscuit factory. His interests include learning German, painting with watercolours, and, of course, reading poetry
Pam Zinnemann-Hope has two full collections: On Cigarette Papers, adapted by her as a play on Radio 4, & Foothold. She is also children’s author
May 31 2025
London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2025
*
ISSUE 56 OF LONDON GRIP NEW POETRY features poems by:
*Sam Szanto *Joseph Blythe *Barbara Howerska *Ross Jackson
*Rosie Jackson *Angela France *Norton Hodges *Tony Dawson
*Jim Murdoch *Jeff Gallagher *Ceinwen Haydon *Lewis Wyn Davies
*Peter Surkov *Pam Job *Michael Carrino *Alexis Deese-Smith
*Ben Banyard *John Bartlett *Sue Wallace-Shaddad *Dan Burns
*Pam Zinnemann-Hope *Graham Clifford *Philip Gross *Andrew Sclater
*Phil Wood *Bridgette James *Sue Norton *Dan Janoff
*Helen McSherry *Rebecca Gethin *Stephen Bone *Jeff Skinner
*Cos Michael *Neil Douglas *Gareth Adams *Katharine James
*Özge Lena *Ken Cockburn *John Whitehouse *Colin Pink
*Vanessa Ackerman *Sue Rose
Contributor Biographies and Editor’s Notes are also included.
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
A printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Summer 2025
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 January, April, June & October
Please do not include us in simultaneous submissions
*
Recently I found myself idly wondering who I think I’m writing for when I’m working on a poem. Motoring journalists or restaurant critics might be able to visualise their target audience with reasonable accuracy; but it is harder to conjure up a picture that fairly represents the small but variegated section of the population which reads poetry magazines. Yet it is only from this latter group that I can expect to get any attention. A poem about my grandfather’s vintage Daimler (even with its fluid flywheel fluently described and its pre-selector gearbox turned into a telling metaphor for loss of free-will) is unlikely to come to the notice of a reader of Practical Classics. Similarly, the chances of my sonnet on a soufflé appearing in the BBC’s Good Food Magazine are vanishingly small since its editor would probably calculate that a casual browser would be more inclined to pay to read a page of prose than to invest in something shaped like a poem.
There may be poets who can see a particular editor or a competition judge as a real person with whom they are in communication rather than as an anonymous ambusher to be outwitted. Others, perhaps, have someone from their poetry workshop in mind when they are composing (Alice/Arthur is really going to enthuse/quibble about this!). Alternative author-imagined consumers of poetry might include a fond parent who must be reassured or an over-critical teacher who must be refuted. It would also be interesting to find out whether such notional audiences are thought of as readers or hearers….
… but instead I want to suggest that most poets are essentially writing for themselves and for the satisfaction of solving whatever poetic puzzles are set by the current theme, tone and form. Generalising from my own experience, I believe we’re all hoping for one of those where did that come from? moments which yield mouthfuls of crisp or chewy consonants or sweetly chiming internal rhymes. As one draft succeeds another aren’t we simply seeking to persuade our inner consciousness to whisper back a clinching, perfectly expressed image, analogy or metaphor? And we’d love it to be startling enough to knock us off our chair – as happens to the protagonist in Tirzah Garwood’s curious engraving The Man Who Was Answered By His Own Self which Is this issue’s header image.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Sam Szanto: The Young Man on the Train sits alone at a table for four, red-haired and too big for his skin, tapping a pen on the plastic, tap tap like a child’s heart. When his phone rings, I stare at my half-formed poem so I don’t appear to be listening. It’s his father, for whom he’s been saving the seats. ‘Where are you?’ he asks, smiling. His dad will get on at the next station, I ascertain. ‘With Tanya?’ The young man’s face has the smell of sour milk. We draw in to Polegate and no one gets on. The phone rings. ‘Whatever, I’m not bothered,’ the young man says, several times, voice limp as a dead fish. He calls a sibling or a friend: ‘He’ll have told Tanya I’m on the train and she’s refused to sit with me, she does this kind of thing.’ At Lewes, his dad calls again. He seems to believe he’s on a different train. ‘You don’t have to come, honestly, I’m not bothered. Do your thing.’ At Haywards Heath, the halfway point, the train gets busier and a middle-aged lady tries to sit at the young man’s table. ‘Sorry, I’m waiting for people, they’re getting on at this station,’ — although no one’s on the platform or moving down the train. ‘You sure?’ she asks. ‘Where are they then?’ At Gatwick, a volta, the train full of tanned people and huge daylight-bright suitcases. The young man has to share his table with three women speaking a different language. He stares at his phone. . At Victoria, he gets up and our eyes meet. I want to say maybe Tanya isn’t entirely to blame and his dad will need him more one day. I close my notebook and leave the train. Back to poet list... Forward to next poet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ***Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Ross Jackson: In the hardest half hour my quarter opened bedroom door chink of moon my brain empanelled in this wood crafted room first train of the day soaks up water, takes on coal half an hour’s thinking time to luxuriate play with a chain of iambs plans revolve in my cerebellum’s triple-barrelled chamber I should get up and write the script for today but this hardest half hour’s infected by procrastination next to the skin I pat the dog-eared Oblomov on my bedside table well, ‘time, time and the dividing of time’ as my late father used to say proverbial gristle not easy to cut through by a blade not so keen in the hardest half hour time, time and the dividing of time is a mangled version of Daniel 7:25Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Angela France: Lao tóng for Ann Drysdale Yesterday it was a helleborine in the woods, too late. The seasons continue to drift, sending small flags of distress up through the earth where people tread. The other day there was a post online, a humble-brag we’d have laughed about, indulged in some just-between-us guilty gossip. Today it was the leucistic crow. It has come to the garden every day since I told you about it, always alone. We worried that it was rejected for being too different, too eccentric. Today it was with a black crow, It has found a mate, it isn’t lonely anymore. * The ancient Chinese had a phrase, Lao tóng, for ‘heart sisters’; women friends closer than man and wife. We don’t have a word for the loss of such a friend, nor a word for the one left. Where is the language for the ache of your boots in the cupboard, the stick you oiled in the hall. There is no word for my reaching for the phone to tell you, the bone-deep pang of pulling back.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Norton Hodges: Nostalgia
i.m. A.E. Housman
I have no blue remembered hills,
only the pavements I trod on my way to school,
and no lads who sadly marched away,
only the aunts and uncles who disappeared
one by one to cancer or old age.
I have no land of lost content,
only the gardens, long or short,
where I was sent while the adults
had their important chats
as lizards basked out in the sun.
But often, like him, I look back to find
somewhere so safe I was unaware:
playing toy soldiers on my grandparents’ floor
at the feet of indulgent grown-ups,
long ago, when the battle lines were clear.
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Jim Murdoch: What Survives of Stevie
I knew it was a good line the moment it hit me.
Quite took my breath away.
Before the ink was dry.
Even before I’d dotted the i’s.
Naturally I knew.
I settled myself with a strong cup of tea
and two custard creams not realising
(how ever could I?)
that that was that;
after so few years at t’face mulishly
(or, some would say, asininely)
ploughing my own seam
I might as well call it a day,
hang up my hard hat
and set the canary free.
I expect Philip felt much the same
when he wrote that rot about love.
Stevie Smith was born in 1903 in Hull, Yorkshire and Philip Larkin lived in Hull Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Jeff Gallagher: ‘I Do Not Remember This Day’
William will be remembering some assault to the senses,
the stolen boat, that bridge, those d----d daffodils.
William remembers everything, chewing scraps of emotion
like a wasp, building a vast store of recollection.
William can wander beside lakes, beneath trees, his fine pen
pricking out smiles and stings to be carved into words.
William knows God. They exchange pleasantries in verse
and drink claret, asking each other important questions.
William fears progress. His tranquillity is disturbed by dreams
in which the rivers dry and the clouds are turned black.
I am the stem to his flower, hidden beneath the spritely dance
of his growing, patiently noting anything of significance.
I am the day to day, hidden by mob cap or bonnet, shy face
tilted towards the earth, recording all for posterity.
I am frightened of these hills, my fear pressed like a leaf
among receipts and prayers and household accounts.
