Books – Hannah Darnley

To escape my frustration and despair

My name is Hannah Darnley I am 27 years old. I live in Canterbury Kent. This my poem “Books” below.

Books

I read books to escape. I come alive in them. My heart pounds and I’m no longer there, I’m the story, it’s me. I am living these lives of pain and pleasure. I am sick when I stand after reading, still foggy from the world I’ve left. Nauseous for a long time. My limbs are buzzing and I’m tense. Reality and unreality are mixed. I like the blurred feeling between make believe and the real. It’s addictive and I never want to leave. I wish I were made of books, made of stories to live and re live. To be reborn again and again as in books. To escape my frustration and despair at the nothingness that is my life. My sadness leaves me, my life is not wasted, youth not disguarded but living breathing and vital. I am free as I wish to be, flying high above my fears and worries, all forgotten. They have done the hard work for me gone past the fear of freedom, skipped the hardest step. So I’ll keep reading and maybe one day I’ll slip into the pages unnoticed and live them for real.

Hannah Darnley, Kent

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Fragile as Wicker – Laurence Morris

I want to get drunk on air

Laurence Morris is an Academic Librarian of Leeds Beckett University, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an active mountaineer. He has climbed peaks in the Andes, Arctic and Rockies, with his poetry focusing on the connection between people and landscape.

Fragile as wicker

There is a hole in the sky
where the willows used to be
fragile as wicker
holding back heaven
and less useful than a fence.

I want to get drunk on air
and laugh like water
feel leaf and stone like loving
and know that all which ever
lived and breathed is holy.

Laurence Morris, Leeds Beckett University

Voice note from a lover in summer – Luke Grey

When the city is nearly silent

It is a poem taken from a Whatsapp Voice note sent by a lover.

The author, Luke Grey, is a writer. He lives in London.

Voice note from a lover in summer

“One of the ways in which I love looking at clouds

Is to see them bisected by wires.

One of the most beautiful sights of the summer,

This late in the day, is when clouds take on

Their deeper tones.

Sometimes more intense, even, than the brightly lit sky.

When sat, or stood, or (now) walking on a platform

And looking up at the wires, the suspended wires:

Gliding towards each other,

Crossing, ending, held aloft, hitting a pole,

Marked out by the thinner wires than hold the thicker ones apart

And yet together.

That web of energy, stretching far across the city,

Only a few metres above me and the rail tracks,

Never meeting.

That web measures itself out between me and the sky,

And sometimes, sometimes, at the most exciting moments,

When the city is nearly silent,

And you stand on the platform and look up at the wires.

You can hear them fizzing.

Fizzing in a sky full of high, lunging, soft and smooth clouds

That sashay upwards and northwards.

Pink on their undersides, lit by the setting sun.

A dark lavender on their edges, and then above them

A pale, duck-egg blue.”

Luke Grey, London

Tomorrow – Bonnie Cheuk

What will it bring?

Bonnie is from London, UK. She writes poetry to complement her piano playing as a way of expressing unspoken thoughts and feelings. Her writing takes inspiration from personal experiences coupled with creative depiction of stories that derive from imagination. The fragility of life and the expanse of astronomy are themes she likes to include throughout her work.

A little bit about the poem – Tomorrow:
It was written as part of a three-part poem (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow) and is about looking forward to Tomorrow and what it will bring, whilst remembering and reminiscing a loved one who has gone to the skies.

TOMORROW [明天]

Tomorrow

What will it bring?

Will songbirds still sing?

Maybe a change in human nature

Discovery of a new creature

Let us write historical scripture

For tomorrow and our future

Can you still hear me talking?

In times of lonesome walking

I wish you were still here

To wipe away today’s tears

Yesterday was difficult

It brought me to a halt

A time capsule is what I need

To plant more memory seeds

I don’t want them to fade

Willing to put tomorrow up for trade

Just to see you once again.

Bonnie Cheuk

TXT SPK – Joyce Walker

Don’t b l8

Joyce is a retired administrator who has had poetry and stories published in a number of magazines. She won 1stprize in the Writers Brew story competition in 2002 and was runner up in the Erewash Writers Burst Flash fiction competition in 2013. Her most recent win was 1st prize in the Writers Forum Poetry competition in the July 2016 issue of Writers Forum. She loves the First World War Poets.

TXT SPK

I ave 2cu

It can’t w8

2 o’clock now

Don’t b l8

If ur

U’ll leave me cryn

4 I’ll think

Our luv is dyin

Joyce Walker

Romanticism – Aisha Bibi

I do regard the sky often, wishing upon a shooting star

My name is Aisha Bibi, I am a full time A level student, studying Sociology, Geography and religious studies. Am 17 years old and like to think that I have a lot of extraordinary life experiences.

