You may also wish to listen to poem recordings that have been added to our (small but growing!) digital archive. We have poems there by:
Nadine Brummer, Daphne Gloag, Gill Horitz, Mimi Khalvati, Lottie Kramer, Gill Learner, Gill McEvoy (read by Anne Stewart), Maggie Norton, Jennie Osborne, Elizabeth Soule, Jill Townsend, Marion Tracy, Fiona Ritchie Walker, Sarah Westcott and Lynne Wycherley.
Select and listen here Poets of the Month (other dates)
Anne Ryland’s first collection, Autumnologist, (Arrowhead Press, 2006) was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2007). Her poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies. She lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where she teaches adults and runs writing workshops for community groups.
My name would not be your middle name.
You wouldn’t inherit my listomania, I promise:
I’d renounce list-making in honour of your birth.
The term Muscular Dystrophy would not be sewn within you.
I would not pass on my stony ova
or the euphemisms stuffed up the sleeve like handkerchiefs.
Thank You wouldn’t be your mantra; it trapped me at the amber light.
You wouldn’t stare at every dog and see only its bite.
You would never know that ‘worry’ derives from ‘wyrgan’, to strangle:
I’d lock the door to my mother’s worrymongery
but I would be your guide in the storehouse of the thesaurus,
assure you there’s no such curse as being too clever.
I’d even show you how to blow a trumpet in a long and steady tone.
My desk and my blue propelling pencil would be yours.
I’d hand you your great-grandmother’s last letter to her daughter
from the hospital – ‘bye bye, dear’
All my words would be yours, so you’d observe me on the page,
learn all that I am and was and should have been.
And, my daughter, each night I’d hum you a lullaby.
You would remember me as a song, not an apology.
Poem published: Mslexia, No. 34. Runner-up, Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, 2007.
Publications: Autumnologist, Arrowhead Press, 2006, ISBN 1-904852-11-4, £7.50.
Anne Ryland website
e-mail (via SLN)
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Estelle Price lives in Cheshire but often goes west to the Llŷn Peninsula. She is learning Welsh. Estelle is the winner of the 2021 Welsh Poetry Competition & the 2018 Book of Kells Writing Competition. Her poems are in Poetry Wales & other journals.
(after Derek Mahon)
And why would I not wish, after a drawerful of days
disarrayed with worry, to walk into dusk’s byways
leaving the back gate unlatched? Come night
I’ll say, lead me away from the probing kitchen light
where fear simmers blood-orange like a dying sun
and all the talk is of treatment not yet begun.
Race me across the cropped grass until my mind
is infused with black, the future set free, undefined.
Somewhere in the forest a badger leaves the sett
to forage for her cubs. Inside a child learns the alphabet
his small hand feeding the page with words.
I stand with my back to the door knowing in spite
of everything a mother never loses the urge
to run, for who can tell if everything will be alright?
Poem published in 14 Magazine, Series 2, Issue 2
Publications:
Primers 6, Summer 2022, Nine Arches Press
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
‘Tightly-wrought sequences and lyrical pieces … poignant and often surprising’ (Katherine Gallagher). Jane McLaughlin writes poetry and fiction. She has been widely published in magazines/anthologies; her first collection is Lockdown (Cinnamon 2016).
The silver hook slips to and fro.
Dark head bent over red sweater,
in the next seat she nets
a fine white band. Fingers arched,
thumbs steady. Turn of the wrist.
The train gallops the latifundios,
Cordoba fades behind golden hills.
Slant orange sun descending
paints white villages, backlights her hair.
The work grows, precise as frost.
Her small bones and tendons learnt
this craft from women whose maths
was in their heads, patterns
of chequered mesh, stars, flowers,
eloquent as a Moorish ceiling.
It does not need words: the yarn
is hooked into its own language.
In the lexicon of human gestures
her movements mean this and nothing else:
I am making lace.
Flowing like high cirrus
it will trim an alb, perhaps,
or christening robe. Maybe
hem a sister’s wedding dress.
A rite begun, tissue of spider’s breath.
