featured poets

Hospital Visit

The waiting room is full
of all sorts, pretending
to be awake.

The bad mother,
deaf ear cocked
to the incubator;

the bogey man,
painted eyeballs on his hands,
wedged upright in the corner.

Even the alchemist
has discovered a way
to shoe horses in his sleep.

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Helen Ivory was born in Luton in 1969 and lives in Norwich.  She has worked in shops, behind bars, on building sites and with several thousand free-range hens. She has studied painting and photography and has a Degree from Norwich School of Art.

In 1999 she won a major Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Her third Bloodaxe Books collection is The Breakfast Machine. She has taught creative writing for Continuing Education at UEA for ten years and has been Academic Director there for six. She is an Editor for the Poetry Archive, Editor of Ink Sweat and Tears and is currently working towards an exhibition of her visual art.  Find out more here: http://www.helenivory.co.uk/

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Penelope Shuttle

                                                           Photo: Jemimah Kuhfeld

 

 

UNSENT

I’m writing this letter
in a garden shut-fast to us back in the day,
hungry glances over the high wall
our only chance

of glimpsing the old poet’s
courtship zone…we longed to be ushered-in,
made welcome, but previous owners
guarded their privacy…

Nowadays the place does B and B.
At last I’ve crossed the threshold
on a July afternoon
when grumpy cool wet summer

throws off its doldrums, shells out
sunshine unlimited, on tap…
…so I can tell you all about
this long-hidden garden,

bird-wild, bird-quiet.
There’s a green ha-ha,
we didn’t suspect that,
a monkey-puzzle tree the poet liked

and the pine he called ‘scorpion-tail’,
a fruit cage big as a row of cottages,
and a run of hens so smartly turned out and buffed
each one must have her own personal groomer,

apple trees, of course, and lime trees,
and twist paths,
one of them brings me to the look-out platform -
beyond fields and Valency valley, the sea’s soft blue tread…

That’s all I have to tell you
in this unsendable letter, written
while a busy-bee recording angel,
in a brighter higher garden,

writes our story,
weighing every word,
forgiving us our trespasses
and leading us from (or into) temptation…

And perhaps, to carry a theme
beyond its natural span,
you’re already reading both my letter,
and, over a feathered shoulder,
the angel’s edict and amen…

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Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970. She is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove, (1932-2003). A biography of Redgrove, A LUCID DREAMER, authored by Neil Roberts, appears from Cape in January 2012, alongside Peter’s COLLECTED POEMS.

Her most recent collection SANDGRAIN AND HOURGLASS, appeared from Bloodaxe Books in October 2010, and was a Recommendation of The Poetry Book Society, and a poetry book of the year in The Financial Times.

A NEW AND SELECTED POEMS is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books in Spring 2013, and UNSENT is taken from that volume.

In 2007 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry.

Shuttle’s 2006 collection, REDGROVE’S WIFE (Bloodaxe Books) was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Single Collection, and for the T S Eliot Award.

She is a Poetry Tutor for The Arvon Foundation, Almaserra Vella in Spain, Le Moulin in France, The Poetry School, Second Light Network and Ty Newydd, etc.

She has been a judge for many major poetry competitions.

She is currently taking a ‘gap year’ from her tutoring work, but will continue to give readings.

Dan Wyke

Spring Evening

The first spring evening
when it’s light enough
to cook with the light on,
and the backdoor open,

the scent of hyacinths
and cold grass meeting
the smokiness of paprika
as some ardent souls

work away at Vivaldi’s
Adagio for Strings
or something surprising
like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue,

and the cat in the garden
makes its move on
an unsuspecting pigeon
and crows wait for carrion.

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Dan Wyke was born in 1973 and lives in West Sussex. He has an MA in twentieth-century poetry from the University of Sussex and works as a counsellor for Breakeven and in private practice.

