Today’s choice
Previous poems
Audrey Cotterell
A November anniversary
In a corner chapel of the abbey
I lit a small candle, and sent the flame
as a message only half composed
to somewhere I hardly believed in.
Room is restricted on the ferry:
six cars, a few pedestrians and dogs,
all of us looking across the water
at the estuary’s other bank coming closer.
Even if the river’s unwrinkled, the crossing smooth
and it doesn’t take too much waiting
to get to the opposite side
lighting a candle is never straightforward.
Audrey Cotterell lives in Sussex. Her work was long listed for the Winchester Poetry Prize in 2024, and has been published in London Grip.
Angeliki Ampelogianni
on marble tiles bird like
I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl
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.