poetry pRO Jan 15, coming soon: weekly featured broadcast
poetry tREnD … 30May14: launch of Poets in Person…

buy Poem Cards for Anytime – poetry p f SHOP ONLINE (and type ‘Card’ into the filter box)
EVENTS LISTING – readings, courses & venues
COMPS & CALLS – 30 / 31 Jan: Sentinel / Torriano / Teignmouth, Kent & Sussex, Slipstream

Site Patron: Andrew Motion

Poetry competitions: these organisations support poets in a unique way – let’s help them to help us by submitting entries whenever we can. At worst, you’re giving your support; at best, you may win! And even if you don’t, you may have a poem selected for publication or have an opportunity to read at an adjudication event … Slipstream: Judge Roger Elkin (editor of Envoi for 15 years); Torriano: Judge Martyn Crucefix (teacher, reviewer, critic, translator, several collections); Teignmouth: Judge Penelope Shuttle (has to be in our top 10 poets…); Kent & Sussex: Judge Mario Petrucci (another of our top poets…). More details on the Comps & Calls page.

The Book of Love and Loss, eds R V Bailey & June Hall (hbk, from Amazon, Waterstones, etc). Sample it at YouTube … a fine collection
387 poems, of which 114 are by 48 poetry p f members… 50p per copy sold goes to Parkinson’s Reasearch.

donations will be very gratefully received.

latest on site:

Caroline Maldonado

Sue Davies

Tanya Nightingale

latest new pages:

Comps & Calls

30Jan: Torriano;
31Jan: Teignmouth,
Kent & Sussex,
Slipstream

Poem Cards, books:

ppf shop online

latest cards:

Anne Stewart (Birthday)

Katherine Gallagher (Anytime)

shop window:

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Comp results:

Second Light 2014

Frogmore 2014

featured poet, Moira Merryweather

1976

I can’t slake the Severn’s thirst
with bore-hole or Welsh water,
no more than I can stop
the tidal waves of bathers
who, needing to cool-off, strip, leap
like stampeding wildebeest
into fluid oozing with effluent
and never a word from you in Kurdistan.

If you drink from a spring
shaded by a fig tree
you would feel younger, more loving…
but while shapes of buildings
from Shrewsbury to Gloucester
mirage in and out of sight
I don’t know if you are alive to care;
there’s still no word from you in Kurdistan.

When spirochaete death
is reported, Britons are warned
not to swim in rivers, streams,
the Malverns spark, flicker, burn
and every cricket pitch turns to brown.
My hair reverts to blond again,
skin colours up like ripe dates
but nights are filled with sweat-terrors

hearing of bullets ricocheting
into mosque, shop, child, traveller
and the reservoirs writhe
with gasping fish
and petri-dishes colonise
with rising numbers
of pathogens in the River Severn
all the way from Craig Goch to Chepstow
while your face fades, your voice is silent in Arbil.

The lines quoted are by Gene Burns, ‘The Stuff of Myths’, The Atlantic, 1999