He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1999. His poems have appeared in a number of publications, including The Rialto, The Reader, New Walk Magazine, TLS, and The Spectator. His work has also featured on a number of online sites and blogs, including Ink, Sweat & Tears, peony moon, and days of roses. Waterloo Press brought out a pamphlet ‘Scattering Ashes’ in 2004 and a first full-length collection ‘Waiting for the Sky to Fall’ in 2010. He also has a poetry blog at: Other Lives

Other links:

http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2010/7/4/4570023.html

http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/waiting-for-the-sky-to-fall/

http://daysofroses.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/poem-from-dan-wyke/

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Anne Stewart

Take my Hand

I’ll take you to an island, any
Greek island town with winding
uphill paths, and as we reach
the highest, steepest bend,
steady yourself. Catch your breath
and turn, be careful of your footing, the stones
are loosening in the crumbling earth,
and there it is:
the line of trees,
the simple line of trees
I want to show you.

So small, so far, you hardly know
what shape they are, though these nearby
amongst those terraces perhaps you recognise
as olives? The green of these is soft,
exquisite to the touch and eye, if eyes
could feel the things they see.

I holiday much less these days.
But that isn’t what I miss you for,
those little Englands, lazy Autumn evenings
in the Spanish islands.

You never could have tried these paths
– never would have chosen to –
left tired by all your own old steepnesses;
but the far trees, see, before the dark light falls,
how they glisten like sapphires
setting off the world.
I wish … That is …
I just wanted to show you
something beautiful.

published in collection, The Janus Hour, 2010, Oversteps Books (www.overstepsbooks.com), ISBN 978-1-906856-16-8.

Review by Penelope Shuttle in ARTEMISpoetry Issue 6 (follows Elisabeth Rowe’s Thin Ice): http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/artemis/5shuttlerowestewart.pdf

Review by Fiona Sinclair at Ink, Sweat & Tears: http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2011/6/25/4845466.html

Anne Stewart is the founder and editor of the online poet showcase, poetry p f, President of the Shortlands Poetry Circle, and the Poetry Society Stanza Rep for Kent North West. She is Administrator for Second Light, she created and runs their website, SecondLightLive, and she was co-editor of Issues 1 to 4 of their biannual journal, ARTEMISpoetry.

She was awarded an MA (Distinction) by Sheffield Hallam University after studying poetry with Sean O’Brien and selected for the “Ten Hallam Poets” anthology (eds. Sean O’Brien, Steven Earnshaw and EA Markham), which attracted high praise from top-calibre poets (Paterson, Darling, Dunmore). She won the 2008 Bridport Prize with ‘a nice little sonnet’. Her first collection, The Janus Hour, was published by Oversteps Books in July 2010.

She was the Translator/Polisher for a book length poem, aproape. atât de departe / close. so far away, by Romanian poet, Lucian Vasilescu, which was published in bilingual version by Integral/Vinea in 2009.

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Todd Swift

Summer Solstice, Villa Bled, Slovenia

Tito’s getaway in the Julian Alps
has a lake cut from a glacier.
The architecture is monumental, retro,
June sees the blue-green water halted
in its heat; gondolas with another name
move people out at commercial intervals
to the medieval church on the one island
in this small, historic country. Once there
they can enter the picturesque
and pull the bell’s knotted rope;
your wish goes with each weighted fall
of the body with the arms. Everyone
in the town of Bled can hear the throng
of peels. Here we are, in the postcard.
Hip, rich and uncertain how we love,
but not too unsure; each has accidents
in the past that make us unlikely to be hard
enough for our own good, but we can be cold.
The view would make Wordsworth write
poetry. Not all of it good.  Memory
rewrites greatness like it does
our faults; Was Tito faithful, this partisan liberator
to his wife?  The church bells ring again -
some kid from Austria hoping for a loose buck tooth,
the guy with FRANK on his silver Cadillac
parked at the wish-rope, wanting more fish on the fork.
Beauty is where we visit, and pay for it.
I am glad I came. I know, with how we know things
in our informed age – with that tingle of knowledge
somewhere approaching pain – that this is
where I have always wanted to be. Near God,
and near totalitarian places, both similar, and serene,
I feel France Preseren’s Slovenian adulation for Nature,
and know, as if told by someone who I trust -
and always will – that here in Alpine climes -
two thousand metre peaks in the distance -
snow-capped, sublime, higher than any bird will go,
it is the best we can do to recognise what is special,
then blanche the acknowledgement with silent innocence
and then leave, and with it, take the cynical;
because, when we see and feel something rare and pure,
that too is a subject for the soul to torture and control,
or to fondle to kindness in the eye’s pleading bowl.
Bled is serious, and permanent, and she more beautiful
than I. This I will take to my personal history, until dead.
And what else, except for tragedy and birth, is there,
to sing, or singe with lunatic light, the shutterbug’s impulse
to cover every wondrous shape? Only, that even
after Tito and such stark buildings, we are this gently
capable of soft remembering. On the longest day of summer.

