From 1 January to 28 February 2025, we feature our seventh open submissions window — free to enter.
Submissions are open via the submission form below.
or for audio: a Wildfire audio recording session | send your own audio recording
Feature editors: Howard Timms (audio), Katherine Parsons (text)
Alphabetical list of writers selected for publication to date
Published writers, linked to text, audio, and biography.
Writers here without audio can record it by clicking on this link.
Annie Ellis
, Annie Sturgeon, Christian Ward, Clare Bryden, Dave Wynne-Jones, David Birch, David Dawson, Diana Hills, Edward Alport, Elio Escoffery, Gareth Adams, Ivor Frankel, John Bartlett, Jonathan Chibuika Ukah, Kate Copeland, María Castro Domínguez, Neil Beardmore, Pam Job, Paris Rosemont, Paul Thwaites, Peter McDade, Stafford Cross, Trisha Broomfield, Wendy Webb, Yvonne Crossley
indicates one audio
As usual, we are looking for writing on your own choice of theme 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.During this submission window, each writer may make one submission as a single file containing a maximum of 3 items — poems and/or prose. Each item can be in any form, but no longer than 80 lines or 300 words, including title, stanza breaks, dedication or footnotes. For all submissions to Wildfire Words, we choose only content that follows our inclusivity policy of respect for all writers, regardless of their background, beliefs, ethnicity, identity.
We encourage you to make an audio recording of each item 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 strength and meaning of your writing. If you prefer to join one of our online recording sessions to submit, click on this link.
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.
To submit your text and bio (with or without audio) please click on this link.
To submit audio after submitting text and bio, click on this link.
Submitted writing must be your own original work, in English, and unpublished in print or online, including your own website.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 poems, flash, 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 text. 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 keen to share the work on Wildfire Words.
We do not charge for submissions — or for feedback, if we choose to offer it on work not accepted on first review. Our publishing service is non-profit-making, created with a love of sharing creative writing and social and personal growth it produces. Donations to support Wildfire Words’ sustainability are welcome, but voluntary. A donation does not affect whether we publish a submission.
We aim to include writers worldwide. We respect all people and their well-being, beliefs, individuality, and free speech, and expect the same from writers. 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.
An entry form for text and audio submissions is below.
(Audio only can also be submitted using this submission form. If you have a problem submitting, please email info@wildfire-words.com)
Annie Sturgeon
Egg cases washed up on the beach
expended en cauls
miscarried during storm tides
cold empty cradles
Dawn vixen
(In Doric dialect, then standard English)
Snaw-shurl frae hencoop
Smoors fresh feetings in grampels
Grispin thief escapes
Snow-slide from hencoop
Smothers fresh tracks in fine snow
Twilight thief escapes
Oh for clear air
There’s a heaviness to the air now;
it’s harder to breathe.
The dampness of doubt settles, and smells
like a slumped, wet dog too weary to shake.
With stifling humidity,
this covidity crushes like a migraine.
Sweat clings to clammy brows, fogged
by real news and viral, fake news.
There’s a grumbling thunder of negative speculation,
of bitter accusation and darkening clouds of blame.
We need (that dog, and you, and I)
a decisive crack of lightning
to rip this muggy air apart,
to split this stagnant stalemate
into clear ideas we can believe in,
so we can freely breathe again
and feel refreshing rain.
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.
Paul Thwaites
Seven Haiku for Geoff
White eye of winter
Stares into the heart’s landscape,
A last rose blooming.
A fist grips tighter
Closing its hand in darkness,
Curled around soft palms.
The lips fall silent
Land in its secret stillness,
Awaits seeds still speech.
Earth sleeps in sadness,
Waiting in vibrant darkness,
Dawn’s touch of new light.
Sun’s gift of memory
Brings into earth its promise,
Of new arrivals.
Sunlit horizons
Entice soft palms to open,
And free dawn’s white dove.
A conjurer smiles,
Wings are the wonder of light,
And the snowdrops love.
Two Birds
Two birds flown,
Lives still warm upon my palms,
Wingbeats fade like whispered psalms,
Toward the Great Unknown
How far their flight
From broken shell, deserted nest
Following the sun down west
And leaving night.
Stars ascend in overarching sky,
And distant shine ~
A portent and a sign
Beyond the compass of my eye,
Beyond what truths I may discern,
My birds have flown,
In joyous clamour of the dawn,
They may return.
Round runs the cycle of the heart,
The slow earth turns, to bring new sun,
And new begun,
The dawn birds start,
Lifted with song this light to praise
Up with the sun return two birds,
I give you my blessings and my words,
To sing in the Chorus of The Days.
