Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anne Ryland
Self-Portrait as an Old Schoolhouse
Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder,
a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds –
fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope.
Sash windows, shoothered open, once shed ample
light through dreich lessons, but pupils who tried
to view their future needed legs as long as ladders.
All feelings, ceilings rather, are twice as high
with pitted beams, capable supports. A half-roof
peeled off. The moon looks down into a ruinously
untidy classroom. Wooden lids keep telling stories –
a cluster of desks carved with vocabulary sparkier
than in books on the plank, or library shelf.
Damp and foggy. My northern weather within.
Rodents and birds visit. And grey, nithering children –
rascals, angels, plodders, even ‘weaker brethren’.
Listening for whispers, the scart of pencils.
Sniffing. Soap and ink are variants of tenderness.
English was more painstaking than lace-making.
The Lord’s Prayer hung on; hymns flowed like a burn.
My big double doors, now painted duck-egg blue
just in case – of what? It is not quite known.
Alma mater. Those who came here never learnt that term.
I was no worse, no better, than a stone apron.
Anne Ryland’s third collection is Unruled Journal (Valley Press). Autumnologist was shortlisted for The Forward Best First Collection Prize. New work has appeared in Long Poem Magazine, Magma, Empty House (US) and Crannóg. She has also published articles and reviews. anneryland.co.uk
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...