We look to the peripheral for the shortlist for our December 2025 Pick of the Month and find work that is infused with, inspired by or a rage against myths, parables, chants and the idols of our childhood reading. Underneath all is a strong sense of a nature that is increasingly remote and in danger, and a world less and less sustainable.
Which will you chose? What poem reaches the very core of your being?
- Toby Cotton,‘Napsack’ which draws and interweaves emotional, narrative and scientific topographies, exploring different ways of knowing nature and culture.
- Michelle Diaz, ‘Love Song for Snow’ which ties that crisis with personal and cultural relationships with place that we are losing.
- John Greening, ‘Parable’ wearily celebrates Christmas as the gingerbread house/planet is threatened with extinction through rising sea-levels and flood
- Paula R. Hilton, ‘Eating Apple Pie with Louisa May Alcott’– why you should never meet your heroes
- Usha Kishore,’Chant’– questions a world where only men are allowed to pray to the Goddess.
- Fiona Larkin, ‘The Approach of the Cailleach’- a timeless take on mythology, wherein the poem embodies a mythological creature, exposing us to new sensory landscapes and atmospheres
All six of the shortlist have been chosen by Helen, Kate and Sairah or received the most attention on social media. They can be found below. (Please scroll down.)
Please VOTE HERE. Voting will close at 6pm on Wednesday 14 January.
Our ‘prize’ is £25 towards the charity of your choice or an emailed National Book Token giftcard*.
*Book tokens can only be used within the UK. Sadly, we are unable to find suitable cost-effective alternatives outside the UK.
THE DECEMBER 2025 PICK OF THE MONTH SHORTLIST
Napsack
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
A dragonfly perches
atop a little asphalt hill
but zips off when the hill twitches
and sniffs the air.
“Perhaps, it is thataway?” suggests Pooh Bear.
A sand-swimming golden mole,
Cryptochloris wintoni,
has resurfaced after 86 years
hiding in the ‘thought extinct’ subsection
of the desertified dunes.
Exasperated Owl sighs. “How about
this one,” he posits to Befuddled Pooh,
“What do you get if you move
the ‘h’ from the end
to the beginning of earth?”
Wondrous thoughts wander through tunnels.
An unmarked bend masks a dead-end
hung with a huge landscape.
High up, honeypot ants dangle
their distensions and echo a riddle around.
“Huh?” says Pooh.
“Precisely – ‘h’” confirms Owl.
The bear with his seemingly head of air
scratches it ponderingly
and glances about for a clue.
Wild thoughts thunder through wheat stubble.
A daring russet dog is bounding loudly –
a big bad wolf outstripping its pack, clacking at –
hearing a whistle it turns on its heels
and transforms back into the teddy bear.
“A biscuit?” enquires Pooh,
peering down into the straw-strewn sod.
“Always thinking with your tummy,”
scolds Rabbit. Owl warbles
“A worthy guess, but now think laterally!”
The thought trees slough off their skins.
Tiggery leaves zigzag zoomily
across a hundred acres of wood,
crocheting a quilt over the broad bed of earth
and tucking themselves in.
Pooh rootles through the gold litter
and comes up clutching a
part-wheat-part-meat heart-shaped treat.
“Pooh’s got the answer!” hoots Owl.
“I do?” queries Pooh.
A raincloud scuds up and flurries down,
splashing the meandering moon.
A donkey drags a brash brush,
sweeping up the setting sun.
The dog is licking my face awake.
Owl concludes, “When you move
the ‘h’ from the end to the beginning
of earth, you get heart.”
Solemnly nodding, Pooh adds
“And rounded is quite grounded.”
Toby Cotton is a poet currently pursuing an MA in creative writing at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. His work appears in Pearl Press, Wildfire Words and Boundby and he helps to edit GossamerWight Literary Magazine.
*
Love Song for Snow
I carried you in my heart to Central Park,
you burnt my face as I walked past Wonderland Alice.
She wore you like a hat and coat.
I’ve been missing you again.
Truth be told—I can’t live without you.
Because of childhood.
Because of things I buried in you.
I can’t live without you.
I’m trapped knee-high in childhood snow.
I love the way you slow everything down to noticing.