Highly Commended, Torbay Open Poetry Competition, 2015
Publications:
Lockdown, 2016, Cinnamon Press,
link
The Abbot’s Cat (e-novella), 2014, Cinnamon Press,
(Kindle, avail from Amazon) link
Quintet (poetry), 2005, Cinnamon Press
Quartet (short stories), 2004, Cinnamon Press
twitter &MclaughlinJane3
at Facebook
Jane at poetry p f
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Joolz Sparkes is co-author of London Undercurrents, with poet Hilaire, published by Holland Park Press, which uncovers London’s unsung heroines north & south of the river. Her poems and short stories are published in magazines and anthologies.
I am doing the walk you do when you’re in Soho –
the walk that says I’m a Londoner see?
Not a tourist. Don’t mess with me.
I do the walk past Soho Square at 9pm
on my way to late night jazz,
it’s been raining and the pavement
is something I don’t want to see
but the filth, oh how the filth, it beckons to me.
– There! –
See how quick it went?
What was it; a mouse?
Nah, the thickness of that slubbery tail, says
eugh [shivers] a baby rat’s in the house.
– There it is –
hunkering next to the railings
gnawing that scrap of a thing
… it’s, it’s looking back at me
little black eyes all lit up like bling.
A dirty evil smudge
the shape of infestation,
nasty filthy claws like the clattering
of lies told down the police station.
Rat, rat. Definitely rat.
It’s doing the walk you do when you’re in Soho.
Poem first published in South Bank Poetry Magazine, Issue 15;
published in Some Kind’a Soho by David Russell and Daniel Saunders published by Central Books 2021
Publications:
London Undercurrents, Holland Park Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-9073208-2-8, £10.00
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Born in Doncaster, Lesley lives in Ledbury. She runs the Herefordshire Stanza, and has been printed here and there – is working on everywhere. It may take some time.
This is more than dibbing in, but not quite
rifling through. The zip defensively tooth
and nail, bites, snatching the tremor from my skin,
scratching my rouge noir. Deep breaths.
This has to be against some law.
I finger-skim the surface shapes, reading
the contents like braille, a sharp edge, a cold key,
a press of leather, a prickling of guesses.
Time washes in, pools in the notebook
I know holds your days, your
coffee mornings, keep fit classes, chemo
dates. Your variations in temperature.
I recognise your lipstick mirror by the ring
of bling round its top. I can’t open it.
I would see you. Drowning in your Youth
Dew, choking in your tissues and
mini-sudukos, half-dying
in the deeping and the laws
of nature … I see you shake your head.
‘Dive in’, you say, ‘dive in – we have no secrets
you and me’. Already half way round
the bend I nod. Had. You mean had.
* written for the theme ‘Into the Deep’
Poem published: Mslexia, April 2010
Publication:
Scumbled, 2015, Cinnamon Press, ISBN 978-1-909077-72-0, £8.99
Lesley J Ingram website
e-mail Lesley J Ingram
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Marion Oxley is originally from Manchester but has been living amongst the flood plains of the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire for many years. Her poems are published widely in journals and anthologies.
after a Calderdale folktale of Gabriel Ratchets; spectral hounds and the hunting of Lady Sybil
who takes the form of a doe and is also thought to be a witch.
The valley is saturated, full to the brim,
a prayer bowl carried in anxious hands.
A woman strides out, walks the rim from moor to crag
sings to the wind of the substance of things not seen.
Breath dances in droplets, shapes form in a mist
spreading out beyond the black and white gates,
the lock unpicked, a question mark waiting; a cormorant
lost, sea-wings spread; a crucifix in the cold sun.
A glide of Canada Geese heads held high
hiss a warning, pink tongues quivering.
And the dog spoke of you last night
of the shiver of milk-white skin
of slender legs cleansed in the river
the pendulum swing of a racing heart
of when suspicion slid to a stop
in the moonlight the turn and weight
of your belly, a boulder flung down
from the out-crop, the arch of your hips
sprung making ready for the leap,
flames licking at your heels.
You’ll burn in hell, they said.
Listen to the thrum coming up
from underground, the hillside shifting, the movement.
In the rush and swell, push to the surface a split in bedrock.
Riven granite clouds release a yelp a howl left circling
the siren’s wail chasing tales out across the valley.
Second prize in The Red Shed Poetry Competition 2019. Published in a pamphlet of winning poems by Currock Press.
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Maureen lives in North Wales. Poems published in Iota, Poetry Nottingham, Other Poetry, Second Light, Helicon, and various other magazines. Success in local competitions. Chapbooks: Shared Ground and Turtle Stone. She is currently working on a new collection, Alternatives.
