Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steven Taylor
SPORTS NEWS
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Stadium fire that killed
56 football watchers, contrasted
The quiet dignity of those relatives
With the behaviour of the relatives
Of the Hillsborough victims, who
Were forever blaming other people
Instead of accepting
It is the lot of the working class
To suffer in all divisions
They should be grateful
For whatever leisure
They are granted
By their masters, betters
Sir Oliver was a cricketer
Wicket keeper batsman
16 stumpings 60-something catches
After Charterhouse
He went to Cambridge, studied
Steven Taylor was born and raised in Hyde, near Manchester. He now lives in Kilburn, London. Steven’s poems have been widely published in journals including Acumen, Magma, Poetry Business Coal anthology, Stand, The North and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He can be found on Facebook @steventaylorpoetry
A W Earl
Doors
My parents’ house became a place of closed white doors,
where sound hung spare and echoes found no junk
or clutter to rest themselves upon.
Finola Scott
Winter dusk soughs in, dark
clouds threaten, tangle her wool.
Huw Gwynn-Jones
Black is the colour inside black light on
blackened brick and slats
Clare Morris
Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean,
So that she no longer spoke, just looked –
Her world reduced to a search for special offers . . .
Alison Jones
Mrs Norris had thought ascension
would be whirligig rides in bright violet rays,
as the training books all implied.
Sandra Noel
The tide unpleats from her godet,
zig-zags in running stitch
round the base of the côtil.
Matthew Caley
supposedly: if I am to render
‘a man’ then
this ‘man’ must I guess resemble me‹›
Jenny Robb
The nun in charge of the children is thin, her back straight as punishment.
Ken Evans
You try doing star-jumps, steps,
or squats, in knee-high wellies.