Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Noakes for International Women’s Day
Jess Phillips reads the names, again
Each year in March, on the eighth day,
the one we’re allowed to call ours,
slowly, Jess reads our names,
not the bitch, slut, whore we died hearing,
but the gifts from our parents.
Remember us now in this careful litany,
ordered by the dates of our deaths,
not bitch, slut, whore from the mouths of men,
but us as named daughters,
named women of these isles.
Who is here to listen to ‘unnamed woman,’
or the woman added to the roll
at the start of this very day?
Just over a dozen of you shift, embarrassed
on green benches. And you other representatives,
can you not spare six minutes to hear our names?
Kate Noakes‘ most recent collection is Goldhawk Road (Two Rivers Press, 2023). A pamphlet, Chalking the Pavement, was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024. Her website is www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com. Kate lives and writes in Bristol.
Adam Horovitz
Into the Orkney Sky That spring, I learned how to fly. Willed my small arms hollow, thrust them into a long coat and made wings as the wind rose from plaintive selkie cry to fury’s register. I spread myself gull-like into the sea’s salt-feathered...
Kate Noakes
Grandmother during the war Turn to the afternoon sun, boys, turn to the cobalt sky, but shield your faces from the blast and smoke. Your grandmother is planting sunflowers early this year; three in each pot for luck. The glass in her greenhouse is...
Andrew McDonnell
Andrew McDonnell writes poetry and short fiction. His debut collection The Somnambulist Cookbook (Salt) was published in 2019. He lives in Norwich but works in Peterborough to ensure a long commute in which he can write things that are not emails. ...
Caspar Wort
Point Nemo And once more you descend like captain Nemo to the depths of the planet’s tears. Torch in hand, you search the silty sea floor for any signs of life in the bleach-white corals. You search to the solo choir of a sperm whale echoing...
Peter Bickerton
You should never be disappointed by weather You should never be disappointed by weather, just accept it for what it is, it won’t lie to you or let you down. It’ll tell you, just by looking at it: you need a brolly, or a sun hat. Pack the factor...
Robert Beveridge
Grease 2 the sidewalks are shoveled but there you are in the middle of the road as always you trudge through a river of maple syrup and the delivery truck comes ever closer Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and...
Roy McFarlane
Lampedusa I know this is risky and that I will probably lose the boat, but the shipwrecked on board are exhausted, I will bring them to safety. Video released by Sea-Watch, Guardian For the 43 souls waiting in the port; for lampas the torch,...
Iain Britton
circumference words do not suit do not fit the towns i travel to i’ve this habit of locating new neighbours with different physiognomies * always there are uniforms on the march intractable comic heroes in animal disguises i say very little i...
Charlotte Ansell
Alone at the New Road Hotel He is right to suspect me of infidelity, there will be other rooms, there have been rooms before. At the old textile factory turned hip hotel, in Whitechapel’s tatty bravado, as the brutal heat is sucked from the day...