Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gemma Blakeley
My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown
and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.
Why do we crave these straight lines and
clean edges? The hedge itself
is a border, a defining.
A this is mine.
And this is yours.
A there and here.
An us and them.
Why not let it keep a little wildness?
Not for me this lopping and shaping,
this trimming and taming,
ruling and restricting-
Hear this- there are things
which cannot be governed, like
certain tendrilous tendencies
of a hedgerow heart
and those sacred things which live inside…
Father, I will not reach for the blade.
There is no such thing as too alive.
Gemma Blakeley is a teacher, mother, nature-lover and aspiring writer. She will have her first poetry published in Black Bough Poetry‘s Winter 2026 Anthology later this year. She lives in Shropshire with her husband, two children and the cat.
Helen Smith
lunchtime, in the maths department
arranging pencils by colour
two friends, carefully sorting
into clear plastic tubs
Carolyn Oulton
Unexpected as burned stone,
what am I supposed
to do with this memory?
José Buera
Aircon crickets through the night
outside my parents’ bedroom
since brother and I are not allowed AC
given the dangers of cold air to children.
Abraham Aondoana
We did not inherit land,
only remnants of fields they burned—
black fields scorched before we understood
Lorna Rose Gill
Maybe I remember getting brunch;
or the time the dog ate my croissant;
Adam Strickson
He couldn’t play rugby – the oval slithered away
whenever he touched it and he fell in the mud
or more often was pushed with some viciousness.
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe
Tadhg Carey
When our plaything ricochets
falling
who knows where
everything hinging
on the line
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
I hear the roar of
the ocean. I hear
a series of shrieks
and long screams.