Today’s choice
Previous poems
Annette Iles
You Again
across the street
I am washed off my feet
my heart
splashes up into pieces
as if someone has thrown a stone
into the pool of me
all these years
I thought myself dry ground
but I am a stream a loch a river
brim full
sequinned with light
you smile
I ripple and shimmer
Born in New Zealand, Annette Iles is a Midlands-based poet. Her first pamphlet On New Street I See a Mermaid was recently shortlisted for the 2026 International Rubery Book Award.
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence
Tom Nutting
They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.
Emily A. Taylor
I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,
Eryn McDonald
It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green