Free submission window open until 30 April 2026
Writers published so far
A C Clarke, Anna Marie Kinkead, Christine Griffin, Clive Donovan
, Emeline Winston, Eric Nicholson, Glenis Moore, Jowonder Woodward, Julie Wiltshire, Kate Copeland, Marie Papier, Martin Rieser, Oliver White, Richard Devereux, Sara Stegen, Sue Gerrard
indicates audio with the text
What does peace mean to you, your family, your local area, your country? Peace of mind? The end of a war, battle, fight, argument, disagreement, misunderstanding? Having friends, lover, partner, family, job, money, security, untroubled future? Avoiding aggressive situations? Finding a peaceful environment?
How much peace do you expect or need? Today, this week/year/decade/lifetime? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about future peace, and why? Who or what is threatening, preventing, risking peace? What puzzling, misguided, intriguing, attractive ideas of peace have you encountered?
Peace in our time? The Peace theme was chosen in early February, as the prospect of a peace settlement in Ukraine seemed to be dragging its way nearer. Since then, another huge war started when Israel and United States attacked Iran. Soon 13 Middle East countries were targets of deadly attacks. By mid March the U.S. had lost 13 military personnel.
The road to peace is a vital part of this theme. Was Winston Churchill right when he said in the 1950’s that it was better to Jaw Jaw than War War?
In short, what poems or stories do you have relating in any way to Peace?
Whatever you submit, the Wildfire Team looks for writing that grabs our attention, pulls our heart strings, leaves us open-mouthed or holding our breath, makes us think, makes us laugh or cry, and/or is strikingly original. In short, words that excite us enough to share them with Wildfire Words readers.
We aim to be inclusive of writers worldwide. We respect all people‘s free speech and their beliefs, individuality, well-being, and free speech — and expect the same from all writers. We’ll publish any work that adds fresh creative spice to this submissions feature. We’ll evaluate your written jewel, whether it’s a cut and polished dazzler or a rough stone with some interesting lustre. So please don’t hesitate to submit. More on our submission philosophy.
Each writer may make one submission as a single file of text or audio** containing 1, 2, or 3 items, each of which can be poetry, or prose and no longer than 50 lines or 300 words including title and any dedication or note.
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We accept audio-only submissions of up to three pieces of work, and each poem or story is no more than 300 words.
With your submission, please supply a biography of yourself in the third person and in no more than 60 words.
We prefer unpublished work, but will consider any submission that we can legally publish or republish, that is an original and respects our submission philosophy. If your work is published in Wildfire Words, it will be on a non-exclusive basis for at least one year. The copyright remains yours for all poems, bios, and audio recordings you submit for publication.
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Jowonder Woodward
The Gun
We, a posse of curiosity boys on bikes,
lounging on banana seats, and taking sideways looks,
headed down the barrel of a gun, moved on down the
gat and quivered a little, all lined up for
the powder flash to shoot us out.
But there was a joker onboard—
a sailor with a fixation on a sweet paper waiting to hatch.
N’ when they pulled the trigger, he was caught off guard.
N ’ we too forgot to shoot! . . . and instead of violence
we all became rapt, as the sweet paper, swirled and swirled,
ahead of us like a walnut whip.
So we held fire, had a talk
n’ decided to form a choir.
The Stopped Time of the Butterflies
Startling unicorns with bright red coats balanced like agile goats along the wall of the ravine.
Some raised their heads and dashed out, while others lazily drifted off to sleep.
The water that pumped under them, held the memories of the dead ones like lumps of jelly. They were only once waiting for the passing sun.
I slid down to where a dull eyed one stood grazing.
She lifted her face half looking at me. Dozens of red butterflies where feeding on the blood inside a cut on her forehead where her horn once grew.
I cut her free.
Smoothing a soft hand from withers to tail, I found a metal cog. The bullet of a clock; it would have been a lethal device for anyone— but for a newborn unicorn it could be fatal.
“Go !” I said, for it was the Buddha’s horse.
She blinked, and her eyes covered over like dark stars.
The butterflies continued on, they had an economy of their own. All they wanted was blood!
“But had I heard the beauty of their feelings expressed in the sound of the water? Or was it just Humpty Trumpty banging a drum?”
