Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gareth Writer-Davies
In the Dales
after John Ashbery
it’s a special kind of empty
the footed earth, saluting the sky
so much to see
I took a photograph of you
posed in the window seat
punchy red slippers
blurring rock and field
the same window in five years?
jenny wren says yes, the crows caw no
what do they know
as days go by
certain details are already hazy
and new succeeds new
as we spread over the vast stone barns
of Swale and Wensley
and there we are, older certainly
walking to the monument
where there is no monument
the upper left corner of the sky
a history of what might have been
Gareth Writer-Davies: Hawthornden Fellow (2019). Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014 and 2017) and the Erbacce Prize (2014). Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition (2015) and Prole Laureate for 2017. Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) and Highly Commended in 2011. His pamphlet Bodies was published in 2015 followed by Cry Baby in 2017, The Lover’s Pinch in 2018, The End in 2019 and Wysg in 2022.
Ava Patel
Our Bedroom There in the bed, like dirt or blood, someone else lay, not sure who. They smelt like apricot and drove us wild. We all twisted in the duvet and rolled up tight like a burrito. Sweating and swearing, knotted up all angry-like, dirty white...
Sue Burge
Alternates after Pessoa Do you remember that film where there are multiple suns, or was it moons, or both; and that other film where the guy can’t escape this one day, waking up to the same song, same radio news, I would have been like ‘oh,...
Tess Jolly
Proofreading the Motorbike Manual I’m struggling to understand the meaning of float pivot pin, centrifugal filter, whether values or valves fits the context, when there’s the familiar sound of your impromptu knock and running to open the door...
Matt Nicholson
Light at the edge of the world It takes both of us to pull the door open before I follow her up to the light room, climbing what appears to be a thousand spiral steps. At the top, leaning on a bent rail worn by old hands, I am breathing hard, like...
George Cassidy Payne
The Sturgeon The mechanics of suffering is not so daunting to understand it hurts for a while- gums and bellies pierced by an unseen passion... and then it is done the savory-sweet, cherry cough syrup scent of death dries and disappears, leaving...
Ellie Jenkins
The Ceiling is Painted Vivid White Many things crave our attention: the plates maturing in the sink after last night’s spag bol; the poinsettia dying on the windowsill; the news constantly playing on phone screens or the TV; that photo that needs...
Ginny Saunders
The Biologist, the Poet and the Silverfish On my first ever date, he romances me not with poems but with talk of nocturnal dry-land fish, how they glide and skitter like mercurial swimmers and grace the damp of his bedsit grime. Like them, he has...
Jackson
Many hands The day before the fridge broke down I wished it would shut up As I listened, trying to breathe, the noise separated I could hear the electrons shocking about in the wires the liquefied gas gurgling thinly in the pipes a ringing like a...
Gareth Culshaw
The Lost Tongue Some said he had no tongue. The words he spoke came through his body. I watched him nod, put up a thumb, flick his head, shake a hand, shrug, and walk fast as if his feet were on fire. Not many people knew him or maybe they didn’t...