I have tried to be a poet like my brother – but I am a woman
and must hide my true self beneath manners and corsetry.
I do not remember this day. There is nothing to write of
save for my brother laughing and crying to the grey sky.
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Pam Job: Beached Or, I could be sitting in my garden – not in a deckchair and the blackbird would come to sing me out or the robin and the dye would run down my face - pink, not black, like his and Rudy Giuliani’s and I would remember Venice, and Ezra Pound’s grave and the snail trails, tracing my name over his in San Michele at the end of the row.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Helen McSherry: You Tell Us Your Mother Is An Actress In memory of Sarah Kelly You tell us she is in London and lives in an apartment. You tell us your mother will be famous, and when she is, she will come home and get you. Your granda is our lollipop man. He used to be in the Navy and shouts all aboard! before he ferries us across the road. Your granny is the cleaner of our school, she keeps everything shipshape. When you tell us you will become an actress just like your mammy, I believe you, because you have this beautiful jet black hair, and something about you reminds me of Snow White. On the day we go to school and you’re not there, they tell us you won’t be back. They tell us, yesterday was the last time we’d cross the road on your granda’s boat, the last time your granny would clean our decks. The day after the coffins (you had the wee white one) were carried up to the altar in the church where we made our Holy Communion, I go round to your house to look through the blank windows and see if it’s true that glass can melt and pebbledash can turn to slush. I don’t understand why my nostrils sting when the fire has gone out, I don’t know why I need to squint my eyes when there is no light. They tell us your granda was found trying to get to your room, they tell us you were found fast asleep, they tell us they found your granny downstairs in the armchair with an ashtray at her feet. They say, may their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. And they tell us to say, Amen. On the day of the funeral your mammy comes home to get you. Someone tells us she isn’t an actress, but I don’t believe them, because even when she cries and cries until her hair is soaked, something about her reminds me of snow white. Helen McSherry: Cycling Through Cathays Cemetery On the days you go to your dad’s, I cycle with you along the side of the Recreation Grounds, bags on our backs with school books and uniforms, creams for psoriasis. We don’t stop to laugh at the geese crossing the road over to Roath Park Lake, we swerve, they are just another obstacle in our path. You, my middle child, lead us through the side streets, thrusting out your arm at each right turn, you take us into the cemetery, the arching gates too grand for our small cortège. The three of you fly down the hill between the graves. I slow this gravel feels deadly under wheel. Yew trees mark the sea of buried lives, the rooks inhabit headstones and watch as you reach that spot where you wait for me. I suggest we visit the Irish Famine Memorial, you lot worry you’ll be late. As we file out the side gate, pause for a break in the traffic, to cross over, the coffin of our family unit becomes almost too heavy for me to bear.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Neil Douglas: No onions Three strangers, one with a barbed wire tattoo, walk into a kebab shop, High Road, Lewisham.It’s Good Friday 2020. Black Cherry in bloom, sky blue, air clean and people say they can hear birds instead of planes at daybreak. Three strangers, one with a barbed wire tattoo, in a kebab shop. Three men unmasked, ungloved, all standing adjacent. One man turns to another man, and he is close enough to whisper something in his ear. Right in his ear. This man laughs and touches the third man on the elbow. Touches him on the elbow. And the third man, the one with the barbed wire tattoo, turns to Ali who is slicing his doner on the rotisserie and says no onions. Blue sky, blackbird song, a barbed wire tattoo; fallen blossom melts like snow.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Vanessa Ackerman is an actor, writer and educator based in Cambridge,UK. She has written five full length plays and her poems have appeared in publications such as Propel, Marble Poetry, Icarus, Cephalo Press, Tears in the Fence, and Anthropocene amongst others. Her poem Antigone was a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee.Her collection Small Rebellions was a winner of the 2023 Dreich Classic Chapbook Competition.
Gareth Adams lives in the UK. he has returned to writing after a long hiatus.
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, on the North Somerset coast. His three collections to date are Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016), We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Hi-Viz (Yaffle Press, 2021). He edits Black Nore Review (https://blacknorereview.wordpress.com). Website: https://benbanyard.wordpress.com
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 (walleahppress). he lives In Southern Australia.
