Haiku authors published so far

Alan Mansell, Alice Evans, Aneesha Shewani, Annie Ellis, Annie Sturgeon,
Chris Hardy, Christina-Sandra Sõõrumaa, Christine Griffin, David Crann, Derek Sellen, Donna Marie Smith, Frank William Finney, Georgina Titmus, Ian Parker Dodd, Ivor Frankell, John Atkinson, John Beattie, Kevin Scully, Lana Silver, Maggie Mackay, Mandy Beattie, Marilyn Timms, Mike Everley, Niall Ashdown, Pam Job, Patrick B. Osada, Peter Devonald, Peter McDade, Sally Mayo, Sarah Graham, Sarah James/Leavesley, Simon Tindale, Stafford Cross, Timothy Marshal-Nichols, Tracey Hope, Valerie Fish, Yvonne Crossley
indicates one audio

Howard Timms, feature editor, writes:

This prompt is specifically for poets and writers of extremely compact text. Haiku is a Japanese form of non-rhyming poetry containing precisely 17 syllables. The original style defined content and structure of this very short verbal art form. However, as Haiku grew in popularity, restrictions on content began to loosen. For this submission window, the choice of content is yours, as long as it follows our inclusivity policy.

For structure, we are seeking Haiku entries that follow the traditional three lines and 17 syllables like this:

five syllables here
seven in the second line
finally five more

Haiku evolved from hokku, each a brief introductory stanza to a long poem. Hokku gave information as a key to what followed. So haiku became a compact and matter-of-fact art form, which might appeal to flash-fiction writers as well as poets.

The one concession over haiku that this feature gives as an opportunity is that it will accept a group of up to 5 related haiku as a single entry. An example is this piece that I wrote when Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020 during the pandemic:

Haiku to the Golfer in Chief

A death toll each week
of three times Nine-Eleven’s
Donald’s hole in one.

Like Nero before
he plays around while home burns
with covid nineteen.

He scores his own card
calls rivals’ cards illegal
tries to erase them.

He hits a bunker
huffs and puffs the sand away
blows hard on his ball.

When he’s in a hole
he claims it as his target
says that he has won.

We encourage you to make an audio recording of each submission/entry on your phone or computer and submit it with your text or on its own without your text. Publishing audio is our speciality, because it amplifies the power and meaning of your writing. It also increases your chance of being published. If you prefer to join one of our online recording sessions, click on this link.

As always, we are looking for writing that grabs our attention, pulls our heart strings, leaves us open-mouthed or holding our breath, makes us think, make us laugh or cry, and/or is strikingly original. In short, poems or flash-fiction that excite us enough to share them with wildfire words readers.

Rules

During this submission window, each writer may submit on the form below a maximum of 4 works, each work either a standalone haiku or a group of up to 5 closely-related haiku. You may submit as many forms as you wish.
You are also invited to supply a biography of yourself in no more than 60 words, If any of your work is published, your writing “bio” will be, too.
Please remember that we will look more favourably on submissions that include audio of your submitted works.

Submitted writing must be your own original work, in English, and unpublished in print or online, including your own website. Where an original writer teams up with a translator into English, we will consider publishing the work, provided biographies of both writer and translator are provided.

If your work is published in wildfire words ezine, it will be on a non-exclusive basis for at least one year. The copyright remains yours for all text, bios, and audio recordings you submit for publication.

How we decide which poems to publish

Our decisions on whether to publish an item are not anonymous. We see the writer’s bio with the poetry or prose. Published authors have generally set a quality benchmark which we can use to gauge their new work. The work of writers with little or no published work is assessed on quality and potential. In such cases, we may contact the writer to suggest some tweaks that would make us keener to share the work on Wildfire Words.

We do not charge for submissions — or for feedback, if we choose to offer it. Our publishing service is non-profit-making, created with a love of sharing creative writing and social and personal growth it produces. Donations — in this feature, to support Mental Health Research UK — are welcome, but voluntary.
A donation does not affect whether we choose to publish your work.

