Today’s choice
Previous poems
James McDermott
Samsara
if samsara’s concrete please don’t come back
as black jackal for I live in Norwich
nor spineless worm as I don’t have a lawn
ditto poppy fields with my hay fever
nor breeze I don’t open those windows now
so I might not hear you nor beige house moth
nibbling my pink knitwear nor hot new squeeze
father for ease please just come back as you
I shake my head aren’t I then fixed to lose
you all over again and I don’t want
you to be on a loop as I won’t be
fireproof and I don’t want you to be
kicking to sink your son praying Jim won’t
rise as poppies jackal that worm this wind
James McDermott’s collections published by Nine Arches Press include ‘Father Myself’ and ‘Wild Life’. James’s poems have been published in Poetry Wales, Magma, The North, Butcher’s Dog and Interpreter’s House.
Olivia Tuck
I Think My Poem About You is Unfinished, says Sal. How so? I ask her, and she says, there are just things I want to add. Like how you suck your thumb, how you pace the room, and how you smudge your eyeliner when you cry, and your dresses, I’ve got...
For National Poetry Day – ‘Refuge’ : Polina Cosgrave, Chris Hardy, Di Slaney
Ulysses Loses Identity When a local mistakes your oar For a fan that winnows the grain You won’t have to search anymore, May your spirit abandon pain. Yes, the locals will take your oar For an artless winnowing fan! But until you have reached that...
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Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, occasional musician, and accidental academic, who has published ten chapbooks and collections, and loads more interesting stuff with other people. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University....
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Refugee I know the earth belongs to you in the same way the moon does. You’re the unspoken clause, the question nobody wants: how bad does it have to be to begin an inventory of what you can take: the clothes you stand up and lie down in, the...
For National Poetry Day – ‘Refuge’ : Aoife McClellan, Helen Pletts, Bel Wallace
Ashes They wake in the small hours in the country house, long miles from Hudiksvall. Moonlit snow lies thick. Dark pines shelter the still garden, their shadows lie elongated, spear-head sharp, on crystal whiteness. Dawn comes late. Always dark...
For National Poetry Day – ‘Refuge’ : Vida Adamczewski, Helen Grant, AV Bridgwood
CW: Rape Olives Healing is exchanging rape anecdotes, sitting on a bench outside a pub, eating fat green olives and drinking Guinness. How do you begin? She says, new fringe tickling her eyelids, When the body has its own indelible memory? There’s...
For National Poetry Day – ‘Refuge’ : Marie-Louise Eyres, Cathy Symes, Joseph Nutman
In My Sister’s Arms When she boarded the ship off the coast of Libya, waters were calm and skies flat blue. She stayed afloat with refugees for days, sharing rice and beans, stories of their left-behinds, never to be seen again abodes. And as they...
For National Poetry Day – ‘Refuge’ : Lorraine Caputo, Fiona L, Bennett, Hélène Demetriades
A Thousand Miles —to Ibtisam Barakat I dedicate this to you, my Palestinian friend, walking a thousand miles for all the other refugees who had to walk from war, from poverty from genocide, from repression carrying what they could in a shoe box or...
Michael Conley
Exposure Therapy For your fear of spiders? Behold, I have sourced this perspex box and this adult Goliath Birdeater, a type of tarantula which, interestingly, and contrary to its name, rarely eats birds at all. So I think you know what’s coming. I...