As a child, I became a sort of God—sculpting people,
crowning you with hats, muffling you with scarves.
I handled your rawness without gloves.
And falling face down into you as snow angel
always felt like a good thing.
You know the coldest parts of me,
and the things that melt me too.
They should erect a museum dedicated to you.
Just in case we ever lose you.
Michelle Diaz has been published in numerous journals, both online and in print. Her debut pamphlet The Dancing Boy was published in 2019 by Against the Grain Press. Her new pamphlet Raising Ghosts is due out in 2026.
*
Parable
For thirty years, O Lord, we have lived
in a house without foundations.
And now it is
Christmas again, we drape lights
from the living apple tree to the dead one,
haul o come o come from the piano,
set the innumerable specials, the host
of appearances, to record.
Here comes the flood.
Here comes the storm.
A gingerbread house
hurled on the kitchen floor, a torrent
of rage, frustration, the meter showing
rising levels, below the still
unbroken membrane.
And neither sand
nor rock, but clay.
Thus, today
we swaddle the sausage meat in pastry
and lay gifts at the font of the Nordmann,
and gaze at the light from our widowed neighbour.
John Greening: A Bridport and Cholmondeley winner with over twenty collections, including The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022, he’s edited Arnold, Grigson, Blunden, Crichton Smith and Fanthorpe, plus several anthologies. Latest books areA High Calling (Renard) and Rilke’s New Poems.
*
Eating Apple Pie with Louisa May Alcott
When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.
Genie, exceeding expectations, delivers it
hot. As steam rises from slits in its cinnamon
dusted crust, I cut two slices. One for me.
One for Louisa, my hero. My second wish.
Yes, I tell her. Those are golden delicious
apples. We used to pick them from the orchard
behind our house. The whole forest’s a subdivision
now, but Genie tells me nothing’s impossible
when he’s around. Louisa eats while I ramble.
Would you sign my copy of Little Women?
She marvels at the ballpoint pen I hand her.
I always wanted to be Jo, you know? A writer,
nonconformist— Louisa, clicking the Bic
in her hand, laughs, dismisses: As you wasted
wishes on trivialities—dessert and necromancy,
I’d say you are more of an Amy. I gasp as if
she’s slapped me. Use my last wish to tell
Genie: Take Louisa May Alcott away.
Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has appeared in The Sunlight Press, ONE ART, Feminine Collective, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Website: https://paularhilton.com/
*
Chant
after Ammar Aziz
At dawn and dusk, my father
becomes a chant, that flies above
the courtyard of the old house
by the river, where only the men
recite Sanskrit prayers by lamplight,
as though in a divine trance,
to Gayatri, consort of the twilight sun.
Do they glimpse the goddess
in flecks of light that fall
into the lap of darkness?
Do they mimic the timbre
of the stars that ride on
the back of the earth woman?
What prayers are these, hymns
to a goddess incarnate in a mantra,
hymns that shut out real women?
Note: The Gayatri mantra is a Hindu hymn chanted during twilight hours to the goddess, who personifies the mantra.
Indian born Usha Kishore is a British poet and translator, resident on the Isle of Man. Usha is widely published and has authored three collections of poetry (the latest being Immigrant, Eyewear 2018). She recently completed her PhD in Postcolonial Poetry with Edinburgh Napier University. www.ushakishore.co.uk
*
The Approach of the Cailleach
the hazel’s green heart
fades at my touch
slips to a spotted ochre
mistress of abscission
I exhale pure frost
force the shedding
of the leaf
even the sun in its tracks
stops short —
the dark night lengthens
and the wick of my veins
burns blue
snow startles
from my fingertips
and the word itself
embraces no —
two arms encircle
emptiness
in this white space
I work to preserve
to keep the dead held
in a coat of ice
to overwinter the hedgehog
and still the bats in the eaves
to curb the bud and the bulb
yes, you fear my coming
but to you I bring clarity
what now
but yourselves unadorned
straining towards light
Note: The Cailleach is the goddess/hag of winter in Celtic mythology
Fiona Larkin was the winner of the National Poetry Competition 2024. Her debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020). @fionalarkin.bsky.social Website: fionalarkinpoetry.wordpress.com