We aim to include writers worldwide. We respect all people and their well-being, beliefs, individuality, and free speech, and expect the same from all writers who submit. We’ll publish any work that adds fresh creative spice to this feature. We’ll evaluate your jewel, whether it’s a cut and polished dazzler or a rough stone with interesting lustre.

Looking forward to reading/hearing your words . . . Howard Timms

Haiku Anthology 2024

Sarah James/Leavesley

From yesterday’s rain,
early birds harvest new fields
of golden sky-song.

through our windows

catching the sun, rain
maps out a star-chart without
waiting for dark nights

drops of house and road
jolt and slide onto my sill –
their past presence smears

spring showers petal
the lawn; wet tears stick – I watch
still dry behind glass

barefoot through wet grass;
our summer garden’s greenness
varnishes my toes

puddles’ liquid panes:
river and sky slowly seep
in through earth’s windows

Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer, whose collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022) was winner of the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her new Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024 collection Darling Blue is out with Indigo Dreams in 2025. Website: http://sarah-james.co.uk.

Patrick B. Osada

Frost

A night jewelled with stars,
Bright white moonlight on cold air :
A hard frost glinting.

Before dawn, hoar frost
Etched glass with icy flowers :
Window light obscured.

Ghostly trees hold firm
To frozen berries. Birds starve
And huddled, shiver.

A sharp wind knifes through
Bleak hedgerows, past hanging trees,
Icing travellers.

Iced spears of gleaming
Sedge and rush hold frosted webs –
Nets to catch the wind.

Patrick B. Osada retired as Reviews Editor for SOUTH Poetry Magazine. He has published eight collections, The Warfield Poems was launched in JULY 2024. Patrick’s work has been broadcast on national and local radio and widely published in magazines, anthologies and on the internet.  www.poetry-patrickosada.co.uk

Mike Everley

A clump of ginger
sitting in the small green pot
it fills my senses.

Mike Everley has had fiction and poetry published in the Anglo Welsh Review, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Outposts, Cardiff Poet, Undiscovered Poet, Entheoscope, Poetry News (Poetry Society), Lothlorien Online Poetry Journal, 5-7-5 Haiku Online Journal, 101 Words, Cranked Anvil and Acumen. He also has poetry accepted for next year’s issues of Red Poets and The Seventh Quarry. He has had articles published in general, specialist, family history and literary magazines and journals. He was a member of both the NUJ and the Society of Authors before retirement.

Yvonne Crossley

Persian carpet knots
you ponder old mysteries
conjuring answers

sun-faded carpet
I sit on the tree of life
in fear of falling

ivy-covered door
I hear rusted hinges creak –
open sesame

sundown gilded flight
a golden leaf shower displays
sprezzatura

Yvonne Crossley is inspired by art, natural history, a sense of place, self-reflection and the wonder of words. Published in anthologies and online: Wildfire Words, Poetry Archive Now! 2024; Leaf Journal 2, 3, 4. Salisbury Fringe poem 2023, Cranborne Chase ‘Cherish poetry’ competition winner 2023.

Maggie Mackay

Velvet lush deer etched
statue framed by snow-laced pines
Scottish winter thrill

Torry Burn burbles
tales of salt, smugglers, high flood
its song, heron swish.

What They Cannot Forget

Seaweed, salt, thin clouds,
ship spills over distant curve,
Hattie’s black cat mourns.

Fire eats Roddy’s notes,
blackbird sings of his lost mate,
thistles’ purple cracks.

Shepherd Jamie aghast
spots the inferno, blasting death,
his collie tight heeled.

The otter wallows,
the reservoir bubbles,
Ruth’s sleek pelt thudders.

Facing a red sky,
Susan greets the supermoon,
snow dusted wings singed.

Maggie Mackay is a Scottish poet. Her work has been widely published online and in print magazines and journals including The Poetry Archive’s Wordview 2020 permanent collection and Impspired Press.  Steve Cawte published her second collection ‘The Babel of Human Travel’ in 2022. She shares her sofa with the gorgeous  Hattie the Greyt.