If I could just sit and be content, perhaps every one of them would be set free?
The Three Sheriffs
Three men searched the universe
riding horses run on shadow oil.
They blew their noses into thick handkerchiefs,
the night they each got a star.
Three holes appeared in the sky,
ready to be cooked up in a splendid pan,
to make a lone marinade.
But the taste, when eaten, raised memories,
and it surprised them—
feelings that they couldn’t quite place!
Like they’d heard it all before, but
hadn’t paid enough attention.
One man heard a voice,
‘Now you put us back from whence we came!’
So, he guiltily tipped his star down the drain.
That man vanished forever, never to be seen again.
The second man thought hard and put his
star back into the sky; that was at half past three.
Six o’clock, the third man took his watch.
Lit his match, and burnt his star to a flame.
The three men were not wise,
but insane.
Jowonder Woodward. Dame Marina Warner commended Jo’s fairy tales for their subversive use of narrative in her book about fairy tales: ‘From the Beast to Blonde.’
2025—‘Dream Logic,’ an evening of surrealism, Goatstar Books.
2025—”The Riveraine Muse,” a West Bengal publication, three poems,.
2024—’Surrealist Poems About Clocks,’ published by Sulfur Editions, her first solo poetry book.
https://www.jowonder.com/
Emeline Winston
New Year’s Revolution
What are my hopes and prayers for this year –
only one – is there any way to put a stop to the fear?
This acrid sweat and sting of cortisol fear
lived and mirrored by attacker and defender.
When the clock strikes midnight across the world
could the tanks turn into pumpkins, and drones into birds?
Birds which could squawk off on alternate thermals,
to alter the arch and yawn of those dirty rocket bombs.
Aching hearts blown apart onto the concrete rubble,
the overarching terror of the still-alive. Sole survivors
of whole family huddles, nowhere safe to survive,
no one to hug or cry with, no buildings left to call home.
Aching hearts and trapped screams of the hostage families,
unable to rescue, trying to break free from their stone confines,
stuck, desperate to do, to act, to move, to run towards,
to hug and to whisper to “It’s okay, now you’re home”.
Is it not easy to create change or simply not to do?
Is it not possible to
just stop it, stop it, stop it?
To the hands igniting rockets: lay your hands back down
just stop it, stop it, stop it.
To the fingers which press confirm aerial bomb: lay your hands back down
just stop it stop it stop it
and learn to sit still,
like Buddha.
Revolutions of Intransigence
Do you know the one about the Irish man, the Muslim and the Jew?
Sitting on a bench in Jerusalem’s Old Quarter,
after morning prayers in each of their holiest shrines,
the Irish Man said “For God’s teeth, can’t you lay down your guns?”
the Muslim said “Bismillah, they need to stop the drones and the bombs.”
The Jew said “Baruch Hashem, they need to return our hostages and stop the rockets”.
And the Irish Man said: “For God’s teeth, can’t you lay down your guns?”
Though in their soul, they thought they might have heard a punch line
circling on the desert wind. They look into each other’s eyes when
they realise what they had heard swept up on the wind’s broom,
directed through hairy ears into their hardened hearts. Could it have been
“I forgive you”, “I forgive you”, “I forgive you”.
Emeline Winston is a producer of exhibitions in museums. Poetry came into her life unexpectedly. In 2019, she was invited to what she thought was a poetry reading, but was shocked to discover a poetry-writing group. It brought joy — and consolation through covid online meetings that went on for two years. Emeline continued to write and recently started to share her work.
Marie Papier
To be the Other
I don’t want to be in your shoes
but I am. My thoughts are your thoughts
and I pray as I bond with you to
share your grief.
Why should it be you and not
me? not us? why should you have
your father shot and not mine?
Why must you see your mothers raped
your babies murdered and not ours?
You. You. So let me be you.
Let us be in your place, let us lose
our brothers in this war, watch
our houses destroyed by bombs,
our future erased.
We’ll weep with you. We’ll plead
with you for peace on earth.
Peace on earth.
Peace.
