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last update:

17th Jan25

Maggie Butt photo
e-mail Maggie
Maggie’s website
Maggie at Wikipedia

poetry favourites:
Poetry Society
The London Magazine
Acumen
London Grip
Ink Sweat & Tears
The High Window

and shop elsewhere…
collections –

“Wish –new and selected poems”
and
“Lipstick”
Greenwich Exchange;

“everlove”
and
“Degrees of Twilight”
The London Magazine;

“Santi Clandestini – Undercover Saints”
Ward Wood Publishing;

“Ally Pally Prison Camp”
Oversteps Books;

“petite”
Hearing Eye;

pamphlet –
“Quintana Roo”
Acumen

Lipstick

In war time women turn to red
swivel-up scarlet and carmine
not in solidarity with spilt blood
but as a badge of beating hearts.

This crimson is the shade of poets
silenced for speaking against torture,
this vermillion is art
surviving solitary confinement,

this cerise defies the falling bombs
the snipers taking aim at bread-queues,
this ruby’s the resilience of girls
who tango in the pale-lipped face of death.

Maggie Butt

in collections Wish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0;
and Lipstick, 2007 Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-8715519-4-5

Lipstick

Maggie Butt

in collections Wish – new and selected poems, 2025, Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0; and Lipstick, 2007 Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-8715519-4-5

in collections Wish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0;
and Lipstick, 2007 Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-8715519-4-5