Joseph Blythe is from the north of England. He has short story and poetry publications present or forthcoming from Stand, Pennine Platform, Grist Books, Astrea, SwimPress, Allegro Poetry and more. From 2022-2024, he served as an editor at Grist Books. He is currently working on a novel about the fallibility of memory for his PhD. He holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and a Master’s in Creative Writing. He tweets, Instagrams, and Blueskys @wooperark.
Stephen Bone’s most recent poems have appeared in Black Nore Review, Snakeskin and The Spectator. A new edition of his first collection, In The Cinema (Playdead Press 2014 ) is due in 2025.
Dan Burns is a writer living in Sheffield. His work has previously appeared in Prole Books, Pulsar, The Dawntreader, and Snakeskin Poetry. In his spare time, he is a teacher.
Michael Carrino is a retired English lecturer at the State University College at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was co-founder/poetry editor of theSaranac Review. Publications include ten books of poetry, the most recent Natural Light (Kelsay Books), and The Scent of Some Lost Pleasure (Conestoga Zen 3 Anthology).
Graham Clifford is a British author of five collections of poetry. His work has been chiselled into paving slabs, translated into Romanian and German, can be found on the Poetry Archive, and is anthologised by publishers including Faber and Broken Sleep Books. Most recently his work has been included on Iamb and BerlinLit. www.grahamcliffordpoetry.com
Ken Cockburn is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh. He runs Edinburgh Poetry Tours, guided walks with readings of poems in the city’s Old Town. His most recent pamphlet is Edinburgh: poems & translations (2021). https://kencockburn.co.uk
Lewis Wyn Davies is emerging poet from Shropshire whose work has been published by Poetry Wales, The Pomegranate London, Dreich and Culture Matters, while he has also appeared in anthologies with Broken Sleep Books and Sunday Mornings at the River.
Tony Dawson is an English writer living in Seville. He has published widely in the UK, the USA and Australia. He has three small collections of poetry: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.
Alexis Deese-Smith is an emerging writer interested in navigating neurodivergence by building fractured spaces in which her autistic self might feel at home. Originally from the sunny state of South Carolina, she moved to the UK in 2023 in order to pursue poetry education and a gluttonous amount of cream teas. Most recently, she was chosen as a runner-up for The Classical Association’s inaugural poetry competition, listed as an Honorable Mention by Plentitutude’s 2025 Prizes in Nonfiction, and shortlisted for The Poetry Society Free Verse 2025 competition.
Neil Douglas worked as a doctor in London’s East End and graduated with an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College in 2024. He is published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, North America and Hong Kong.
Angela France has had poems published in many leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times, her fifth collection Terminarchy came out in 2021. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in community settings. She leads the longest running reading series in Cheltenham, ‘Buzzwords’.
Jeff Gallagher is from Sussex, UK. His poems have featured in publications including Rialto, Eat The Storms, Acumen, The High Window and The Journal. He has been a teacher of English and Latin. He also appeared in an Oscar-winning movie.
Rebecca Gethin has written 5 poetry publications and 2 novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Her poems are widely published in various magazines and anthologies and she won the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages.
Philip Gross has published nearly 30 collections in 40 years of publication, the latest, The Shores of Vaikus (Bloodaxe, 2024). He won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009, a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and is a keen collaborator across arts
Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. Her first pamphlet, Scrambled Lives on Buttered Toast was published in 2024. She practices as a participatory arts facilitator, and believes everyone’s voice counts.
Norton Hodges is a poet. He lives in Lincoln.
Barbara Howerska is a Bradford poet, with two books published by Half Moon Press ; After the raging 2018 and The Widow Witch , 2019. She has done solo poetry shows at the IIkley Literature Fringe Festival and ran a spoken word night, in Bradford, which was featured on Radio 4.
Rosie Jackson lives in Teignmouth, Devon. Widely published, she has won many awards, including commended in the Troubadour Competition, 2024 and the National, 2022. Her latest collection is Love Leans Over the Table (Two Rivers Press, 2023). www.rosiejackson.org.uk
Ross Jackson is a retired teacher resident in Perth, Western Australia. Ross has had poems in many journals and poetry websites. A collection, Time alone on a quiet path came out in 2020 (UWAP). His latest collection is Suited to Grey (WA Poets Press)
A poem by Bridgette James was shortlisted for the Bridport in 2024. Another poem of hers won the Flash Fiction Summer Poetry Competition, 2024.
