Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jenny Robb
Jenny Robb has been writing poetry since retiring from a social work and NHS career in mental health and children’s services. She’s been published widely in magazines and anthologies. Her second collection is Hear the World Explode, Yaffle Press 2024. X: @jirobb Instagram: jenny_robb
Iris Anne Lewis
That Night Why did the swans hiss that night? He comes from the river, he comes from the lake Why did the wind howl that night? He heaves it down, he hauls it in Why did the moon glow red that night? He seeks her out, he hunts her down Why did...
Amy Rafferty
Here Come the Crows I drew a sudden dark line under it all. Emphatically, and with the fulsome flourish of a full stop dot. Knowing that this was not what I wanted: the rows of chimney pots, red-rouged and boring in the dreich, mossed and...
Angela Readman
The Survivalist’s Guide to Love The personals sounded survivalist, after. We were still searching, but we offered love like an island someone may wind up stranded on. I have fish fingers, but no bread…There are eggs in my fridge I’ve painted with...
Day Eight of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Becki Hawkes, Sue Finch, Oliver Comins
Mars is bright tonight These are my new cordless eyeballs: no gloopy strings attached untethered, loosed from my skull compact, lightly veined, two floating globes raring to take on the big globe – except instead they lose GPS won’t take...
Day Seven of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Nicholas McGaughey, Christopher M James, Sharon Phillips
The Vision came at night into where she dreamed, in through the nets it blew, to send her serene. Each weighty step had no burden now, the dark was all light about her in a glow. Just…there. She’d motion, showing us the place, where He came and...
Day Six of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Natalie Shaw, Mick Corrigan, Charles J. March III
We stayed up all night and it was mental Umeboshi made our heads go fizzy like we’d opened eyes and ears and mouths and fed in packs of pink space candy. Then it was light. I walked across the Backs with Chris who knew the way and fancied me. The...
Day Five of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Jack Grady, Lydia Kennaway, Antony Huen
Ode to My New Lens Fake you may be, but like the bonafide thing you replaced, you accommodate, put up with pressure, withstand contraction, flex and unflex, bend without breaking. You become, as my eyes converge to focus on the words of this page,...
Day Four of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, David Van-Cauter, Niamh Haran
Running on Sand I want to tell you / I’ve learned how to shorten my stride / a lengthy gait could never work on this shivery terrain / do you remember it was you / who first brought me here? / I make my own trail / stay in my own lane / I let the...
Day Three of ‘Vision’ for NPD: Kat Lyons, Gabriel Moreno, Will Pittam
A study in vertical perspective During the lockdown we flattened our gaze, drew the alter of our days medieval style. Icons front and centre. Importance indicated by size. Pets grew vast. Nurses loomed like cloudbanks, hands raised in benediction...