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.
Rizwan Akhtar
Aposiopesis I see you waving from behind the fence I am trying it hurts clouds wait and move over fields swallows distracted by the burr of an aero plane resting elbows the wrinkled hands of the mower blather into action the company though assorted shows care...
Melanie Branton
White Goods As I came down the stairs, the kitchen came upon me, buzzed through my teeth and elbows. The twin tub having a seizure, a St Vitus’ thrumming twist and shout. The shepherd’s crook of the hose clipped to the side of the sink snake-thrashed in...
Tom Kelly
Singing With Elvis The Rediffusion is playing Elvis. I am sitting in our dining-room, not sure if we ever called it that. There is a yearning in the young Elvis hitting me like a wet clout. We bond, he is a long-lost brother, singing, ‘Are You...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Helen Boden, Sarah L Dixon and Penny Ayers
Empties First of Jan, affluent suburb. Stockbridge, but it could be anywhere across the island, in Ely, Richmond, Beauly. In place of regretting they put their empties out, arranged by colour, size, acoustic property. Scores of bottles, neatened...
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Gareth Writer-Davies, Josie Moon, Sue Finch and Sam Garvan
Twelfth Night the weather through the draped window dreich the fire spits and greetings cards make a merry flame as I the audient listen to the sermon of the grate that a living room is empty unless you let in a little light Gareth...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, we bring you Antony Owen, Mandy Macdonald and Ramona Herdman
Christmas in the wasteland For Prof R Klein Bird foot snow arrows east Sun is oblong yolk spilt over elms I see Hiroshima setting and all is silent now. I see you in snow drift apparitions Bride not to be scattered to five winds I feel the chilblain frost and think of...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas, we bring you Josephine Corcoran, Nicholas McGaughey and Jack Houston
Parenting Book I wrote it down when they woke me at 3am to tell me they didn’t like ham anymore, only jam and cheese. How on the toilet is the best place to sing. I kept a notebook for years: the sore throat bad as three arrows sticking...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas, we bring you Andrea Holland, Sue Burge and Angela Topping
Domain The fork garden is planted by hallmark, by taxonomic value from the tines down. Frost plates the handle, silver lip at the edge of soil, dug out in winter, dug out of winter, bringing up root and louse. If dirt bound and iced in the fork...
On the Seventh Day of Christmas, we bring you ML Eyres, Anna Blasiak and Finola Scott
Christmas Ritual, 1. After lunch she whispers to the carved mahogany table legs feels around for the mouse cut into the back of the armchair where her grandmother reads paperback mysteries. She names that mouse Moses. Then she slides away from the...