Dan Janoff: is a member of the Forest Poets stanza in Walthamstow since 2022, Dan writes poetry and short stories. He won the 2023 King Lear Poetry Prize in the beginner category and was Highly Commended in the Indigo First Collection Competition 2024.
Pam Job lives in Essex where she enjoys being part of a thriving creative community. She is widely published in magazines and has co-edited several poetry anthologies. In 2024, she won second place in The Frogmore Press poetry competition and was shortlisted in a seven further poetry competitions. She likes the adrenalin rush of sending poems off to be judged!
Katharine is a writer, theatre-maker and performer. She grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire and lives in East London.
Özge Lena’s poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Cambridge Poetry, The Trumpeter, The Gentian, The International Times, and elsewhere in various countries, including the USA, UK, Canada, Singapore, Spain, Iceland, Serbia, France, etc. Özge’s poetry was nominated both for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize in 2021, then for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. Her ecopoem “Undertaker” is forthcoming in the Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War Anthology of Scarlet Tanager Books in the USA. Also, her poem “Here is a New Heart For You” was featured in the storefront of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Dublin, California, for the National Poetry Month 2024.
Helen McSherry is a Belfast poet living in Cardiff. Recently, her poems have been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, awarded 2ndplace in the Hammond House Prize, and have appeared in Poetry Wales, Cambridge Poetry Magazine and An Áitúil. Helen facilitates writing-for-wellbeing groups and was selected for the 2024 Literature Wales Writing Well Programme.
Cos Michael writes about life from an autistic perspective, sometimes referencing a turbulent childhood. Cos is a Londoner and has worked across the arts and charities sectors. She has had poems published by The Alchemy Spoon, The Ekphrastic Review, Wildfire Words, Atrium and Grindstone
Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.
Sue Norton has been published in various magazines and anthologies.
Colin Pink co-chairs the Barnes & Chiswick Poetry Stanza. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and four collections, most recently Typicity and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy.
Sue Rose has published three full-length collections with Cinnamon Press, a chapbook of sonnets paired with her own photos, and a book of tree photos and poems with photographer, Lawrence Impey. Her fourth collection will be out from Cinnamon Press in the summer
Andrew Sclater is a prize-winning poet from Scotland, now living in Paris. His new chapbook is forthcoming with Mariscat Press. He speaks three languages and translates poetry and prose. Formerly a plant scientist, landscape historian, teacher, and editor of Charles Darwin’s correspondence, he co-founded the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Jeff Skinner’s poems have been published in anthologies and journals, most recently in Poetry News, Paperboats; Ink, Sweat and Tears. He was commended in the last Sonnet or Not competition. He volunteers at his local food bank and in an Oxfam bookshop, listens to music, watches football, reads, writes.
Peter Surkov’s poems have appeared in magazines including The Rialto, Magma, Poetry Scotland, and Stand. He is working on his first collection.
Sam Szanto is an award-winning, Pushcart prize-nominated writer. Her poetry pamphlet This Was Your Mother was published by Dreich Press in 2024; another pamphlet, Splashing Pink’(with Annie Cowell), was published by Hedgehog Press.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad has had three pamphlets published: Once There Was Colour (Palewell Press, 2024), Sleeping Under Clouds’ , a collaboration with artist Sula Rubens (Clayhanger Press, 2023) and A City Waking Up (Dempsey and Windle, 2020). Website
John Whitehouse has had work published in: Stand, Acumen, and London Grip. His two collections are A Distant Englishness, (Clayhanger Press) and After a Short Illness, (Broken Sleep 2026).
Phil Wood lives in Wales. He has worked in education, statistics, shipping and a biscuit factory. His interests include learning German, painting with watercolours, and, of course, reading poetry
Pam Zinnemann-Hope has two full collections: On Cigarette Papers, adapted by her as a play on Radio 4, & Foothold. She is also children’s author