Today’s choice
Previous poems
Antony Dunn
Plainsong
Have you heard the one about
how I’m hoping to bow out –
playing guitar for the Cure
on a wide stage – the riff pure
as wind-bells in the twilight,
the crowd stretching beyond sight
into the dark and the rain –
smiling, not ageing, not in pain,
lost in the longing song, doubt
done with, drowning myself out?
Antony Dunn has published four collections of poems most recently, Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets) and Take This One to Bed (Valley Press). Winner of the Newdigate Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, he edited and introduced Ex Libris, a posthumous collection of poems by David Hughes (Valley Press). Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and has taught many times for Arvon. He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, Israel and China. He has been Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival, the University of York and the People Powered Press. Until 2018 he was Artistic Director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival. Antony lives in Leeds. Website: antonydunn.org
Jean Atkin
We scoured the parish tip most weeks, when we were kids.
We clambered it in wellies. Ferals, we scavenged
in the debris of the adults’ lives.
Sally Festing
Life lines still arc round the base of each thumb
though the bulk of hand’s muscle mass
Joe Crocker
There was always, of course, the cold
– its freezing pretty fingerprints on our side of the pane.
Julie Sheridan
They married in a chapel of black steel
bars, tethered up their feathers to serve as
stained glass. . .
Maxine Sibihwana
here, water does not run. instead it
sits obediently in old plastic containers
Lesley Curwen
Her feet snagged in a cleverly-placed net
my sister waits for him to untangle her,
to hold her head still between thick fingers . . .
From the Archives: In Memory of Jean Cardy
Denizens Mice live in the London Tube. A train leaves and small pieces of sooty black detach themselves from the sooty black walls and forage for crumbs in the rubbish under the rails that are death to man. You can’t see their feet move. They...
Tina Cole
Mr. Pig modelling his best Sunday suit of farmyard smells,
flees from the cook’s cleaver to find himself a sow.
Ellora Sutton
My heart is breaking, so I’m setting up my new Wonder Oven.
The waft of toxicity as I run it on empty for ten minutes
is a welcome distraction.