Marie Papier has poems published in The North, Stand, Agenda, The Lighthouse, Orbis, Ink Sweat & Tears and others. Online. In anthologies: Smith/doorstop on Running. Indigo Dreams’ ‘Voices for the Silent’; Bristol Stanza’s ‘Calyx’; ‘Weather Indoors’ ‘Walking Words, Poetry Walks in Bristol’s Past and Present’; ‘Bonds’, Lyra Poetry Festival 2024 & Poets’Walk. Shortlisted at Cerasus ‘After Picasso there’s only God’.
Clive Donovan
Rosa
My neighbour is murmuring;
‘It could be almost worth dying to know
that such eulogies would be said of me!’
The local poet is declaiming, over open grave,
his tribute to the daughter love of his life,
in which he manages to insinuate
[as in the order of service so emphasized]
several varieties of her name:
You were a Special Child, Rosa, with an Angel Face.
Born as a little Blue Girl, in a Burst Of Joy,
to the tune of Distant Drums—Good As Gold.
Falling in Love with you was such a Perfect Moment,
when All Dressed Up, to Make Me Blush, Oh My!
You were fragrantly beautiful, a Dream Come True,
Picture Perfect—a Knockout!
And now you have found Peace at Rainbow’s End;
my Sugar Moon, Hot And Sassy, Lemon Drop;
I own you were the White Licorice of my life.
His gardener friends clutch knowingly their caps and nod.
A scarlet Floribunda rests by excavated earth,
the waiting claws of root-ball wrapped in damp hessian.
Ug throw bone
Ug throw bone at Ig
cos he done like face
Ig chuck rock at Ug
then Ug get mad n throw
stick-o-burning wood at dog-o-Ig
So Ig fetch spear n let go
wound one kid-o Ug
oh—Ug fury n shout!
Get bow n arrow shoot n hit
woman-o-Ig in belly where new kid waitin
to cum in so Ig howl then
cum runnin fetch two bros
do bit ax hackin
to Ug famil—kids n wimmin
soon rocks n arrows n spears fill sky
people die blood spill
Old ancient elder maybe he forty year
come by see what noise is mekkem stop
but they no listen to wise
so Neanders big chaps live near
they come over set up peace-camp
call for ceasefire play music start dance
but they no listen for while too mad
then change mind start dance.
Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Crannog, Pennine Platform, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems. clive.donovan@live.com
Martin Rieser
Music Room
This is the reason we bought the house–
large and bright with peaked windows–
looking out on apple trees, a silver birch, and a cathedral,
in the long view between opposite houses.
This is the boat that sustained us in the shipwreck
of your body. Weeks on the sofa while the sepsis healed,
and then your place of recovery after cancer.
The grand piano shakes off the gloom, it rings
and thrums under sure fingers. The arpeggios
ripple around the blue walls, cross and recross the space
until the music and light become calm sea.
In the licence of long marriage
We occupy the bed like two defeated armies
my side, your side, an armistice–
our emissaries are hands, which meet
in no man’s land, carrying no flags.
If you miss me, the hollow in me misses you
as much, because we are now beyond flesh
in our long days, beyond doubts, here
where all the wars end and love begins.
Blue Water Lilies
for Claude Monet
His world is now raw colour.
Things blur into each other, definition–
is not his concern. Relaxed,
he paints a purity of blues
derived from the sky’s cheek
where it touches the water.
Lilies gaze upward
with wide eyes of wonder,
while the willow trails rough tresses
like swirls of flotsam
inside his failing gaze.
Martin Rieser is both a poet and visual artist. His interactive installations based on his poetry have been shown around the world. He runs the Stanza poetry group in Bristol. Published: Poetry Review, Magma 74, Morphrog 22; Poetry kit; Primers Volume 3, Artlyst Anthology 2020, Alchemy Spoon 2022, Ink Sweat and Tears 2019/2023, Write Out Loud Anthology 2025, Vole Anthology 2025. Shortlisted: Frosted Fire 2019 /2022, Charles Causeley Prize 2020;Runner up Norman Nicholson 2020; Winner of the Hastings Poetry Competition 2021.
A C Clarke
Heatwave
A ruckus in the street. Then silence.
Windows being open this stifling night
fresh voices needle in. It promises to be
a long trudge towards sleep.
