Hello

      Watching the ‘Strictly’ Results Show on a Sunday night   Knowing what we know about the pain of the world, who wins and who loses might feel like a betrayal. Too many sequins, too much glitter, a vacuous distraction          and yet           ...

      Wind Come my love with me alone to inhabit those years again Sean Hewitt, Night Ballad Oh walk with me up the slippery lane when the frost has turned to ice. The wren in the hedge may catch our eye as if flits from twig to twig as it follows us....

      Finding the hill again Wear a coat, you’ll pass through light rain at the wood-edge under Helmeth. Sing loudly, so the snakes can hear you. There’ll be birdcall, leaf-mould, path-fall to the brook. You’ll splash the ford and settle to the slope....

      Nature Is Healing “If humans are the virus, pandemic is the cure.” I think capitalism is the virus. We humans are still here. - Naomi Klein It constructs membranes between its most powerful organs, filters pathogens hidden in boats. It despatches...

      When I read my poem about stretch marks you said it was a funny thing to write about. I felt a flare, low down, an orange hazed ember you’d have to blow into life. Because they’re not very nice to look at you said. The flame caught, scorched...

      Promised a Hedgehog, We Wait in Your Garden Our bodies hinge into smallness, my back pressed into the shelter. Street voices fade, radios are muted, we count house lights twinkle out one by one. On the edge of sleep it comes snuffling through leaf...

      Blown Away The Victorian spinning wheel at the top of the stairs was carved in South Wales around the time this house was built. Somewhere in the carpenter’s breath was a flicker of the blue I chose for the walls when I stripped them to go with...

      Abreast Wait, I'm talking. It's my turn. Be patient. It takes me a while. I have to work it out. I will keep it short. You see I've lived a while, learnt a few things, for example clichés are true but not always. Listen to your friends, to your...

        On My Evening Walk Down Walworth Rd For anyone considering going on T I’m ready for your future self to walk right up to me. I am certain that I will recognize you because I’ve been practicing! As night falls like a slow curtain onto...

      the feminine urge to murder a lover over breakfast because he talked over you at last night’s dinner party. swallowing remarks like dripping yolk, whilst he sips his tea brewed with love— and arsenic. the feminine urge to wash his whites with the red...

      Trearddur Bay Everything was slate. Outside, the rain made barnacles of water on the wooden slats and waves jumped like giddy children onto the stones. Jellyfish loomed, a cove of beached moons. You stood in your room for hours a rock pool waiting...

      Dad You reach the end of the garden path and open the gate. I wait at the door. You reach the vestibule with its mosaic tiled floor with a big hug for me. Daddy’s girl, always. Tea done, you fetch Glen’s lead and we climb the hill to the spread of...

      Smile Your smile Woke something – Up. If you knew, You would hate me: Being, this, or that – One thing, or another, I’m not, But love, Mirrored in your smile, I felt it then.     Sarah Nabarro lives in London with her husband and small...

      The Heart Intervenes, a Dream Poem We are four strangers learning to live together in a new suburb where streets are names from the past. “Good morning!” I precipitate crisis in the kitchen by eating biscuits when no one else thought to bring...

      LULLABY Night drops by In a coat of onyx and blue Lights up his silver pipe And asks how do you do Night perches on my bed Says  - kiss goodbye to sleep Blows smoke rings in the air Throws a dreambone at my feet Night wiggles his long fingers Taps...

      boudicca you’re a brewery down the road i drank a bottle of your finest on the train back from bury st edmunds the red queen (no one will call you ginger) i see you everywhere realised you were also the wetherspoons round the corner the one with...

      Confluence  Stour springs from greensand into lakes marbled with lily-pads hosts to hazes of dragonflies & pseudo-Roman reflections glides sixty-one miles seaward past the rare Black Poplar meanders through chalk      clay      heathland...

      Memories are squirming prehistoric creatures burrowing under my clothes, enlivened by tea in that mug that matches your eyes, Revolutionary Road shown on TV, the airline ticket from our Paris trip leading to le labyrinthe, feet blistered trying to...

  Helen Pletts translates work by Ma Yongbo 马永波    Wander around the Barren Mountain from Afternoon till Evening on the Sunny World Poetry Day Leaving the Dull Books Behind When you enter mountains, afternoons stretch and lengthen like days; mesmerise. You...