Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Tabula Rasa
Rectangular, with corners cut off like an octagon, muddy brown shows through the cream exterior where the edges are chipped. Just the right height for a young child learning to stand. Coloured beakers stacked up ready to be knocked down. A place for card games played at speed, endless cups of tea. Smooth and squat, immovable, it has borne the weight of decades, silent witness to family life, a slab too heavy to lift up.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad’s pamphlets are: Once There Was Colour, (Palewell Press, 2024), Sleeping Under Clouds (Clayhanger Press, 2023), A City Waking Up (Dempsey and Windle, 2020). Widely published, Sue does readings, writes poetry reviews and runs workshops suewallaceshaddad.wordpress.com
Paul Murgatroyd
I am a clown performing slapstick at a funeral,
Cassandra whispering to Narcissus,
an ant on the lawn at a posh garden party
Hayden Hyams
The rain is expected to stop in 8 minutes and start again in 29 minutes
Bryan Marshall
Look at the faint rain twisting
itself into the ground,
making dry things resign themselves
to different states of damp.
Poetry from UEA MA Scholars 2023/2024: Badriya Abdullah and Dana Collins
Oranges with Bibi
Don’t hold the knife like that!
the first love lesson
from my grandmother…
– Badriya Abdullah
*
pulp
just once I want
you sprayed over pavement
I split my knuckles swinging…
– Dana Collins
Dawn Sands
Nothing I can tell you to answer your question —
all I can muster is that
it was that production of King Lear, Edgar emerging
Christian Donovan
O celebrated bard, you should know
espresso mixed with drags of Gauloise
won’t steady your head.
Shamik Banerjee
Much like a burnt-out farmer flumping down
upon his ache-allaying, tender bed
Rose Lennard
Each year we climbed to that place high above the ruins.
Melanie Tibbs
People came to find out what ‘Garage Sale’ meant
in a small village landlocked county early burning comet tail
of Thatcher’s Britain.