Romantism

He has me caged in a sanctimonious romantism

By which a dwindled hope, became a beacon of light

By which I barefaced crave, to be the nostalgic character

Whom he voluptuously gazes at

But I know she couldn’t be me

For I am attainable, so not the one he’s looking for

And not the unattainable like his love, he so loves the unattainable

I do regard the sky often, wishing upon a shooting star

That thou he isn’t mine

Someday in my dream his voluptuous gaze, might free me from this cage

So together we can rescue the goldmine wrecked ship

In which he sails away, treasuring her

And I will treasure the voluptuous gaze

While regarding the sky

So, I can wish upon the next shooting star

–Aisha Bibi

Paper Bag Seagulls – Chris Quigle

Clothes plastered to my limbs

Paper bag seagulls

Paper bag seagulls
scrawl across the
dying day
Slivers of disappointed rain
hang within the air
Darkness slowly suffocates
as chill wraps his arms around
my broken shoulders
Crested puddles
seek refuge in my shoes
Clothes plastered to my limbs trying
to keep warm
As the new born night
steals the light of passing cars and lamps
breathing in the antidote
of mixed rain and sprayed wind
that cures the poisoned day.

Chris Quigle

Entangled – Jacinta Noel

The path crossed with thorns among bushes

My name is Jacinta Noel, a student originally from West London but currently studying Law at the University of Exeter. My story is not unlike many others you may have heard in relation to their poetry journey, but I started to write down and express my feelings and thoughts as a way of self-expression, and as a reaction to things occurring around me, to not only deal with that but also to be able to reflect and look back on my journey and be able to develop as a young individual.

Entangled

Wrapped up in wires,

The source? (untraceable).

She searched for the beginning,

Longed to see where it started –

Where it begun.

But still nothing but a hint;

A mere nudge in the direction.

The path crossed with thorns among bushes.

She gives in –

Unwilling.

The prize not worth the pain,

But stuck confused with a longing for purpose (acceptance).

Wrapped up in self-gratification.

Alas.

Jacinta Noel, University of Exeter

The Window Seat – Karen Middleton

Looking like a modern-day snow white

My name is Karen Middleton I am a performance poet from the North east I have 6 poetry books published. I also love writing short stories I look forward to seeing the results.

The Window Seat

Ticking, all the right boxes,

Flicking, through the pages,

Auditioning,

For the role of book worm,

On a mission,

Turning pages,

Seeking reason, reading from centre stages.

Potentially, reading on the window seat

Now she is residing, hiding,

Wrapped up finding her purpose,

Waiting until motivation peaks

This month, this moment, this week.

Remembering incentives,

The source, the provocation, the basis,

Stopping, selecting, marking pages

Keeping places, with bookmark, an indication.

To mark her place

To locate in case inspiration breaks

Another brainwave,

Another creative creating, another creation,

Looking like a modern-day snow white

A basket of clothes at her feet

Did she carry on writing

Or did she fold the clothes

Well ,you’re listing to a poem.

Karen Middleton, North East England

What Memory Tastes Like – Sasha Saben Callaghan

we drank sweet, black coffee, flavoured with orange peel

Sasha Saben Callaghan is a writer and digital artist. She was a winner of the 2016 ‘A Public Space’ Emerging Writer Fellowship and the 2019 Pen to Paper Awards. Her poetry, short stories and illustrations have been published in a wide range of magazines and journals.

Sasha’s lived experience of disability and impairment is a major influence on her work.

What Memory Tastes Like

Yes, I know what memory tastes like.

It’s a triple espresso from Las Violetas,

a coffee house in downtown Buenos Aires,

with terrazzo floors and marbled Corinthian columns.

Now, when the smell of arabica or dark cerrada

hangs between flurries of snow in the wintery air

I go sailing away, down the Rio Grande

Due southerly, from Colorado to the Gulf of Cazones

to dance the tango in some basement jazz bar.

Mocha means riding a sleek, black horse across Patagonia.

cantering over the pampas in distant Tierra del Fuego,

where two great oceans collide.

Blue Haitian reminds me of watching from the veranda

of an estancia near del Santiago Estero,

as a charm of humming birds, tiny living jewels,

darted between barberry thorns, frangipani flowers.

Blue throated goldentails. Collared Incas. Sparkling violetears.

On the first night climbing the Andes,

we drank sweet, black coffee, flavoured with orange peel.

Star anise melya, poured straight over ice,

like the heat and the breeze in the mountains.

Sasha Saben Callaghan