Gulls clamour hours before first light
spreads its workaday apron over
the belly of the sky. Step by step
drowsiness overtakes me,
I mist into dreams.
At the first touch of the sun
peace homes like a dove.
Trafalgar Square addresses the crowds
Listen up punters! All you who mill around
my familiar sights, feeding popcorn to the pigeons,
wondering who the statued worthies are,
making snide comments about whatever’s showing
on the fourth plinth: docile as Landseer’s lions
you play the good tourist, check off one more sight
stored in your iphones, have a vague notion
of Nelson and Trafalgar, never think once
how people have gathered among my fountains
to cry out against perceived injustice.
From Bloody Sunday marchers clubbed by batons
through bomb-hurling suffragettes
to anti-war protesters, climate warriors,
my few metres of asphalt have seen years
of demonstrations, peaceable or not.
A Christmas tree stood here only last month,
the gift of one free nation to another.
Think of the ties of friendship, forged
under bombardment, under bombardment still.
Put your phones in their cases, turn
to the stranger standing next you,
no matter where from.
Smile, stretch out your hand.
Tranquillity
to all who love peace
A wealth of water birds cluster the shore,
paddle the still water under a bright
heatless sun. A tree spreads out
branches still clutching autumn’s dark finery.
Low hills embrace the loch. The sky
ignores the rainclouds hovering to the east.
A moment and a place at peace.
Despite our fractious times, may you have many more.
A C Clarke has published six collections and seven pamphlets, three in collaboration. She was one of four winners in the Cinnamon Press 2017 pamphlet competition with War Baby. Her last full collection was Alive Among Dead Stars (Broken Sleep Books December 2024). Her third collaborative pamphlet, Chiels & Quines, was published by Seahorse Publications in December 2025.
Oliver White
Imagine
voiced by Ruthie Moriarty
A Place
A knowing
A feeling
Beyond your imagination
Where Essence
drifts in and out
of Essence
The deep, calm rhythm of
the Infinite Cosmic Continuum wrapping itself around Me
External Eternal vibrations seep in engulfing in a gentleness of tranquillity Yet, so overwhelming
I feel this Calm beyond Calm moving towards Me
I welcome it with openness
Its exquisite purity pervades Me
The Basis of Existence
Oliver White is the pen name of Alan Sanson. Two years ago, Alan started to receive poems from his lighter self. He and Inara Bell have self-published on Lulu.com and have published movies with audios on YouTube. They thank Ruthie Moriarty whose voice brings this and their other poems to life.
Anna Marie Kinkead
Sanctuary
Just at the very tip of the place
where our diagnoses meet
There is a space
For ecstasy and joy and abundant giving
Bathing in the fragility of our trauma
We calm like a balm
We save like a salve
Together, we are safe
Just at the very tip of the place
where our diagnoses meet
There is a space where pheromones fly
Our chemistry crackles
And we are wild with our loving
Slick, as we lick
Trusting our lusting
Loving and loved
We are home
Anna Marie Kinkead loves all that is vibrant, authentic and that speaks to the reality of lived human experience. She has written for the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health and is currently exploring the way poetry distills what is raw and real. Her creative pieces have appeared in Down in the Dirt, Wildfire Words, and Spillwords.
Christine Griffin
The Lament of Harry Jones
My name’s Harry Jones, I’m a hundred and five.
Of all my companions the last one alive.
Those men who fought with me, once young and bright,
all of them gone into endless dark night.
It’s Armistice Day and they’ve wheeled me down here
with the legless, the blind, the ones who can’t hear.
but all I can think of is Chalky and Turk
and the others all drowned off the coast of Dunkirk.
They mustered the willing, the able the fit,
and told us that all of us must do our bit.
So me and those brave lads marched off to the war
to keep Hitler’s army away from our shore.
It’s so long ago I can barely recall
the names of those lads who gave of their all,
to end up forgotten in some foreign land,
the bravest of men, my companions, my band.
I look at these lads lining up in the Mall
and I know what they said was a lie after all.
There’ll never be peace, just suffering and pain
and the whole thing will happen again and again.
There’s a man from the telly who’s asking me stuff
and I tell him straight out that I’ve just had enough
of presidents, rulers, the merry-go round
of missiles and drones and boots on the ground.
And I say to you young folk, when the call comes
and the sabres are rattling, the fife and the drums,
be brave, tell them no, make a fuss, make a stand.
Cry out to the heavens for peace in our land.
My name’s Harry Jones, I’m a hundred and five.
Of all my companions the last one alive.
The men who fought with me, once young and bright,
all of them gone into endless dark night
Christine Griffin writes poetry and short fiction and is widely published in Acumen, Wildfire Words, The Dawntreader, Graffiti Magazine and Poetry Super Highway amongst others. Her work has been showcased in both the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. In 2025 she was Highly Commended in the Laurie Lee Prize for Writing for her short group of poems on the theme of ‘Journeys’.
Eric Nicholson
Enchantment
Apologies to WH Auden
About enchantment they are never wrong,
The Poets. How well they understand it isn’t
Found in Distance & Determination.
How well they understand, as the bombs drop
One man’s need to weed his garden;
How one woman sets a moth trap
Inside a shattered shop and in the morning
Lovingly lifts out a Death Head’s Hawk-Moth.
How a mother snaps her son’s
Toy gun across her knee and how
The Humming-Bird Hawk Moth’s hum
Drowns out the sound of distant guns.
In Vincent’s Great Peacock Moth for instance
See how each leaf flutters towards the light;
See how his fragile sanity trembles on
Each transient wing and how his vision
Triumphs in his Starry Night.
Eric Nicholson is retired and as well as writing he paints in acrylics and other mediums. He lives in the northeast of England.
Sue Gerrard
Comfort
Barren, bleak, harsh landscape,
Yet there is comfort here
Beside the stark power of the hills
The water gently laps by the shore,
And the contours of the scene
Are softened by the morning sun.
I shout at the mountains and
They whisper back my name.
Yes there is comfort here, as
The hills engulf me like a friend’s arms
The water ebbs and flows
Like true friendship and sunlight
Warms my face like a lover’s smile.
Quiet Time
The boats have not yet come
To the banks and there is
No family chit chat carried
On the early morning breeze.
There are no signs littering the trees
With warnings about tipping
Or rubbish or walking on the grass.
There are no pop cans with
Ten pence back or special offer foods
Or polythene wrapped super goods
Discarded on the paths.
No chart sounds disturb the air
Or walkers turn the ground,
For this is the quiet time
When nature is around .
Sue Gerrard has 24 published books including 11 poetry collections, 2 ghost novellas, and a collection of ghost stories. Her 9 local history books, some published by Amberley, include St. Helens in Fifty Buildings (2025). She was twice awarded ‘Robert Lord Writing Residency’ in Dunedin, New Zealand in 2019. Pear Tress Press, New Zealand, then published Poems for the Cottage. More information on suegerrard.com
Glenis Moore
Under the flag
Peace is something that seems to allude us.
It hides in the muddied trenches of war,
afraid to show its head as the missiles fly.
It runs, like a scalded cat, from the noise of battle,
flooding the bombers’ flight paths with its tears.
It turns away from the blood and pain of orphaned children
too tired to even acknowledge their loss.
But, when the fires have all burnt out,
we look for it and ask it to stay,
just for a while, until our hatred returns,
with its promise of death to those we once embraced
in friendship under the flag of a hope
we once unfurled for peace.
Glenis Moore is a poet who currently lives in the flat lands of the Fens just outside of Cambridge UK with her partner and three rescue cats. When she is not writing, Glenis reads, makes beaded necklaces, knits, cycles and runs 10K races slowly.
Julie Wiltshire
Finding My Peace
Words call out from this page,
Fight or flight.
The psychoanalysis of my behaviour,
My justification, childhood scars.
I learnt to survive at a very early age.
My sensitive and gentle responsiveness,
Leant only towards my grandmother.
My hardened characteristics,
Moulded from the past,
Remain tattooed on my tattered heart.
The power within the wilderness of my muddled mind,
Was to keep myself unconquerable.
Over the years my scarred emotions,
Became too deep for tears.
Many times, I teetered on the edge
Of the abyss but stepped backwards.
My eyes became absent of passion.
Grievances grew into monsters.
I picked at my weeping scars,
Through the loneliness,
Of the aching night time hours.
Alas I yearn to change.
I wish my tomorrows,
To be void of all sorrow.
I wish, to be acquainted with miracles.
To view the world with a sparkle,
In my diamond faceted eyes.
I’ll seek out my solace,
And fill the constituency of my thoughts,
With love, tenderness and forgiveness.
Blow, blow a feather of gentleness,
Upon my healing heart,
And let my splattered soul find the peace,
It now, in old age, so richly deserves.
Julie Wiltshire has been writing poetry most of her life and has just had her third book published – A Plethora of Poetry and Prose. She has been published in many anthologies.
Sara Stegen
Fjord horse peace
Iris said:
‘Relax your back.’
‘Don’t work against Gwen.’
“Breathe out through your shoulders.’
I believe Gwen heard
the cicadas
in my back
relaxing.
I never would have believed
that a Norwegian Fjord could breathe
peace –
into me.
Battle-weary hearts on sticks
You tell me I should trust
but the signals point the wrong way
red lights flashing
how can I trust
these things you still say.
There is a highway of hurt
running through these flatlands
and I do not know where to stand
you may have stuff planned
but I so do not understand.
Please, please
I will throw my heart again
on those barbed wire songs of yours
one more time
once more to the breach
battle-weary heart of mine.
See me waving my heart
a white peace flag
on a stick.
Please surrender to me
yeah, you the one ou t there
so, I do not misunderstand
anymore –
no more, no more
hit the road Jack
and open – just open the door
and put your hurting heart
out on a stick
perhaps we can hold a swordfight
with both our hurting hearts
I will even let you win.
Sara Stegen is a Dutch poet and non-fiction author. Sara is a mother of two neurodivergent sons. She is a member of the Poetry Society Germany Stanza group. Home is a boulder-clay ridge in the northern Netherlands where her bike shed contains eight bicycles and where she works on a memoir about apples and autism and her first poetry collection.
Kate Copeland
peacefeeling
when rain falls, sweet
heart, choose the pines
that open arms
and root in motion
when roar rises, sweet
love, draw present
word-whispers, past
the surfaces of sea glass
in a world where nights
continue royal, the clouds
neatly on a trot, a shore
under the carpet and
whenever you waver
my sweet, aim for temples
that sun and moon
and bad ends up best
peace being
picturing with eyes open, escaping
for so long, she yields up strict walls
like a roundabout, no interluding, no
yonder, and the blue hour
wins over crests on driftwood lands,
royal swans protecting cygnets, clouds
ward up, for so long, the rowing sculls
cleave words beyond, and her
moon quarters around his angels’ day,
picturing her state, the eyes certain as
a poem washing in high palms, peace
she reifies, being on her way.
Day between daze and consolation
Out of a chaos of sheets and
shower towels, rises a sixth
sense, a voorgevoel, she opens
curtains to hear the clear
radio announcing: they cease
the fires – Unbelievables
can happen, right
when all, alles, has become un-
believable, the day became
everything, alles; maybe
now, despite, everything may be
after all – set right.
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, and runs workshops & open-mics for several writing networks. Find her poems @ TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] or @ https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/. Kate was born in harbour-city & adores housesitting in the world.
Richard Devereux
The Lasting Peace
The Great War was over –
the War to end all Wars.
Now, the lasting Peace.
The peal of bells faded,
even the sorest of heads cleared
in a couple of days,
and men climbed long ladders
to take down the bunting.
Old men could now die happy.
Some did.
Others knew better
the nature of the species.
They watched and waited
as the victors fixed the sum
of the loot they required,
redrew boundaries with crude tools,
and institutionalised peace.
Institutions pickle the mad;
perhaps an institution
could preserve a big idea
like Peace?
Then Christmas came,
and families counted places
around the table
for the living and the dead.
Richard Devereux lives in Bristol. His pamphlet Coal and Fire has recently been published by Culture Matters. His poem “Beirut” won the Mist and Mountain International Poetry Competition in 2025. He is a committed philhellene and is interested in all aspects of Greece, ancient and modern. He often writes about Greece. His greatest poetic influence is the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos.