Month: March 2023
Jean Stevens reads ‘Pye Black Box’ (Issue 90)
Regina Weinert reads ‘Helping you decide’ (Issue 90)
A Literary Coalface (Issue 85)
What are poetry magazines for? ‘It’s hard to see how a little poetry
magazine can make anything happen except satisfy the reclusive vanity
of the editor and the poets,’ says Nicholas Bielby in Issue 81 – not perhaps
without a tinge of editorial Weltschmerz. He is right, but provocative,
as he then goes on to say that poetry widens human empathy, which in
turn makes the world safer. I commend the full article to you, but his 400
words didn’t leave him space to say that there is more to it than that.
The small poetry magazine – a meme roughly contemporaneous with
modernity – is a literary coalface bringing new poets to engaged readers,
ahead of the more risk-averse big publishers. Almost every nineteenthand
twentieth-century poet, whose articulations of humanity’s deepest
existential concerns are now part of our linguistic bedrock, was first
welcomed by small magazines. We unpaid…
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William Bonar reads ‘Rebound’ (Issue 89)
William Bonar (1953-2021) was an established and admired contributor to Scottish poetry. https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/william-bonar/
Char March reads ‘Dislocating the Moon’ (Issue 91)
Emmaline O’Dowd reads ‘Dalhangari’ (Issue 92)
Cathy Grindrod reads ‘Curtain Call’ (Issue 92)
D A Prince reads ‘Artist’s impression’ (Issue 90)
Poetry Showcase: Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon (March 2023)
Overheard in on Sled Lane in Winter
Treading cautiously downhill,
on snow, sludge
and ice,
slipping slightly,
I saw two worn men,
their heads bent toward each other,
strict Covid-metres apart:
creased brows confiding feelings,
bald heads, carelessly exposed.
They saw me.
Nodded, smiled and said hello
in that old-fashioned, courteous way.
I returned their greetings, passed by,
heard drifting skeleton-words,
she was so good to me, when Margaret went.
Was Margaret his wife?
Was she a friend, lover, neighbour, daughter,
sister, doctor, carer? Supermarket cashier?
Sparse clues cued my thoughts
to loss and comfort,
pain and kindness:
life.
In that country lane,
three pairs of eyes brimmed,
red-rimmed by cold winds and warm thoughts:
connections, like mycelium, running underground.
Ode to My Pencil Oh, leaded pencil, with your scarlet rubber tip held securely in the grasp of your patterned metal shaft. I found you on a woodland floor…
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The Wombwell Rainbow 