Christine Griffin

As early mist thins
a hare shivers in the field
the patient fox waits

Buried deep in snow
dry husks of last year’s plenty
stir as the earth turns

In that sombre hour
where today meets tomorrow
a passing bell tolls

Christine Griffin has been writing poetry and prose for many years and is widely published both nationally and internationally. Achievements this year include winning  Writing Magazine’s short story competition and publication in the American journal Poetry Super Highway. She was recently Highly Commended in the Laurie Lee Writing Competition.

Annie Ellis

Reindeer on a roof
Wait for Santa down chimney
Giving out presents

Collecting fallen nuts
Put away for a cold day
Never can find them

Nose twitches whiskers
Sleek body, fast swimming pelt
Clown of the water.

Dry leaves drift and fall
Red as a rosy sunset
Is nature on fire?

Annie Ellis is a member of the Wildfire Words team, particularly as Lead Sponsor. More about Annie

Ian Parker Dodd

Puddled Seasons

Silt blooms in Swiss rolls
Chantilly patterned algae
beneath the surface

Crazed, crumbled mud blown
powder fine on faces tastes
 of drought and drying

Filigree of leaves
floating sailing captive
in dank decaying pool

Carapace contoured
ice stations of the night
hold darkened water life.

Ian Parker Dodd came back to poetry in 2016. Since, he has read at the Ledbury and Cheltenham poetry festivals; at open mics in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire; been published in six anthologies and on websites Pendemic and Wildfire Words. His collection All They Will Call You published in 2021 raised money for GARAS. He has another collection due March 2025.

Alice Evans

Mare’s frost-breath spirals
Sad-static, slow-entropic
Foals swish just-born tails.

Alice Evans is an artist and poet. She trained at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art, and works from her studio in Lancashire.
https://www.aliceevansfineart.co.uk

Alan Mansell

December 2024

Foxes’ fur thickens,
hedgehogs dream in deepest sleep,
until warmth’s return.

Late morning melts frost,
hungry beaks peck softened ground,
dusk arrives too soon.

Snow levels roof sheet
hiding the corrugations,
masks asbestos threat.

Lion devours trees,
broken branch bones lie licked clean,
winter gale roars by.

Blooms out of season,
early bulb heads protest, shout,
“one point five degrees”.

Alan Mansell lives in south-east Shropshire. Recently retired, he has more time to devote to reading and writing poetry and a number of individual poems have been shortlisted, longlisted, or published in various publications in 2024. His interests include walking, history, (particularly British social history), conservation, poetry, music and following a notably unsuccessful local football team!

Chris Hardy

Spring Rain

Dark May afternoon –
a woman eats an orange
in St Luke’s graveyard.

Dark May afternoon –
bright red mail van parked outside
the open church door.

When they told me you
were dying I went outside
and swept up the leaves.

Chris Hardy‘s poetry has been widely published in magazines and online and he has won prizes in the National Poetry and Live Canon competitions and won the 2024 McLellan Poetry prize. His latest collection Key To The Highway was published by Shoestring Press.
Chris is the secretary of the Chichester Poetry Stanza, and is also a musician.

Christina-Sandra Sõõrumaa

the mist no crescent
of mountainside     the wind shifts 
instead a swallow

as exhale friends, kin
mirrors flake by flake silver
to relief abstain

croft another edge
lips have left marks on its rim
balking now, alone

frosted, mauve, half-burnt
unfolding condensation;
sparsely gnawed petal

Christina-Sandra Sõõrumaa is an Estonian poet, editor, and history teacher based in Japan. Her work draws from T’ung dynasty occasional verse and the quality of absence in Zen poetry, aiming at a synthesis of Daoist lore and Western poetic mediation. She practices this synthesis in the many onsens proliferating Tokyo.

David Crann

In blue galleries
Clouds hang frozen aquarelles.
Sporadic bats drip.

Slow the cuckoo tolls:
The enigma strokes the hour
And unlocks no key.

Bees first

In the wake of bees,
Pollen bleeds in lilts of dust.
Honey binds old hurts.

Skylarks seek angels,
Spread tongue-butter on the sky;
And silence echoes.

Today, flocks of crows
Skirmish in anarchic rant –
Tomorrow:  swansong…

Voiceless as schooners,
Mute swans beat the air like sails:
Windmills heave millstones.

Pandemonium!
Scandal-mongering sparrows
Eavesdrop like cymbals.

Garden

Among the snowdrops,
Beside nursery playgrounds
I seek remembrance.

Wild orchids hide moths.
Children flush out butterflies –
A time of secrets.

Purple emperors
Reach unwisely to the sun –
Icarus’ secret!

Out of rose-gardens
Perfume stamps on memory,
Thorns not forgotten.

Bees capsize petals;
Fill honey-pots as sweeteners.
Elephants forget.

David Crann is an English solicitor who became a book wholesaler in Provence and is now retired. His interests are family, travel, poetry, bridge. His poetry prizes include Barnet 2015; Earlyworks  2016/7; Speakeasy 2008; Mary Charman-Smith 2012; Commended: Teignmouth 2017; Sentinel 2018; Welsh Poetry 2019; Long Poem Magazine 2023. Publications are by Orbis; French Literary Review; Earlyworks; Dreamcatcher; Poetry Salzburg; Littoral Press; Cerasus Poetry; The Piker Press; Frosted Fire; Cannon Poets; Snakeskin.

Donna Marie Smith

blue and white marble
our beautiful mother earth
the host of all life

nature’s water stream
flows like a liquid ribbon
as it knits and weaves

seraphic blanket
molten silver beacons shine
stellar casting light

flower petals fall
nature’s confetti cascades
floating in the breeze

Donna Marie Smith is a British poet residing in Royton, Oldham, Greater Manchester. She is a published author with her own anthology Marmalade Hue published in May 2024. She also has over 25 poems published in various anthologies. Her poems are often quirky light-hearted observational poems, but she has written poems in many various forms and styles.

Lana Silver

A welsh rainbow sleeps
In fetal position on
Freshly made sheep farm

You sipped your coffee
I sipped all your lavender
Sun sipped the whole earth.

The poster shines bright
Of: ‘Llama Anatomy’
In the mental ward.

She buys bright pink mugs
lathers them in Fairy Soap
tends to Sakura.

Lana Silver is an honours graduate in English Literature. Her poetry appears in Spectrum: Poetry Celebrating Identity, Secret Chords and Barbican Young Poets. Her poetry was shortlisted in New Voices First Pamphlet Competition 2021 and 2023 and long listed for two entries in Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Competition 2023. 

Mandy Beattie

Laundry Detergent

Bold, Fairy, Persil
Non bio pods, softener
Extra scent boosters

Bold, Fairy, Persil
Cells, olfactory nightmare
Bombards my senses

Bold, Fairy, Persil
Poison chemicals infest
Hide on the top shelf:

Bold, Fairy, Persil
tell us in plain sight, “Keep out
the reach of children”

Supports genocide
Unilever, Procter and
Gamble: Give it up

Mandy Beattie is a feminist, former social worker and academic. Winner of Words with Seagulls and City of Poets competitions and shortlisted poet. Her poetry appears in: Poets Republic, Drawn to The Light, WordPeace, Orphic Review, Crowstep, Abridged, The Banyan Review, Full House Literary, Verse-Virtual, Abridged and many more. Best of The Net poetry nominee 2024.

Peter McDade

Five Related Haiku

At the seventh spell
He sent forth upon the world
His Bodhisattva

A lamb and then a
Fisher, aries and pisces
In precession through

The Glastonbury
Zodiac, thorn and lotus
Flower, Siddartha

Who art in heaven
Thy arithmetic becomes
Mathematical

In the musical
They burst into song. The wine
Consecrates itself.

Peter McDade currently aspires to be the man on the Clapham Omnibus. While studying poetry and maths, he has paused to consider the sacred.

Timothy Marshal-Nichols

November Rain

Dawn a light rain falls
Soft wind misty rain dancing
Cold rain turns to snow

Morning mist grey clouds
Thus another rainy day
Mists clearing drizzle.

Pouring all day long
Watching behind the window
Raindrops drip dripping

Walking all wrapped up
Out in the rain it’s chilly
Walking through the rain

Calm the rains ease calm
Dampness upon roads lingers
Dusk clouds drifting night

Timothy Marshal-Nichols doesn’t do biography. He was born, allegedly. He was educated somewhat inconsistently. Some say he worked — but only irregularly. He languished — that much is certain. The rest has to happen.

John Atkinson

Clouds darken the sky,
then a rainbow, it’s God’s sign
raindrops refract light.      

I thought we were one.
Your heart broke free, like a leaf
falling in Autumn.

John Atkinson retired eight years ago and went to live in south-west Scotland. He now spends his time there enjoying the wild beauty of the countryside and wildlife there, and also writing about it.

Georgina Titmus

Shells—abandoned homes
Their inhabitants long dead
Objects of beauty.

The atmosphere thins
I want to climb higher—so
I breathe with my soul.

Georgina Titmus has had poems published in The Moth, Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, The Journal, South, Reach, Briefly Write, Fenland Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal and others. She writes on a 1980s electronic typewriter made in the former GDR. She’s twice been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She’s a ‘seer’ for her sight-impaired husband.

Ivor Frankell

the sky at midnight
blue sapphire memories spin
orbiting like stars

the sea is sighing
its relentless waves lapping
against the sea wall

blue ocean currents
the silent harbour watches
tides dragged by the moon

Ivor Frankell is a Cornish Bard, a retired teacher, a meddler with language and obsessive member of four writing groups. Once I lived in Manchester’s suburbs and worked in a Jewish school in Crumpsall. Now I stare at the sea and wonder why we are here.

Marilyn Timms

Frozen Puddles

Winter weaves a prayer
warp of ice, weft of snow; thin
blanket for the earth

Snowflakes drifting down
(wishes, dreams, hopes) they settle
on my cheek as tears

Dreamless sleep of birds
Hoar frost freezing feet to twig
No awakening

Gaunt, leafless, ice-bound
savaged by an Arctic thrust
ancient oaks still stand.

Marilyn Timms is a leading member of the Wildfire Words team.

Derek Sellen

It bets against time,
it stakes all on a moment
of seventeen beats

Alphabet Auction –
billionaires bid all they have
for a single ‘A’

doze, yawn, stretch, slink, leap,
ears pricked, tail up, this cat prowls
inside a haiku

Derek Sellen lives in Canterbury and has had a varied writing career. He has written grammar books, coursebooks and abridged versions of classics for overseas students, reviews, plays, short stories, comedy and poetry. He enjoys taking part in open mics, workshops and readings and has judged poetry competitions. His work has won awards.

Frank William Finney

Icicles hanging
above the black-eyed owl’s roost.
Hare tracks in the snow.

Tell us he will live.
The doctors look bewildered.
Promise he will live.

Frank William Finney is a poet from Massachusetts. A recipient of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry, his poems have appeared in The Asylum Floor, Brussels Review, Kelp Journal, Orchards Poetry Journal, The Paradox Magazine, Wildfire Words, and elsewhere. His chapbook The Folding of the Wings was published in 2022 by Finishing Line Press.

John Beattie

Without any words
It’s either taciturn’s turn
Or signalman’s waves.

My torch batteries
always seem to last longer
than I think, then don’t.

Do you know my son
You are either right or wed
But not ever both

When I speak out loud
An aphorism a day
Is aphoristic.

Heedless of lockdown
Weeds twirl on the dance floor that
Once was my garden.

John Beattie is an 80-year-old retired dyslexic nuclear physicist who is fascinated by words, their source, place and power.

Kevin Scully

We ate their honey
but the bees did not survive
the long hard winter.

Incense candle stone
flowers poems songs silence
remember the dead.

On hard white snowfall
birds clawprints invisible
not so man and fox.

Kevin Scully’s poetry has appeared in Atrium, The Merton Journal, Theology, Prole, The Fib Review and Second Chance Lit. He won the Eastbourne Poetry Café contest in 2024 and the Ashdown Forest Poetry Competition. Kevin was the inaugural Poet in Residence for the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path. He has an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School.

Peter Devonald

Meow, Meow, Me-
practicing to be a cat
in the next life soon.

big red balloon flies
effortlessly over hills
full of eagle air

leaves fall leaden fast
whispers kamikaze times
we learn so little

Now we awaken
Our wings are stretched wide open
We are the shadows

Bright blue morning light
dawn chorus yawns miracles
transforms into oak.

Lake reflects regrets
transforming us into swans
flying to Cold Moon.

Love whispers gently
we are all sailors floating
on the sea of life.

Peter Devonald, Manchester UK based, is winner Loft Books 2024, Waltham Forest 2022, FofHCS and two HoH, second Shelley Memorial 2024, Finalist Tickled Pink 2024, Top Four New2theScene 2024, highly commended Hippocrates, Passionfruit Review, OxCanalFest, Saveas and Allingham. Forward Prize and two BoN nominations. Widely-published/anthologised. Children’s Bafta nominated.
www.scriptfirst.com Facebook: @pdevonald BSky: @pdevonald.bsky.social Instagram: @peterdevonald Twitter/X: petedevonald

Sally Mayo

Leaky leaden skies
World in wet winter wardrobe
No hope of brightness

Biting wind arrives
Muddy fields set in stiff peaks
Small chink of brightness

Sally Mayo lives in London. She has worked as an English teacher for the last few years and has always enjoyed writing to entertain herself and her pupils. More recently, she has attended creative writing classes and focussed on writing for adults.

Sarah Graham

Autumn

Wind disturbs the trees.
Mist sneaks along the hillside.
The birds are quiet.

Nights are cooler now.
The garden is drawing breath
before the winter

Winter

The sky is on fire
as the daylight fades away.
We all stand and stare.

The pond is frozen
but birds still need their water,
so we break the ice.

Winter is cruel.
It’s icy grip won’t let go.
Darkness surrounds us.

Sarah Graham has had poems published online in Wildfire Words, as part of anthologies by Pure Slush/Truth Serum (PoD), and in local works. She is constantly inspired by the natural world, and most of her poems reflect this. She has taken part in open mic events, mostly online.

Simon Tindale

The 17 O’clock News

A haiku gambler
Was banned from a casino
For counting syllab

Limerick drug tsar
Impersonated haiku
While chopping two lines

Haiku Festival
Announces its headline act
Heaven 17!

This isn’t a Haiku
(editor’s note — technically disqualified, this poem is included as a loving, meaningful parody. )

If you’re attempting to fix
A broken haiku
Try reverse haikology

Simon Tindale was born in Sunderland, wrote songs in South London and found poetry in West Yorkshire. He is currently editing his second collection.

Stafford Cross

Norman Bastard Will
Cull Anglo Saxon Cattle
Rename them – Roast Beef

Online Groceries.
Kind Words; Butter; No Parsnips;
Substitute; Brandy!

Time and Tide Waiting
For no-one. No-one arrives
Time and Tide depart
President Biden
Pardons Thanksgiving Turkeys
Trump Pardons Himself

Haiku Rules OK
Seven Sided conundrum
Prettily resolved.

Five Syllables Start
Seven Syllables Succeed
Five Find a Finish

Five scene setters are
Seven protagonists make
A fine conundrum

Set the something scene
A character introduce
The result describe

In Riddles speak like
Yoda guiding Padawan
Force within you is!
Veritas non est
“Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori”
                             
Age withers them not
For, for all our Tomorrows
They gave their Today

In a green field far,
Away from Tipperary
Red Poppies Blooming

Stafford Cross (biography)
Stafford seeking is
A little Inspiration
Haiku by the score

Limericks were Once
His forte and his passion
Lays are shorter now.

A Chemist was he
Till Computers called to him
Poetry remains.

Tracey Hope

A bell is ringing
I step aside, bow my head
calling ‘Rag and bone’.

Graven grief gentled
by Evernia’s fingers
a symbiosis.

Tracey Hope is a powerful new voice in contemporary poetry whose debut pamphlet, Myther, won the prestigious Cerasus Poetry Prize 2024. Her poems have featured in Wildfire Words, Orbis, Erbacce and The Lake. She won a reader award in Orbis and was shortlisted for the annual Erbacce prize. Tracey completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. www.traceyhope.com

Valerie Fish

All alone she sits
Freezing by an unlit fire
Shame on Rachel Reeves

Flaming Christmas Pud
Memories of silver coins
Stirred in by grandma 

Singing ‘Silent Night’
A choir of tiny angels
Tears from all the mums

Jesus on the Cross
The ultimate sacrifice
Let us not forget

Valerie Fish has been making up stories since childhood, and now in her twilight years, is still making things up in her local U3A Creative Writing Group.  Her fortes are flash fiction and composing witty,  sometimes naughty, limericks.
Her collection, accumulated over many years, can be found in ‘A Sexagenarian from Smithy Fen and other Limericks’, available on Amazon.

Niall Ashdown

I found biscuit crumbs
And one arm of your glasses
In the cold dawn bed.

I’ve had dreams come true
That I never knew were dreams
Until I found you

How I hate haikus
Seventeen syllables can
never be enough

I foresaw my death
In the blood purple water
Of last night’s beetroot

Niall Ashdown is a performer and writer who specialises in improvised theatre and comedy. He guests with the Comedy Store Players, and improvises opera with Impropera. He has written for stage and for radio, and is an associate artist with Improbable. He teaches improvisation at Oxford School of Drama.

Pam Job

I saw snow today
  remembered   birthday icing
     marzipan    my cake

Pam Job lives on an estuary in Essex, a constant source of inspiration. She has had poems published in anthologies, in magazines such as Acumen, Magma, Interpreter’s House and in the on-line magazine, London Grip. She has won prizes in national and international competitions and has received many commendations. Her poem ‘The Parcel’ features in the oratorio, The Affirming Flame.

Aneesha Shewani

A summer in poems

Spring breeze, seeds with wings
Wildflowers take to the skies
Tales drift freely.

Dandelions aglow
Petals paint the morning air
Wild spirit untamed.

Sun-kissed daffodils
Cradle warmth in velvet folds
Earth wakes from slumber.

Summer drenched in light
Rhododendron calls for rest
Hill-bound bus arrives.

Dreams sprout wings and fly
Summer’s glaze on window rests
Within sight, yet far.

An urban life

Blossoms in your hair
Morning’s hues now faded brown,
Twilight train homebound.

City breathes out gray
Walls and drapes once bright now dull,
Heavy sighs linger.

Time leaves silver threads
Worry lines on my forehead
Battle scars run deep.

Home

Night’s stupor escapes
Morning’s kettle whistles soft
Warm breath of brewed tea

Cocoa swirls rise high
Tender sips warm my heart, soul
Wintery quietude.

Evening clatters soft
Scrabble tiles shuffle and rest
Words in gentle pause.

Whispers fade to white
Dreams tangle in restless night
Crochet hooks moonbeams.

Sea and Sun

Sunset oozes gold light,
An ocean burns deep within,
Destiny on tides.

Storm light gilds rough waves
Troubled waters rise then fall
Tides swish over moments.

Deep sunset glimmers
Gossamer raindrops whisper
Rainbow’s first shy steps.

Aneesha Shewani is an evocative Indian writer and poet, acclaimed for her vivid storytelling and emotional depth. Her poetry collection, Gossamer Whispers, and short stories in anthologies have touched many hearts. Aneesha contributes actively to the literary community through her blogs offering book reviews, writing tips, and inspiring insights.

Annie Sturgeon

free falling feather
bearing pewter pearls of rain
each globe — a mirror

heavy sky      calm loch
dark clouds creep down mountain sides
clouds of mayflies rise

Annie Sturgeon is an Aberdeenshire writer and artist interested in place, wildlife and human interactions between them. She’s widely published and has been Ginkgo prize longlisted twice.