Guest Poems

We love to read your poetry and, even though we receive over 1,000 poems per month, we always take time to read every single one.

A few of the poems we especially enjoyed and which were selected for publication in our Journal are reprinted below.

For more information, please see our Submissions page.

Guest Poems

Christine McNeill

A Flash

I described the painted saints,
carved animal heads on pews
in a medieval church.
I’m going through hell, you said,

and questioned whether loss of hearing
was worse than losing sight. You knew a woman
blind and deaf who’d learned to speak:
with balloons in her mouth, she began to utter vowels.

I tried to distract by mentioning your passion
for foreign languages: the Dutch for house,
French for sky, German for apple.
Just then a bird flashed past the lake –

you raised your head: Don’t tell me!
Beyond your turmoil of thoughts
a slow-ascending spiral of recognition:

A kingfisher!

And it was as if
intuition and truth
had walked through the same door.
Your face shone with the thrill of it.

Season of Christmas cheer we adore thee,
We adore thee and greet thee
And men sleep outside in the streets.
We greet thee with carols and cards
And prepare lavish fare,
And men sleep outside in the open
With feet that are bare,
With feet that are crippled
And hands that wait there.
And we greet thee with candies and drink
And we shout and we laugh
And we laugh not to think
Of the Christ that we feel
In those hands that wait there,
In the eyes that grope blindly
For neighbourly care.
Season of Christmas cheer we adore thee
And feast all our neighbours ,
We feast all our friends and
Regale them with wine and good cheer
We regale them with beer and with parties
And all we can buy,
And men starve in countries and
Lie down to die.
Season of Christmas cheer we adore thee
And men sleep outside in the streets.

More Guest Poems

John Greening

On the Morning of Christmas Day it’s mildacross our ungrazed fieldwhose thorns and clay have yet to know a freeze.The clouds in the east proclaimhow every wise man’s dreamof frost fair, snow and angel, is old news.Nature, abandoned at the Pole,feels something cracking...

Duncan Forbes

Nativity Scene Besançon Book of Hours (15th Century) The saddled donkey seems to be eatingJoseph’s cake-like halo or at least testingwith mouth and nostrilswhether it might be edible. In his carpenter’s hands,bald and bearded Joseph is holding the babywrapped in...

Patrick Osada

The New Estate Uninterrupted, our view towards the dawn,beyond silhouetted horses near the hedge.Soon, across the lightening sky, first birds flew –in this pleasant way each breaking day was set. But builders bought the land, they lifted hedgerows,trampling wild...

J.S. Watts

Falling Like Feathers Hushed, each Christmas we wait with breath-held hopethat the Barn Owl, pale queen of the night dark skywill spread her strong broad wings to dropwhispering with a flutter and rustle of promisewhite tales of long ago, once upon a time...

Jeremy Robson

Raising the Spirit Always such an unsettling time of year,Christmas with its fake joviality departed, thoughseasonal lights still blink from nearby gardens andabandoned Christmas trees lie forlornly atthe roadside, drenched by the incessant rain.Meanwhile the new year...

Nicki Griffin

Aftermath We’d gone to Dublin in search of artand found William Orpendispatched to record the Great War, all those boys in muck and mire across French countrysidethe gallery full of pink, land and sky in pastel shades,not the colours you expect of brutal conflict....

Roberta Dewa

Edward Burra: Never Tell Anybody Anything In the endI gave up on people, my layered clowns,my boxers’ lips, my stroke-struck faces. InsteadI painted their standing gravestones, the long slicksof their tracks across the landscape. Sometimes,despite my best attempts,...

Martin Reed

Red Hares When I think of the haresome raggedy, angular graceraces through my mind. It comes unlooked forwhen chatting of nothing,rounding an August cornfield hedge, up and away across sharp stubble,square to the ground in an upright scurry,arcing its route to distant...

D.G. Herring

Thoughts on Crater 308 …io nol feci Dedalo…Dante's Inferno 29:116 It is freedom we sail to. Or this is our story. Who gets to flywhen the winds are not hers to control? Yet, there is nocoastline, nor even a sea. Only mind. And, when the wax melts, pesanteur. In the...

Frances Sackett

Amongst the Rubble from a photograph by Lee Miller All colour is bleached from the landscape.Only grey dust, ash falling, dereliction.The children sit in the rubble, face in hands,horrified that their homes have gone.The boy, eldest of the three,is creased with...

Ranald Barnicot

After a Concert II But music does not always unite.Armies clash on through the night,Ignorant, in aesthetic spite.Brahmsians, Wagnerians brawl,Trash composers, concert hall.Igor Stravinsky’s Spring RiteProvokes all Paris to riot!Mods and rockers rev and roast:‘There’s...

Kate Noakes

Is it Crazy to Wish them Happiness? Some friends don’t get angry in flaming emojisor start nonsensical fights with others, voice their disagreements in no uncertain termsor claim superior knowledge of diverse subjects. They don’t much like things. OK, they never like...

Edith Speers

Tennis Club Indoor Courts aquarium worldseen through thick glasssubterranean silence four-limbed fishstrange white fishin a green and white world the walls are light green on topdraped on the bottomwith dark green cloth dark green flooris subdivided and outlinedby...

John Killick

Anglezarke As Edward Thomas his Adlestropso I my Anglezarke,but with this difference:for him it was the nameon the station signand the tranced afternoon;for me it is the namethe rest clean goneconjures the feeling,but there must have beenwater, woods, fields, for...

Annie Kissack

Saint with Accoutrements after ‘Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table’ by Harold Gilman All spotless. Some objects we might deemespecially significant:the glistening tea pot, pristine cupslustrous milk bowl, the best surely.We inhale diverse aromas:odour of home-made...