Paul Thwaites has been writing poetry and prose pieces since childhood. He had a collection of work published alongside imagery by Graham Ibbeson, the sculptor, titled High Noon to Midnight and was asked to read his poem “NHS” at the unveiling of the COVID Memorial Sculpture in Barnsley.
Paul recently finished a novel The Habit and The Hood, and is seeking publication. He also enjoys writing short stories and articles.
David Birch
Call me Achilles
I am the leash that tugs your body back,
the unseen chain that tags you,
tracks your keening ache,
sends the impulse blip to your brain.
I control your tread, your step,
your leap into the air, your flex
of ankle when you run.
I escaped the surging stream
that soaked your infant flesh.
I lie close to the surface of your skin,
watchful, tense and bloodless.
Chagall
In your revolution of the eye
dust from the beaten rug
becomes your milky way.
Broken glass in the muddy track
reforms and resolves
into vibrant stained-glass blue
The cart and horse pull away
but you fly
you fly with Bella
across the town
leaving the fiddler
dancing on the tiny roof
and the floating cows
and plunging birds
only for them to return
with acrobats and clowns
to fill your hectic canvas.
Leaving is your story
from Belarus,
Moscow
Paris
New York
and displacement is your theme.
Ballad of the Briefcase
We found it when we cleared your home,
with all the stuff you’d never need again.
It was fit for the skip, until I remembered the way
it swung by your side as you walked off to work.
It paid the price for bulging papers and books,
split at the seams, shrivelled and worn,
cracked on the surface and rough to the touch,
but it swung by your side as you walked off to work.
I took it to show you: sharp recollection
threw a lifeline to your grasp on a fading past,
then you told me the story of how it came
to swing by your side as you walked off to work.
Your father found it at the end of the war,
in the back of his cab, and passed it to you
when he drove you to catch the Oxford train,
where it swung by your side as you walked off to learn.
I’ve had it restored: patched, renourished and sewn;
your initials replaced and a strap attached,
so it hangs from my shoulder and nudges my hip
and swings by my side as I walk down the road.
David Birch worked in education and lives in Devon. His poetry frequently explores the relation of people to their landscape, environment and past. Several of his recent poems have been published in Wildfire Words.
Clare Bryden
18
clad in over-laundered white
chest armour carefully deployed
gauntlet on the right
foil and lamé wired
the solitary fencer
cuts formalities
mask already lowered
steps up to the piste
en garde
Learning to float
Trust
the salt water under your head.
Do not let your chest cave in—your feet
do not need supervising—keep
your whole body straight—
take a deep breath, immerse
your crown and contemplate
the borderless sky. Yes
yes, this sea is powerful
but you know its gentle
swell if you keep awake will
never take you far from shore.
Stretch your arms and legs out wide.
Become embodied star.
Made for your hand
You have made us for yourself, O Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
St Augustine
Somewhere on this earth is set
the antipode of Pebblebed,
where no-one ever sifted
for a sea-smooth stone,
their hand a perfect shape
for its comfortable weight.
Somewhere over the horizon
of my sharp-edged Ithaka
I sense a waiting antipode,
where someday I shall find
I am that stone, sea-smooth
and shaped to my eternal home.
Clare Bryden is a writer, artist and web developer based in Exeter, UK. Her interests are wide-ranging, but primarily the place of human beings within the natural world of which we are part, and the related theology and psychology of connectedness. Her poetry has recently been published in Dawntreader and Time of Singing.
clarebryden.co.uk | @clarebryden.bsky.social
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.
The Psychedelic Bus
The bus is in a subtle state of bliss
Left brain, right brain, solar, lunar.
We take it to the depot after work
With its one strange forward gear
And 23 reverse.
We play it Kathleen Ferrier and Bjork.
More is always merrier.
We pump the tyres with rainbows.
We derv the derv with derv.
We often change the oil
For a more complicated oil.
Famously the bus
Is seven-tenths water
And bears the indelible imprint
Of all that it is not.
Peter McDade currently aspires to be the man on the Clapham Omnibus. While studying poetry and maths, he has paused to consider the sacred.
Christian Ward
Underfoot, you are beautiful
The dew-scripted lawn
nibbles at my feet
like a horse convinced
I’m made of sugar cubes.
Something worth savouring,
something worth saving.
The morning light’s liturgy
sweeps aside yesterday’s
marginalia of mistakes,
while my feet march
towards the elderberries
caught in the apocryphal
tomes of dusk, repeating
join us, join us, join us.
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet, with recent work in Southword, Ragaire, Okay Donkey, and Roi Faineant. Longlisted for the 2023 National Poetry Competition, his work was recognised in the Ware, Bridport, Maria Edgeworth, Pen to Print and other competitions.
Stafford Cross
The Grandfather of all Paradoxes
After Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Uncle Mad Hatter. Can you build me a Time Machine Please?
I miss my Grandfather and I’d like to see him again. He used to give me Sweeties and Presents.
Of course my dear Alice. But be very careful how you use it. Here’s One I prepared earlier.
No it’s not! It’s just a mirror.
But it’s a special mirror Alice, made of Schwartzchild Glass.
Look straight ahead in the Mirror and you can see what’s behind you, and your right hand is now your left hand.
Any Mirror can do that!.
Now. Hold my hand, Take a deep breath, and we’ll walk inside the Mirror together.
What’s Happening ¿I’m Downside Up and Front to Back!
Don’t be frightened. We’ve just turned Inside out. Everything, including time, is the other way round.
Mr White Rabbit, Can I borrow your Pocket Watch please?
?Time the that Is !Whiskers And Ears My Oh
Thank you. Look how the watch is going anti-clockwise. If we wind the watch forwards in our time, we’ll go backwards in Grandfather’s time. Just Watch. We can’t change anything!
We’re going to start at the End, go forward to the Beginning, and then Stop.
Oh No! We’re too late. It’s Grandfather’s Funeral. They’re digging him out of the ground!
Tick Tock. The Ambulance brings him back from Hospital. The Paramedics put him into bed.
He’s awfully poorly. Grandma’s kissing him gently. Oh Good. He seems to be waking up a bit.
That’s not how I want to remember him. Fast Forward to my Sixth Birthday please.
Tick Tock.
Don’t I look Young. I was a different person in the past.
Hey, don’t do that!
He gave the other me a kiss, took my Birthday Presents away, and walked back out of the door. That wasn’t very nice. I hope something nasty happens to him.
Tick Tock! Off we go again. Where are we now? Oh Dear!
Help! He’s in a Battle. He’s shooting dead enemy Soldiers and making them alive again. But they’re not very grateful. They’re shooting at him and he’s having to run backwards across No-Man’s Land until he’s safe in a muddy trench. With the Rats. I’M SORRY Granddad. I didn’t mean it.
Tick Tock! Let’s move on a bit
Oh my Goodness. You look so handsome. Just like the Boy I’d like to meet and marry.
But you’ve already got a girlfriend. She looks like Grandma might have done if she was younger. And you’re helping her put her clothes back on.
I bet you were a beautiful baby.
Tick Tock!
Oh Yes you are! But you’ve got a . very . smelly . nappy.
And you’re ever so clever. You cleaned your dirty nappy all by yourself.
I’d like to meet my Great Grandmother too please.
Tick Tock!
Hello Great Grandmother, What A Great Big Baby Boy you have.
Tick. Push Last One Just. DELETED EXPLETIVE – EXPLETIVE DELETED
OH!!! Oh!! oh!
I’m not sure I wanted to see that. Please can we go home Mad Hatter. We’ve reached the Beginning.
Stafford Cross is a recreational poet and retired chemist who has dabbled in art (rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Show), campanology, folk song and dance (Ukrainian style Cossack dancing), (finalist in Sidmouth’s Traditional Singer), Poetry (Prize-winning limericks by the score) and story telling. Only recently published (Wildfire Words).
Edward Alport
The Hand That Holds the Crystal
Re: Sulamith Wülfing
There is a story to be told in every edge
Each point and pinnacle sings with rhyme
And every facet paints a picture
And tips the balance with a grain of sand.
The glow that glitters in the crystal’s depths
Distils the starlight from the dawn of time
And whoever holds the crystal
Holds eternity in the palm of his hand.
I’m not so brave that I would dare
And not so arrogant that I would care.
Those points and edges lacerate.
Their expectations carry too much weight.
The crystal’s range is way beyond my power,
Though I might see heaven in a wild flower.
Crossing the Field
One for the I and the me and the eye that runs with the stars in the hair.
Two for the hand in the hand and the green grass and the cool of the river.
Three for the weight on the back and the wall and the stile and ditch full of nettles.
Four for the song in the frosty air, the fire in the grate and the roast of chestnuts.
Five for the lost love, for the empty seat and the empty cup.
Six for the throw of the dice and flutter of leaves and the softness of grass in the meadow.
Seven for the silver of stars, the tracks of small things and the echo of laughter.
Eight for the whirling dance and the flashing blades and the knot of lovers.
Nine for the stately procession of cups and saucers, tea pots and boiling kettles.
Ten for the broken jug, the broken heart and the broken promises.
Eleven for the first pure pledges of a pure young heart beating.
Twelve for the glide and dip of wings barred with gold and the hunting.
Thirteen for the ring of stones and the ring of blades and the fighting.
Fourteen for the empty horizon and the last of us standing.
The Briar Patch
There is a hill
There was a hill
I know there used to be
a hill here but it disappeared,
and now there is a foam
of bramble rioting
as far as I can see without a drone.
There may be paths for rabbits;
Brer Rabbit, he could tell me,
but with my skin too thin
and by head too high I cannot pass.
It is a world out of logic, a hole in time
filled with spikes and anger,
surly and impenetrable as a tank trap.
There is a hill, cowed
and subjugated by the bully boys,
staking their claim and proclaiming their own truths.
Do we need the hill?
Why would anyone go there?
But oh! … But oh! the blackberries and their sweet!
Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He currently occupies his time as a poet, writer and gardener. He has had poetry, articles and stories published various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. He used to post snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.
Trisha Broomfield
Your Duster
Your red hemmed duster swipes
at post war wood, lint snagging in crevices,
dust motes, refusing to rest, circle like tiny raptors
waiting to land the minute your back is turned
the aroma of Duraglit burns our nostrils
copper shines reluctantly, determined to dull
in time for Christmas, brass takes notes
and as for silver, its name is already blackened
Bex Bissell’s best carpet sweeper,
rolls its brushes over autumn leafed rugs
surreptitiously spilling custard cream crumbs,
as many as it swallows, followed by collar studs
Acdo Glowhite bleaches black moods and coal dust
from the scallop-hemmed nets in the back room
the front, with its velvet three-piece suite,
reserves itself for the scent of Johnson’s Lavender polish
Flash flushes across tiled floors
frothed tides wash up by front and back step,
cobwebs are largely ignored, lending a grace to the place.
Squeezy stands to attention on the draining board
Ire is released with the carpet beater
a wiggle of strong wire and a rubber handle
dust floats eagerly, racing back through open windows
waiting to land the minute your back is turned.
Trisha Broomfield has had three pamphlets published by Dempsey and Windle and contributed to many anthologies. Her new collection, My Acrostic Mother, deftly illustrated by Heather Moulson, is available to order from bookstores and online.
You can hear her poems in the podcast Poetry Worth Hearing and BBC Upload.
Instagram: @magentapink22
Facebook: Trisha Broomfield Poetry
Dave Wynne-Jones
In Storm
the air is blurred with driven snow,
plastering the windward side
of trees, lamp posts, telegraph poles
with a white shadow, double-image,
as though they had shifted
as a low-light photo was taken.
Not a bird in sight in this blizzard.
Then the gulls came.
Black-backed and Herring,
wings wide-spread like sails,
hanging on the antagonistic air,
a flick and flap, and hanging there
again, then, close-hauled,
beating into the wind
as if it was an adversary
to be defeated or there was another
place they absolutely had to be,
no other bird airborne,
in their element, none
running before the storm.
Nightfall
Glowing orange clouds
Float against a night-blue sky,
Petals on water.
The naked trees are
Printed on the afterglow
Of evening skies.
A damp blue fragrance
Of moonlit thistle flowers
Drifts out of the dusk.
Dave Wynne-Jones left teaching to gain an MA in creative writing at MMU, then wrote articles for outdoor magazines and organised expeditions for mountaineers. He’s published two books of mountaineering non-fiction and two poetry pamphlets, whilst his poems have appeared in eight anthologies and magazines including Orbis, PNReview & Dark Mountain. He reads regularly at various Bristol Spoken Word venues.
Elio Escoffery
Drifters
It was some day, when the earth looked away
She chewed on nails, hunting roots
I’d pity my hand for use the nude polish chipped me
I inhaled her, whilst I could
To give apples, you must know grief
The falling flat and hollow kind
Upon you pass, breaking blooded ways, surrounded by rotting scenes
Cream, not ice white legs, we only are what sparrows do
Crying to smile, old forever young
Courage would have taken longer to love
Backing away your outline shimmers
It bleeds through any starved day
Without change, only television stations
Locked in place, the odd flashes
Her butterfly clip fastens, but flutters, loose enough for strands to roam
That unbuttoned, white linen shirt
Playing down the cemented path
My breast still beats today, though thick air spreads dense
We planned to night by the coast, her car doors still scratched
Bloodshot, engine taste hands
Tell me of nothing less than pain
I’ve been motherless this year, fog spills in the window crack.
The flies are angry birds today
They spend time taunting this room
I try to read, they perch my curls
We keep space, the chunks of soul
Their missable sound crawls near
Teasing my hand, you spare nothing one finds the paper lamp, agony
I sit to watch, for both of us
We’re circled together by height
Most hours floated idly by, spewing cluttered riddles your way
The gardens oaked stripped trees, bent all, drifted weight
Whilst stroking her blue palms warm, I stretched out the days skin
How a symbol could stir dusk Seldom, no leaf ever was
Elio Escoffery bio to follow
Ivor Frankel
The Wanderer
Weary of wandering
I stopped by the river;
I saw myself in the water
gradually drowning,
rushing onwards
towards the sea,
a fluid identity
without any words.
In the shifting current
stones find new places
people change their faces
as time churns,
the pebbles wander
towards the beach
the stones bleach –
the seas thunder –
dragged by the tide
into the deep ocean
where whales
slowly glide:
as the days travel
further upstream
in my daydream
they slowly unravel.
Ivor Frankel is a Cornish Bard, a member of various writing groups and an enthusiast for languages. He enjoys exploring history and family history and writes to please myself and to comment on the world we live in for now.
David Dawson
The Rime of the Covid Mariner
(after Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – obviously)
It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three,
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stops thou me?
Two cubits is the distance
The government deems fit,
And every time you speak to me
You shower me with your spit!”
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“A virus came…” quoth he.
“Hold off, unhand me, greybeard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.
“Hearken stranger, fear of death,
And panic in the aisles,
Supermarkets suddenly full
Of jibbering imbeciles.
The virus here, the virus there,
The virus all around;
The virus sending careless folk
Six feet underground.
At length did come a stratagem
Through superstition it came –
‘Wash your hands; wear a mask;
Stay at home or bear the blame!”
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide settee;
And never a saint took pity on
The detritus on T.V.!
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck inside our houses
And every-which-way that we turned
Nothing to see but spouses.
The food we stored did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be;
And we did speak only to break
The mindless monotony.”
“I fear thee, ancient mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!”
“Fear not, fear not, thou scaredy-cat
This body dropped not down.
So many folk, so beautiful
And they all dead did lie,
And a thousand politicians
Lived on; and so did I!
Ah wel-a-day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young.
I was, they said, a clear knob-head
To ignore the stratagem!
I looked to heaven and tried to pray
But a deafening silence fell,
They knew it was my birthday bash
Had sent them all to hell.
The virus did proliferate
There was no antidote;
It even took the pious ones
Who knew their prayers by rote!
O stranger dear, this soul hath been
Alone with his calumny;
So lonely ’twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be!
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
The agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land,
A piteous apparition,
More spurned and more despised
Than e’en a politician
.
I have lived my life right on the edge,
Far beyond and in-between;
But never knew I a deeper dread
Than virus Covid 19!”
David Dawson is used only to the applause of the beating wings of appreciative Pyrénéan ravens or the shrill derision of woodland jays. He is honoured to maybe have a human or two to share with.
Wendy Webb
Learning to Swim for Britannia
I was a mermaid or garden fairy, dancing round and round
in circles in the raised-sides swimming pool of blue fabric.
Massive covered pool in the grounds, for the children.
Just stand – so – and leap forward…
I launched myself on the tide of doggy paddle, breast stroke,
front crawl, back crawl, butterfly, and underwater.
Bronze, Silver, Gold, Third Class Distance, Bronze
Medallion; Bronze Cross: Lifesaving; swim a mile,
so, messing about in the College pool, holding breath,
struggling out of soggy laundry, to prove that mermaid vanished
long ago; before I could swim.
Except – dead fish in water – enlightenment: breathe in and out
through cotton fabric; struggle, flop, escape. Not drowning.
Waving. Relaxing to fine living (wine, chocolates, movie, warmth)…
Titanic. Unbelievable. Nice crockery, beautiful woman, a necklace
and heart-inspiring love affair.
Except, not waving, not now. Mermaid of the cold North Sea,
dipping white feet into brine and hoping no jelly fish floated inland.
Not dancing now, as harsh sirens bewail disaster on disaster
offshore. An ocean away. Underneath the flat earth of now.
So when a TV Drama shows an able-bodied swimmer drowning,
drowning, saved in time. Autism. Harsh sounds and crowds
in a modern leisure pool. I remember that mermaid long-ago,
raised-sides swimming pool in plastic blue; a huge tarpaulin
calling time, squelchy swimming-costumed children running round,
sharing verrucas, bathrooms, and hand-me-down clothes;
wonder about the flotsam and jetsam Britannia-bright
of a toddler grounded like bladderwrack. A world floating an incoming
tide and beached. The price of cheap hotels; and mermen, drowning.
Wendy Webb loves nature, wildlife, symmetry and form and the creative spark. Published in Reach, Sarasvati, Quantum Leap, Crystal, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers, Dreich, Leicester Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry, Acumen; online in Littoral, Lothlorien, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Atlantean; broadcast Poetry Place. Books: Love’s Floreloquence, and Landscapes (with David Norris-Kay).
Annie Ellis
Old Friend
I did not want you to go
we had many happy times together
you were always there when I needed you
we worked together as a team for years.
I laughed when you went wrong sometimes
when bad mistakes came between us
I got angry, frustrated
trying to work out what you were doing.
You were getting old
slower as you age
you couldn’t store any more
in your clever brain.
You will forget my gentle tapping
on your keys
turning you off
when I had finished with you.
I must move on, take a new friend
who is fast and more dependent.
Stone Moon
Stone moon holds a moment
you thrash upon a galaxy of pebbles
send me reeling.
Calmer with a sea fragrance
my golden barge floats
like a leaf on your thoughts
as the tide babbles.
Soothing waves caress
fingers of seaweed
softer than sand
slide over wet stones.
Shells fall like crumbs
stone moon releases you
my boat sinks as we embrace.
Diana Hills
Babyhood and Old Age – Like to Like
Babyhood and old age – like to like
the small, squirming body, jiggling, wriggling,
cute for some, burden for others,
the little dictator, imperious, tyrannical,
ruling its small world with fists of iron,
screaming, face screwed with fury,
demands must be met, chaos without limit.
Old age, the small shrunken body,
spasms and jerks,
My lovely to some, albatross for others,
senses destroyed, words mumbled, obscure,
a dictator by accident, tremulous, beseeching,
a once person reduced to a shell,
demands unmet, chaos of the mind.
The differences,
babies grow and get old,
with a life in between,
so many variables, so many ifs,
old age shrinks and grows young,
life lived, descends to the void,
so many variables, so many ifs.
Diana Hills started writing late after a life changing event. Di enjoys performing and listening to live poetry and feels lucky to have different opportunities near where she lives.
Gareth Adams
Rod at Eighteen
I
You were chopping wood
In the old cellar
And your mind wandered, as it did.
You trimmed the top
Off your thumb and then
It hung by a flap,
A comma of skin,
At the end.
And the doctor
Stitched it back on
Ignoring the blood.
II
One evening in late spring
(I remember cherry blossom still)
You came home with a bee sting in your arm.
It swelled up like a white fat
Worm of a log, until it hardly seemed
A part of you at all, but grafted on.
You were pronounced allergic
To some stranger in your blood,
Dosed, and you slept.
When you woke you played it tough.
Your arm returned to its normal size,
Finally became part of you again.
III
Sunday, before the sun, at 5 a.m.
A knock, and the front door opens
On you, the policeman, your sling.
Too fast on the Penshurst Road
Your bike and collar bone broken,
Twigged on the one tree in the field.
Watching you next day at rest,
How much else was there
I wondered,
How much of Rod came through
The sting and crack, the heavy snow,
The shock, the cut, the break of you.
Remembering Rod
These knees can no more grind out five years arrears of prayer
Then you can answer me from where you are.
The cushions stay beneath the dark pew.
In my dreams you enter as a stranger (as always)
Stage left with a bottle of brandy, a borrowed guitar
And songs you play to remember yourself.
I remember you as a child.
In the back bedroom, with a mouse
We couldn’t let Nan know was there.
I remember you as big brother
Posing on the doorstep of No. 26
As choirboy with a smile mugged from a cherub.
I remember you
As a child would.
These things I polish and lay on the table.
These things you have left for me.
These smoky offerings blowing cold into the room.
We had said goodbye so often
This new mourning feels somehow rehearsed,
But there is no preparation.
There you were, and then you weren’t.
For five years we observed no rites.
No birds fell from the sky.
Your face is still there above the guitar
But I have forgotten the sound of your voice.
Gareth Adams is retired. His poetry has been published in Dreamcatcher, Iota, Fire, Equinox and The New Oxford Magazine, all some time ago.John Bartlett
John Bartlett
Sing the Sun in Flight*
weep for the moon’s soft vanishings
listen to the complex songs
of wattlebirds and
although the mouths
of our enemies are
honey-filled their
tongues are missiles
we walk past
the bodies in the street
they are just stones to us
we don’t look back
pay attention to what we love
not always to what we’ve lost
for these bones this skin
and all it holds in
are just on loan and
must be returned to earth
and worms so sing
the sun in flight
the moon’s returning
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, from Do not go gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas)
earth turning
does the earth not turn
obedient to its hidden plans
we are the psychopaths with
scissor teeth that tear earthskin
we are all those beautiful
confusions we’ve ever read about
like sulphur-crested cockatoos
divebombing supermarket carparks
did we not dance with joy
before we hid amongst the tombstones
all that is left for me now is
to watch hawks tumbling in cloudline
wingtips saluting endurance
I know now how it feels
to grow older as earth does
sclerenchyma *
mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds and
the slow triumph
of ripening pods
here lily stalks move
like living things
for this is
what they are
each a pale ballerina
arms stretching
sketching into
resistant air in
winds that conspire
to bring them down
then I’m overwhelmed
by the idea of love – the sap
that runs through each of us and why
time is such a narrow corridor
as we crawl towards the light
is it enough to just be here
to resist these winds
as lilies do
to briefly flower
then leave
* strengthening tissue in a plant, formed from cells with thickened, walls.
John Bartlett is the author of twelve books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He was winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and his latest poetry pamphlet is In the Spaces Between Stars Lie Shadows (Walleah Press) he lives in southern Australia.
Jonathan Chibuika Ukah
I Come to You with Words
I travel around the world
carrying no bags and no boxes,
wearing only the shoes of winter
and the clothes of summer;
I load words of warmth and light,
my body clinging to your shadow,
with the warmth of cicada’s songs,
filled with love, filled with hope,
such that make dry bones wet again
and the wet bones dry to live for long;
I come to you with my words on my lips,
my eyes catching the moon on its bed,
as the only olive branch, I can carry;
I plead for you to listen to my words
which can bear fruit and flowers
and give you bags of hope and joy
to survive another dreadful day.
If I arrive at your door with my words,
or speak of things you no longer need,
grant me safe access to the next door,
perhaps there is someone somewhere
for whom it is of general relevance
to halt the thunderstorms in their life.
One day, you will perhaps remember,
these words carry the sun in their pages,
and you will no longer step off the ledge.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the third Prize in the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2024 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. Jonathan’s second collection, I Blame My Ancestors, (Kingsman Quarterly, July 2024) was a Second runner-up at the Black Diaspora Poetry Slam in 2024. He was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024.
Kate Copeland
Play room
Next to you, hardly
casting sea level.
Pleated sheets,
the spiders restless; an
unfulfilled keeps coming back.
I may give every
truth you beg, a half
owned breath, face
full of little by little.
Sure hesitation.
The inevitable-wrong
bites me, forever, bitchy,
though law orders
to bird-eye houses over forty.
Our ministry of moving.
I am in dark how to stop
over-thinking, leaving
a fear aside the naked.
Ages from grip I stay
weighing up long-ago
ideas of wild and wander,
of ice-rain down a stark
wooden floor. At home
with questioning all
you were teaching me, I
used to shield an extra
man westerly, who
sneered-schemed his own
November monsters. How
to mayhem a plunge pool
into handsome mistakes?
Fate never flaws when
women wonder the magnetic
sense of safety, emerging
from the unlit. Removed,
remote, I blend all herbs.
Evening out.
Turnout
I exit Oregon, the sun soon rising,
a 5,000-feet radio crackling; crows
circle the freeways to my California.
I spot the clearcut seasons at Lava
Creek deep.
Rental steers till darkfall, I buy shame-
less petrol station liquor, settle on
a Marshy Motel. Seasick will I never.
Folks here down a minute-meal, but
Joe and I
each beer
almonds smoked at One-
stop shop. I’ll bolt in my room, later.
Months of maybe ahead, I steal
sugar at the counter, and matches,
though I quit a world ago. At least
you got some dreams to drive back to,
Joe carps,
switching to soccer. I enjoy there is
no ego at borders. Once, with ex,
I was a Silver swimmer. On my own:
past parking strong. I’m woeing over
interval classics,
rock-rib the Hopper gas tanks, Dutch-
like barns.
Villages so jilted,
the star-stripes startle. Dollar trees,
president flags. Scenematic dreams
and fallen rocks, as pines trade them-
selves for Redwood Empire now.
I readjust the disorder
of salvation. Welcome-Cal poppy sign,
bright blue elation, despite a water-cold
bomb cyclone. Firewise, fearless days.
I selfie coast, google
if butterflies bleed.
I love this
road differently, follow leaves, and clouds
out loud. Mirrors I hardly meet.
Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for TER and the IWWG. Find her poems @ TER, Wildfire Words, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] and https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ Kate was born in harbour city, and adores housesitting in the world.
María Castro Domínguez
Leaf Pieta
I saw a girl on a balcony,
yellow flowered smock and plaits,
sobbing onto a packed suitcase
glazed by the moon’s pool.
A strong boned woman walked toward the girl,
like an actor just remembering her line,
her face washed out and hushed
her hair glistened in the gloam.
She picked up the girl, balancing
one hand under each little arm,
she picked her up as if she were gathering
a bucket of blueberries to take home ─
their shapes together like a leaf
with shoulders heavy after rain.
María Castro Domínguez is the author of A Face in The Crowd, her Erbacce–press winning collection. Winner last year of the first prize in The Plaza Poetry Prize. She was highly commended in last year’s The Red Shed Poetry Comp 2024 and made it to Renard press’ The Building Bridges Poetry Competition shortlist.
Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals such as Popshot, The Lincoln Review, The Friday Poem, Orbis, Chattahoochee Review, The Cortland Review and Backlash Press.
Neil Beardmore
Making Tracks*
(In Memoriam: for Lance)
I saw plaster casts,
footprints from a beach
they’d pressed up a museum wall,
A woman carrying a baby.
You said you wanted to leave something,
show you’ve travelled through,
you’d been somebody,
you couldn’t leave a footprint, you said,
not from a wheelchair,
there were no tyre tracks
in sand for fossils, only prints.
So we made poems instead,
and spelled out your definitions,
let out the poetry of who you are
and we printed that
hoping its fossil would last.
*prehistoric footprints on Formby Beach
Neil Beardmore has performed his poetry widely including St Ives Festival where he co-performed Painters and Painting. Published in Acumen, Orbis, The French Literary Review, Allegro, Sarasvati and others. He was placed in the top ten of 8,000 entries of Erbacce’s 2024 competition. Neil’s interview and works will appear in Spring. Website: neilbeardmore.com
Pam Job
Seaquence
i
Beside the sea, at the shoreline with its diaphanous scrim
and dark acoustic calm, he holds the conch above the water –
we see its skin of light find the harmony survival will depend on.
ii
There is no narrative here, just an ocean of time
where breakers dash themselves on rocks
and the sky is a blue you could climb through to the sun.
iii
Undercurrents in ourselves recognise the same old empty
sonorities, while boats filled with hopes sail amongst bones below,
arabesques of breaking surf failing to carry them.
iv
We know the mechanics of waves cast out all certainties.
Small stones try out their stories on the man struggling to breathe through ropes of time tightening around his throat.
All Together, Elsewhere
Years pass; our lives are drawn on our faces/carried
in our arms/walk one pace behind us in a dance
accepting loss on loss on loss, forwards, backwards,
in the trek from one refuge to another – all our protections,
the fabric that makes us; we wear shreds of ourselves.
Here are the shrivelled borders of me, show me your borders,
the boundaries of your minds, are you in never-ending
dialogue with where you are from, the homes you built
with your bodies? Do you ask yourselves each day what
you are running from to get it straight when they ask you?
Where were you born/who guided you here/how did you
travel here/there/who is waiting for you when you return/
are returned? Who is your leader/where are your weapons?
We tell them we worry we forgot to free the caged
birds before we left. We tell them we plugged our ears
with beeswax not to hear our parents’ grief.
We don’t tell them, we are kin, feel my skin.
Pam Job lives in Essex. She has won prizes in national and international poety competitions including The Plough, Magma, Cornwall Contemporary Poets, Suffolk Poetry Society, Frogmore Papers, Kent and Sussex, and has been commended and sortlisted in many others.
She has had poems published in Acumen magazine, French Literary Review, South Bank Poetry and the online magazine London Grip. She has co-edited five poetry anthologies and her poem, ‘The Parcel’ was included in the oratorio, ‘The Affirming Flame’ which was premiered at Snape Maltings in 2019.
Paris Rosemont
Remnants (a haiku series)
(i)
staring at the cracks
in the ceiling—remnants of
a great depression
(ii)
out of compost springs
new life—an onion—beauty
worth crying over
(iii)
wobbling through heat haze
spitting on hot tin bonnet
eggs sunny side up
(iv)
whip bird pierces air
thundercrack of blue fragments
punctuating peace
Paris Rosemont is an Asian-Australian poet and author of poetry collections Banana Girl and Barefoot Poetess (WestWords). Her debut was shortlisted for Poetry Book Awards in Australia, Greece and the UK, and awarded ‘Distinguished Favorite’ in the NYC Independent Press Award. Paris has forged a niche in theatrical performance poetry. She may be found here:
https://www.instagram.com/msparisrose | https://www.facebook.com/parisrosemont | https://www.parisrosemont.com/
Yvonne Crossley
A melding of coloured threads
Stretched and rolled, pummelled and pressed,
until soapy stress performed its magic twist
and the damp wool and silk fibres began to mesh –
white, brown, pink and blue – into a soft square.
This creative skill, learned one friendship afternoon,
felted beauty through mindful thought and process.
My fingers massaged the long fleece staples, capturing
a secret valley with its grazing sheep folded there.
The silken colours of pale birch bark, wiry fescue, mingled
with a splash of moorland sundew, refreshes old smiles:
I sense a faint hint of dag dung and the lingering
sweetness of sheep’s breath bleating in the leesome air.
Yvonne Crossley is inspired by art, nature, a sense of place, self-reflection and the wonder of words. An Open University diploma in Creative writing and literature in 2008 led to joining a Scottish writing group and developing a love of writing that continues today.