It would have been a July afternoon
with everyone piling out into the sun.
And I remember the dog rose blooming
in a flush of pink, as we waded through green meadows,
hunting for lucky leaves among the purple clover.
Then someone made a daisy chain, and suddenly
we were all crowned in gold and white,
and there were butterflies,
(orange tip, common blue, cabbage white)
dancing around our heads.
And I recall those colours midsummer bright,
but any sounds have slipped away.
Memory runs a silent film, which is strange
and sad, because I’m sure, so very sure,
that all our hearts were singing.
Publications: Chapbooks, Shared Ground and Turtle Stone
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Patricia Helen Wooldridge composes much of her poetry while walking in Hampshire. She has a D.Phil in creative writing from Sussex University and her poems have been published in many poetry journals.
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too? (Emily Dickinson)
With herring-gull grey
knitted in to her jumper,
she spent her last years
living by the sea.
She could be seen standing
on the shoreline staring out,
even though there was nothing there,
there could be.
Hardly anyone noticed,
for she liked to be up at first light
fuelled by the crying gulls,
which never made her think of death
but only about being alive.
Poem published in ARTEMISpoetry, May 2016
Patricia Helen Wooldridge on poetry p f
e-mail Patricia Helen Wooldridge
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Simone began writing poems in late 2004. She’s since been recorded, broadcast, published, & won several prizes. Simone also represented Wales in Radio 4’s performance poetry competition, 2009. She co-runs Ceridwen the Ceridwen Centre
If I tried to give you up, it would be like
buying a train ticket from Aberystwyth
to Hastings, on a Sunday or a Bank Holiday —
a reduced service, works on the line…
essential maintenance;
and I’d expected five changes, steeled myself for
Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Reading, Gatwick
and Brighton,
had psyched myself to tick them off, one by one,
but found cancellations,
my progress halted, my plans thwarted,
my route re-arranged on a chalked easel
with quirky spellings…inaudible apologies…
and instead of three-down-two-to-go,
time for a coffee, a quick last sidinged pass
at crossword or sudoku,
I’d find I was just travelling — locomoting slowly —
in a large reticulated arc
back
to you.
Poem published: 1st Prize winner, Carillon magazine competition 2007, and published in Carillon issue 17, Mar/Apr 2007, ISSN 1474-7340.
Publications:
Cardiff Bay Lunch, Lapwing Publications (Belfast), 2010 – ISBN 978-1-907276-44-6 £8;
Not exactly getting anywhere but… – Ceridwen Press, April 2008, ISBN 978-1849231077 £3.50;
Juice of the Lemon, youwriteon.com, December 2008, ISBN 978-1849231077, £4.99
Simone Mansell Broome, Troed-y-Rhiw, Drefelin, Llandysul, Carmarthenshire, SA44 5XD
Simone Mansell Broome website
e-mail Simone Mansell Broome
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
Victoria Gatehouse is a poet and researcher. Her poems have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies and have featured on BBC Radio. Competition wins include Iklley, Otley, PENfro and the Indigo International Wild Nature Poetry Award. Victoria’s second pamphlet, The Mechanics of Love, published by smith|doorstop, was selected as a Laureate’s Choice in 2019.
The doctor says it’s nothing serious, something
she’ll just have to live with, a malfunction
of the nerves perhaps, not uncommon in women of her age
and she leaves with a script for a mild antidepressant,
a leaflet counselling moderation in alcohol, tobacco
and spicy foods and when she returns, he says it again
after taking a look at lips, teeth and tongue –
nothing to see and he says it with a smile when she can feel
the bees humming in her blood, the tips of their wings
chafing artery walls and she knows without being told
they’re house bees, the ones who feed, clean
and ventilate the hive, pack nectar into the comb
without really tasting it, the ones who wait for mid-life
to take their first orientation flights and she can really
feel the smart of them, the bees in her blood, unfurling
their proboscises to touch the corolla of her heart.
So many years spent licking out hives, all the burn of it
here on her tongue and they’re starting to forage now,
to suck sweetness into their honey stomachs, and the doctor
he’ll keep telling her it’s nothing when they’re rising
like stings, the words she’s kept in.
Poem published in Mslexia
Publications:
The Mechanics of Love, 2019, smith|doorstop
Light After Light, 2018, Valley Press
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet