poetry pRO
A Single Instinct
Hilary Elfick, Integral & CLP
ppf SHOP ONLINE
MEMBERS’ COMPS & CALLS 31st May, Frogmore
MEMBERS’ EVENTS/VENUES May: Shortlands Poetry Circle, 12th & 26th (live), 18th (online); North West Kent Stanza, 20th.
see/hear: Carole DeVaughn reading her poems at Poetic Voices
latest on site:
Julia Deakin
Joseph Long
Peter Ualrig
Kennedy
Judith Wozniak
latest new pages:
Barbara Hickson
Marina Sánchez (biog)
Kay Syrad
Elisabeth Rowe (poems)
Mary Robinson (biog)
John Gilham
COMPS & CALLS:
May26: Frogmore
latest comp results:
Frogmore 2025
selection of books:
ppf shop online
previous projects:
Poem Cards
Blyth Valley Radio
poetry tREnD
From an Armchair
Beyond the range of the King’s photographer
the forest of the meteorite
and its star of blasted pines;
beyond the islands of the Gulag
and the road of bones through endless forest
where winter is norm, lives pass unrecorded,
epics unfold their progress in silence,
towns work through unknown narratives –
all outside the great conversation;
beneath sky-scapes lashed with stars
and the unfolding green of borealis;
through Sakha, Yakutsk and ice crushed bridges
lies Omyakon between frozen mountains,
where they say in winter words freeze
as they leave your mouth to fall forgotten in the snow.
They make a tundra littered with gossip,
cries of love, argument and greeting,
speeches and shouts petrified in depths of ice
until one midday when larch are greening
and golden root makes a brief smile at the low sun,
words fall into air as if from a door flung open
to fill the town like birdsong and running water.
Christopher North
shortlisted for the Strokestown Prize, 2016;
in pamphlet collection The Topiary of Passchendaele, 2018, Smith|Doorstop Books,
ISBN 978-1-9121961-1-1
© Copyright of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site
feedback welcome