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Todd Swift was born in Montreal, Canada, on Good Friday. After working as a successful TV writer in his 20s (HBO, Fox, Paramount, Hanna-Barbera, CBC, etc.), he moved to Europe in 1997 – first Budapest then Paris, where he organised literary events, lectured, and edited anthologies.  A graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at UEA, he is a Lecturer at the Kingston Writing School, Kingston University, Surrey. His critical study of Anglo-Quebec poetry, Language Acts, co-edited with Jason Camlot, was a finalist for the 2007 Gabrielle Roy Prize. His Seaway: New and Selected Poems was published by Salmon in 2008.  He co-edited Modern Canadian Poets (Carcanet, 2010) with Evan Jones.  Poems of his have appeared in New American Writing, Poetry, Poetry London, Poetry Review, The Guardian Review, The Daily Telegraph and The Globe and Mail.  He has new collections forthcoming from DC Books and Tightrope Books and is currently editing Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam.  He blogs as Eyewear.  He is married and lives in London.

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Melissa Lee-Houghton

Jonathan

Portrait of the Man as a Warm Body

Your face is civilised, like Plaster of Paris, and your mouth
is a strawberry, dying to shrink. Your blood is descended
from bears and lions. Your bones were built from fossils, the fossils
of the sea, of whales, and whale song reaches you through forests
as though your ears were attuned to only the big sounds, echoes —
the hugeness of things. Your feet were built last, from man-made
materials, from concrete blocks, and the mafia watched
as Jesus raised you, crafted and chipped your toes.
Your mother and father drew vials of blood
from hardened embers where the dinosaurs fossilised
and gave you thighs like a Roman, to make sure
you would not fall at Pilate’s feet. They picked new berries
for your eyes and stole oyster pearls for your teeth,
gave you the flayed tongue of a martyr to remind you
of the importance of being quiet and sharp.
On the last day, a skin was stretched for you
from the bellies of all creatures, and made white
by the spiritual alchemy of a progressive British scientist.
The grey matter in your brain was flushed with rainwater and holy
water, and you cried when they snapped your feet and held you
like a fisherman’s catch. All the dust fell off you and devoted
eyes smoothed off the rough edges and wept with joy
at the piety of you; the effable creature with blue blood
thicker than magma and ready as gunpowder
to kick-start, to give you a Greenwich pulse and a map
of the world and the determined imagination of an English explorer
waiting an age for the deep sky to open and roll thunder.

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Melissa Lee-Houghton was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester in 1982. Her first collection A Body Made of You was published by Penned in the Margins and has been hailed as ‘a must-read for 2011.’ Her poetry and short fiction have been published in literary magazines such as Poetry Salzburg, The New Writer, Succour, Magma and Tears in the Fence. Her poem, ‘Jim’ was recently included in Starry Rhymes, a chapbook published by Read This Press, to commemorate what would have been, the 85^th birthday of Allen Ginsberg. She is a regular reviewer for The Short Review, a website dedicated to showcasing short fiction collections. Her work is forthcoming in La Reata and The Reader.

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CLOUDSCAPE

Unpredictable as my sister’s shadowed face
the clouds are playing house again

building castles for giants;
there’s a beach framed by mansions

of extraordinary beauty the sun plays hide and seek
among Roman villas in terminal decline

and the giants are planning a ball -
soon the great yachts and cruise-ships will come

dispense their passengers at the doors
of these dream palaces

although the coastline has already moved crab-ways
into new countries new continents;

oceans puff and fill
perhaps dragons are stirring underneath

as we enter a world wrapped by Christo,
(to this day I have a small fragment of cloth

clipped from the Pont Neuf) But look!
the cloudsea is no longer calm

the tumbler of gin in my sister’s hand
clicks its castanets of ice;

our pilot acknowledges turbulence;
the plane begins its slow measured descent

First published in ARTEMISpoetry

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Caroline Carver is a poet and promoter of poetry and poetry events, especially in Cornwall. She started her conscious life in Bermuda and Jamaica, came back to school in England, and then moved to Canada. She now lives in Cornwall, rummaging through the memory bank as she writes. She’s a National Prize winner, poet-in-residence at Trebah Gardens, a Hawthornden Fellow, and has published three poetry collections. See more of her work at: http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/carolinecarverpage.html

photo credit: Lyn Moir

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Malcolm Carson

Chomrong

As from the forest floor
the song breaks into bud,
slow, certain in the night air.
It runs from a single voice
and webs the throats
of the gathered throng,
surges into bloom,
pulsed by drummers.
From their midst a dancer emerges,
orchidaceous,
salutes the audience
then dances with the elegance of petals
demure, each movement
as sinuous as the turn of song.
Outrageous then the cock of the walk
who stomps around her
parodying her sweet restraint,
a rampant Chauntecleer,
hat skew-whiff, acrobatic
in his carnival, his burlesque of mating.
And like the maid enticed
but not submitting
she dances on, sublime,
her eyes and movement
seemingly untouched
yet knowing all too well
the part she’d play
in life’s longer dance.

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Malcolm Carson was born in Lincolnshire. He moved to Belfast with his family before returning to Lincolnshire, becoming an auctioneer and then a farm labourer. He studied English at Nottingham University, and then taught in colleges and universities. When in Lincolnshire he edited the regional literary magazine Proof and organised several series of readings featuring leading poets. He now lives in Carlisle with his wife and three sons. He was a founder of Border Poets which has run several series of readings in the past few years with an emphasis on small presses. He has reviewed for Other Poetry and Critical Survey. Breccia, his first full-length collection, was published by Shoestring Press in 2007, followed by Rangi Changi and other poems (also from Shoestring Press) in 2010. He is a co-editor of Other Poetry.

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Crysse Morrison

Why I did it

Doctors examining a 36 stone woman found an asthma inhaler under her armpit, coins beneath her breasts, and a TV remote control in her thighs. – Newspaper report

I am woman mountain. I swallow storms
like butterflies. Bees swarm in my eyes.
Below my arms are forests where gaudy parrots flit
through shifting shadows, between my breasts
languorous lagoons where dragons fly. My sweat
drowns oil slicks. Turtles crawl between my toes.
In my womb the tribes of lost children safely sing
while wounded soldiers blunder through the valleys of my thighs.
When I smile grim rocks sweat honey.  When I shiver
the moon freezes. I munch the rolling years for fun.
I am woman mountain. I chew death like gum.

First published in Mslexia

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Crysse Morrison also writes fiction and drama, and works with other writers on creative projects in various venues – mostly but not always in idyllic sunny places. Her poetry is mainly intended for performances but several of her pieces have also been published: she has won poetry slams and appeared at festival and theatre venues across the southwest and London, and in California. And her poem Onomatopoeia has clocked up nearly 7000 views on Youtube.

Visit Crysse’s website here.

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Emer Gillespie

Burial

Plant me underneath this tree
when you think I’m dead. Don’t
bury me standing, or flat in a box.
Instead, place me straight into the ground,
on my side. I want to become this tree,
feel it become me.

By then I’ll be tired of rushing,
it will do me good to lie still for a while,
wrap myself around the roots,
seep into the sap, enjoy the calm solidity
of its slow beating heart.
When my flesh has gone, fed the earth
I lie in, leaving only bones behind,
then I’ll take a branch line to the sun.

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Emer Gillespie is an actress, novelist and award-winning scriptwriter.  She lives in London with her family and other animals.  Poetry is her passion but only very recently has she begun to send out her own work.  Last year she was one of the finalists at Live Canon.

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Clare Best

The surgeon’s album

He turns the pages for me:
full and partial reconstruction, implants,
muscle flaps from back and stomach. Creations
to match and balance. But how would I look
flat? No extras. Straightforward scars.
He frowns at a lop-sided photo.
The absence doubled? I’ve not done that before.

Twelve months on, he wants
my picture, conforming to house style:
no head, arms at forty-five degrees to clavicle.
I stand anonymous against a stripped pine door,
knots and fissures dark behind my skin —
a knife-thrower’s object, still
until the last blade hangs from the wood.

First published in Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, Volume 28, nos 2,3, Spring 2011

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Clare Best has always lived closely with words: she has been a bookbinder, a bookseller and an editor. She currently teaches creative writing at Brighton University and the Open University. Her poems are widely published in journals and anthologies. Treasure Ground (HappenStance, 2009) brings together poems from a residency at Woodlands Organic Farm on the Lincolnshire Fens. Excisions, her first book-length collection, will be published by Waterloo Press in September 2011.

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Peter Daniels

Mice

In the yellow water pail
two blue mice are floating.
They splashed through my sleep
last night, and I ignored them.

On the porch, three more mice
lie in the bottom of a dry pail,
withered, with a few old leaves,
and a scattering of droppings.

One mouse looks nibbled,
keeping the others alive
to chase the walls a while
inside the plastic drum.

How long before they died?
We could lie in wait and
count how many fall in:
but simpler to set some traps.

I throw the crisp mice out,
and this morning’s two
wet and bloated ones,
with the water they drowned in,

scrape out the bucket of dried
mouseturds under the pump:
remember tonight
to keep the lid down on the water.

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Peter Daniels has twice won the Poetry Business pamphlet competition, in 1991 and 1999, and came first in the 2002 Ledbury, the 2008 Arvon, and the 2010 TLS and Ver Poets competitions. He returned to pamphlets with Work & Food from Mulfran Press in 2010, and Mr Luczinski Makes a Move is forthcoming from HappenStance in 2011. As well as his own poems he is working on translations from the Russian of Vladislav Khodasevich. Peter lives in Stoke Newington, London.

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Lynne Rees

Drawing

18” by 16”, felt tip pen on coloured paper by Ffion Richards, age 4

There is a red house with orange windows and a pink door. There is a black cat whose feet have slipped off the bottom of the page. There is a tree sprouting flowers, petals pushing against the paper’s edge, a lavender sky with a sun and a crescent moon. And floating above the roof of the house, two stick people, holding hands, unwilling to come down to earth and decide whether the sun is about to set, or if the moon will make way for dawn, or whether the cat is trying to escape or climb into the picture and run towards a door that could be closed, or might be on the point of opening.

all the times
I have been wrong
fresh paint

First published in Frogpond vol 33:3, Fall 2010

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Lynne Rees is a poet and prose writer who divides her time between Kent and Antibes, South of France. She is co-editor of Another Country, Haiku Poetry from Wales (Gomer Press 2011), runs a free online poetry workshop at:www.applehousepoetry
and blogs about food, memoir and writing at The Hungry Writer at www.lynnerees.com

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Stag oak

In the brakes there’s a herd
of trees – tined twigs
pale as antlers in the dimpsey.
Stick-thin legs
on seed-shaped feet
step between fallen leaves
without a rustle.
Leaf-shaped ears twitch
as a small gust brings down
a moult of leaf husks.
A pile of spent bracken
the held breath of a tawny pelt,
a hair’s breadth away
from the globed smoke
of dandelion seed heads
by the thicket.
The owl moon opens its eye.

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Rebecca was born in Yorkshire in 1953. Her first writing success was winning the Wharfedale Natural History Society’s essay competition when she was 10 years old. After turning fifty she decided to try and make up for lost time. Her first poetry collection River is the Plural of Rain was published in 2009 by Oversteps Books. Her first novel Liar Dice is to be published by Cinnamon Press in 2011. A second collection is being hatched and she aims to finish another novel. Currently, she teaches creative writing in a prison.
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Derrick Buttress

Reading The Weather

The auspices are uncertain,
rain threatens in the east -
a bit black over Bill’s mother’s
as they say in these parts -
although sunlight creeps in
from the west in spite
of the banks of cloud.

We can take nothing for granted here
even the seasons have stalled,
the summer’s swifts still circling the house,
the annuals reluctant to fade -
picnics in October, and thickening grass.

We forget the earth is alive beneath our feet,
will not die or even rest
according to the clocks we make.
Prediction is a lost art.

Put two and two together
and we get nothing but conjecture, at best,
the chance that chaos
was all the time the answer.

Although there’s always hope,
like seeing the rain, drifting now
from the east, falling on Bill’s mother’s
as we guessed it would.

Published in ‘Destinations’, Shoestring Press, 2009

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Derrick Buttress was born in Nottingham in 1932. After many years in industry he read English at York University. His poems have been published widely in magazines, including Magma, Ambit, The Interpreter’s House and Iota. Two television plays were produced by BBC 2 and several radio plays were broadcast by BBC Radio 4. His poetry collections are: Waiting For the Invasion (Shoestring) 2002; My Life As A Minor Character (Shoestring) 2005; Destinations (Shoestring 2009). A Memoir, Broxtowe Boy was published in 2004, also by Shoestring. Its sequel, Music While You Work, was published by Shoestring Press in 2007.
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Catherine Smith

THE FATHERS

All over the city, women in restaurants,
cafes, bars, wait for their fathers. Sometimes
the women sip coffee, or wine, pretend to read.
Some fathers arrive promptly, smiling,
dressed as Policemen, or in flannel pyjamas.
One wears a taffeta dress, fishnets and stilettos,
rubs the stubble under his make-up.
Sometimes the father is a Priest
in a robe stained with candle-wax.
Some have pockets gritty with sand
from Cornish holidays; one father
flourishes a fledgling sparrow, damp
and frightened, from an ironed handkerchief.
They bring spaniels, Shetland ponies, anacondas,
they bring yellowed photographs
whose edges curl like wilting cabbages.
One father has blue ghosts of numbers
inked into his forearm. Some of the fathers
have been dead or absent for so long
the women hardly recognise them, a few
talk rapidly in Polish or Greek and the women
shift on their chairs. Some sign cheques,
others blag a tenner. One smells of wood-shavings
and presents the woman with a dolls’ house.
Some fathers tell the women You’re getting fat
while others say, Put some meat on your bones, girl.
Some women leave arm in arm with their fathers,
huddled against the cold air, and shop
for turquoise sequinned slippers or Angelfish
hanging like jewels in bright tanks. Others
part with a kiss that misses a cheek – lint
left on coats, and buttons done up wrong.

From Lip (Smith/Doorstop)

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Catherine Smith is an award-winning poet and fiction writer; she has also written radio drama, (Jellybelly, broadcast May 2005). Her first short poetry collection, The New Bride, (Smith/Doorstop) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, 2001. Her other books include The Butcher’s Hands (short-listed for the Aldeburgh/Jerwood Prize ) and Lip which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2008.  The Biting Point, her long awaited prose collection is published by Speechbubble Books.

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Stephen Boyce

Soundless

I brought home wild marjoram,
scabious and a pink parsley
to catch your eye in the little kitchen,
leaving my hurt pride by the roadside.
After all our talk I’d wanted to bring
butterflies to stir the air in the bedroom:
flitting blues, graylings, gatekeepers
with watchful eyes, and a jersey tiger
moth, its scarlet flash so startling.
But my hands were too slow in the heat
of the afternoon and, besides, in time
one of us would break the silence,
though the butterflies – soundless
and unexpected – go on
slipping through our fingers forever.

Published in Desire Lines Arrowhead Press 2010

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Stephen Boyce lives in Winchester. His poetry has been published widely in magazines including Staple, The Interpreter’s House, Frogmore Papers, Smiths Knoll, Tears in the Fence, Links, the Southern Daily Echo, Moving Stories (website), Acumen, and in the anthology Visible Breath (Indigo Dreams). He has been a prizewinner in the Kent & Sussex, Leicester, Ledbury, Ware Poets and Plough Prize competitions. Stephen has published pamphlets including In the Northland -– poems after the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, and his full length collection Desire Lines was published by Arrowhead Press in 2010. For further information visit: stephenboycepoetry.co.uk

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Valerie Morton

After the Dance

We walk home barefoot, past workplaces
dozing with an eye on the morning

and locked houses where cozy sleepers
begin to stretch away from dreams.

An hour ago music had been our only cause
to move and breathe. We’d raised our hands

waving to a false sun, believing
we knew all the answers.

My fingers were raindrops on your back,
your hand a promise of ecstasy.

Dawn sweeps the pavements as we realise
that somewhere along the way

we’ve lost our shoes.

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It was recently said that “Valerie Morton captures the poetry and cherished memory of domestic familiarity through simple, quiet but effective understatement” (Reach Poetry, Indigo Dreams, Norman Bissett, Jan 2011). She has been placed in various competitions including Ver Poets, Cafe Writers, The New Writer, Cannon Poets and has poems in a number of anthologies. She leads a Creative Writing Workshop at a mental health charity and is just finishing an Open University degree. The featured poem appears in the Ragged Raven anthology The World is Made of Glass published in 2010.
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Bill Greenwell

Air Force

Oh you were perfect, a perfect
helminth, they said. They had words for you, words
with you, a whole string of indignant nouns.

And all because of the day, windless and bright,
that they lined you up like a squadron
of roses and tulips, in bloom

for the photographer under his prayer-shawl,
flash-gun up like a ping-pong paddle
guiding in nervous flight crews.

Just before the powder blew
you mussed your hair up, because you could,
because you were born

with a rebel heart. Look at the picture.
I do. Under the prim and cloudless sky, of all the attentive faces,
I can only pick out one: yours.

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Bill Greenwell is a poet and parodist, and the Arts Staff Tutor for the Open University in the North. He’s from Sunderland, was New Statesman’s satirical writer in the nineties, and is one of the OU’s creative writing team. He has two sites: www.theweeklypoem.com and www.billgreenwell.com. He was born in 1952, and his collection Impossible Objects is published by Cinnamon.
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Sally Douglas

Premature
(For Oliver)

Time lies like stones under water
heavy pebbles
anchoring the days.

You lie on a rind of light
sleep and breathe on the curves of moon and arm,
in moments pared from silver coins.

Unclinging, you curl
into spaces broken from the air
and open your eyes –

your eyes the colour of slate
but clear as water
moving over heavy stones.

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Sally was born in Cornwall in 1962. She read English and European Literature at Warwick University, and has a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing from the Open University. She lives in Devon. Her first collection, ‘Candling the Eggs‘ will be published by Cinnamon Press in February 2011.

Sally works in education, and runs poetry workshops for primary school children. She does most of her own writing in coffee shops, or at the dining room table in the middle of the night. She would do it in her study but she can’t get in there because there are too many books.

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Vicky Wilson

Margate, 2010

St Michael and all Angels descend from the bus,
heralded by the boom of carnival drum and bass,
to a sweep of sea and a golden curl of sand
where pink bikinis dance round tumbledown castles,
shaking down fried noodles and ice-cream, and
Polish teens call the score for volleyball
alongside swingboats where tattooed dads
look on as sticky toddlers rise and fall.
Girls in swimsuits and hijabs hunt for treasures
and a flock of nuns dares the incoming tide
while wrinkled hands unwrap blintzes and pittas,
watching as the twirl of sequins and boas creeps
towards the Turner, backs to Dreamland
where the wreck of the rollercoaster sleeps.

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Vicky Wilson is a poet and non-fiction writer. Her poems have been published in Line Dancing (Categorical Books, 2010) as well as in several magazines and anthologies and her book London’s Houses is due out from Metro Publications in 2011. She works in schools as part of the soon-to-be-axed Creative Partnerships programme and as an editor. Her most recent project is Did I Tell You? a poetry anthology co-edited with Nicky Gould that has raised over £3000 for Children in Need. She likes performing her poetry and has recently begun to write ‘found poems’ based on her interactions with the public at festival events.

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Gill McEvoy

Preparing Fish

I have lived inland all my life,
got no further than sticklebacks
glowering in jars,
never once ate trout.

Here in my new kitchen
this strange fish slips from my grip,
slithers and slaps against the sink.
It smells of foreign things.

The loose scales must be scraped away.
I curse as, sliding, it escapes again.
But soon the sink begins to fill
with pieces of silver,

sequins sail its lake, starbursts
hammer its surface to a shimmer.
I scoop one gently on a fingertip:
it clings, and winks and winks with light.

When you walk in – starving, as you say -
you find me lining out frail specks
of starlight on the drainer’s edge.

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Gill McEvoy is a poet with determination, if not always the energy! With friends she runs Zest!, a quarterly Open Floor Poetry Night in Chester. She and Judy Ugonna run workshops (Poem Catchers). She also runs The Poem Shed, a workshop group, and a poetry reading group “The Golden Pear”. She has published 2 pamphlets “Uncertain Days” and “A Sampler”, (Happenstance Press, 2006, 2008) and a full collection “The Plucking Shed” (Cinnamon Press, 2010).

Occasionally she blogs at redbotinki.blogspot.com.
Website Poem Catchers