Today’s choice
Previous poems
Hannah Coyle
Watching my grandmother view ‘The Song of the Lark’ ‘89/‘26: a Snám Suad
Peach skin wrists,
Watch persists
Her through time
Suffusing.
Scythe in hand,
Walk the land-
Heart commands
Amusing.
Lark in song
Sings along,
Mind made of
Believing.
Setting sun,
Not rising one,
Times hands hung
Deceiving.
Watch face cracked,
Ghosts give fact
To the mind
Diminished.
Full moon’s light,
Worse the blight,
Still her plight
Unfinished:
In her dreams,
Bird song schemes;
She’s back in Chicago.
What is true
Her time’s through,
Too far to
Chicago.
Hannah Coyle is an Irish poet, poetic artist, and creative journalist, based in Wales whose work focuses on challenging institutions and oppressive structures. Her recent work has featured familial, cultural and political voices from the North of Ireland, from which she draws most of her inspiration. Coyle graduation from Cardiff University with a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing in 2025 and has since started her own creative journalism platform to elevate other creatives called The Heron Took Flight.
Day Three of ‘Wonder’ for NPD: Math Jones, Jean Atkin, Kate Noakes
We’ll find the beach, but first through
the flowering wood, there’s celandine,
little suns of spring, casting.
Day Two of ‘Wonder’ for NPD: Geraldine Stoneham, Guinevere Clark and Annette Skade
I stop reading
but learn the alphabet again,
live on boiled eggs, phonetics,
broccoli heads
Day One of ‘Wonder’ for NPD: Philippa Greasley, Cindy Botha and Niklas Pettersson
Halfway to the island, the engine falters
and every cup trembles in its ring.
Emma Dandy
I’ve been staring at the blank page of this notebook for an hour. I close my eyes and breathe in for four, hold for four and out for eight, then repeat three times.
Ken Cockburn
We slept as best we could on the night train.
Leaving the station we walked empty streets
aimlessly until turning a corner
there it was, silent and vast as the moon.
Tim Dwyer
On the pitch of the roof
a jackdaw holds a twig
longer than its wingspan—
do corvids feel pride?
Genna Gardini
go back, small cell, atom
slit by light. It takes up
space, an ocean, a planet, a
Fran Hayden
a friend messaged me:
“every time I see sunflowers,
I think of you”
Betty Doyle
Both cast out to sea, I wonder –
did your ashes ever meet?
It was under the same sun setting,
although years and miles apart.