Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kerry Darbishire
For the love of a fellside
after The Lost Garden of Loughrigg
– Penn Allen
Imagine a spring day drawing out possibilities
the newness of life, sisters in long skirts digging
tangled ground, breaking bones and loam wild
with bracken and rock on this south facing slope.
Then, the building of an enclosure to protect plants
from deer and sheep. Long ago this affair
before my mother walked me up a sweeping track
to be wrapped in scented blooms nurtured from seedlings –
cuttings – discoveries posted from wildest China:
Primula Purdomii for stars, Gentian for sky
Viburnum for fragrance – treasures arriving each week
in packages – perennials for sun, for shade to be planted
in harmony. A garden with a view to the Langdale Pikes
and air once breathed never left your lungs
and the cool damp mist rising from the River Brathay
in mornings reluctant to let go the night. All this
what it was to be here, the guardians waking each day
to seven acres of crag knowing your hands and heart
belong to this patch of earth.
Kerry Darbishire lives remotely in Cumbria, a landscape that inspires most of her poems. She has collections and pamphlets published and many poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines. Her latest pamphlet, River Talk is with Hedgehog Press.
Lucy Ashe
Dressed For hundreds of years I’ve been trying to get out That door. The front door. The one onto the High Street. At the end of the Dark Ages I make my first attempt. But Gilded net cauls, caging my ears, Catch on the door frame. I try again,...
Emily Bell
A night at St Thomas’ Church, Friarmere At first I’m afraid of the church’s dark eyes, thick leaded lines drawn chaotically in illegible strokes against dull brightness, darkness visible within and without. I can’t enter here— In daylight it’s no...
Anjana Basu
Sunday Thunder Something is angry behind the blue sunlit sky a growl crows fluttering in confusion and the wind tugging at my heels The scowl overhead Night growl from the blackness beyond something is angry Something behind the sky is angry...
Bert Molsom
Beside the Clun 10th March No bright sun this morning to paint the tops of the valley houses. The edges of the view blurred by the stagnant mist. Dawn is still recognised by birds, pheasants defining their territory, robin, blackbird, thrush...
Jenny Hockey
Holiday Cottage Remember I sat on the grass and sobbed, dust coating the shack’s three rooms, its festering rugs? Dishes not done. A valley view? All we could see was the wood and a lav in a hut fifty yards off. Water fetched from a stream and...
Saba Khaliq
Hanging with a Baby Serpent I’d like to believe my first dream was mystic I’d like to believe I was born good though naked Like the slimy baby serpent Slithering and hissing just to know himself Cracking and coiling in monsoon muds No pretence for...
Janet Harper
Snake I took a photo of a small snake on a path. Printed it in black and white to know its hexagons to understand its head, its tail. To conjure the moment when maybe I could hear it breathe, could have followed it into the smooth undertow of the...
Antony Owen reviews ‘I, Ursula’ by Ruth Stacey
Ernest Hemingway once said “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”. This quote comes to mind when reading I Ursula which comes across like it was written with a fluid and clear idea of what Ruth...
Carl Alexandersson
Ice aging Look sometimes I just want to lick ice cubes and eat jam straight from the jar and not even bother if the toast is too burnt we all deserve to be seen for what we could have been but this is not about us— Look I’m just saying wouldn’t it...