About Us
'Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.'
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Veronica Aaronson
What Remains Unspoken
Yes, it was me who cleared
my throat on that hot June day
as we pulled into the platform,
said the man in the worsted suit.
The sun had layered light with dust
magicked her shape into being,
as it had been the hour of our parting –
dress bright as a buttercup,
hair drawn back from her face,
eyes misted to an unfamiliar blue.
She pressed a letter into my pocket.
I saw her place the letter in his pocket,
said the station clock.
It was the bright sunshine dress
that caught my attention,
so at odds with how they were;
their fingers lingered, parted only
when arms ran out of stretch,
eyes kept contact until
time and space overtook them.
She waited too long for his reply,
said the picket fence.
I heard she married Tom Brackley,
the post mistress’s son.
The steam couldn’t comment,
it had been lost to the air, unlike
the flavour of their unspoken words
which still clings to the brickwork,
is stored in the memory
of the willow and meadowsweet
around Adlestrop.
When everything’s quiet
it doesn’t mean
nothing’s happening,
said the poet’s ghost.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ian Royce Chamberlain
Ebb
We sat through the tide
watched the ebb and listened
heard the last thin trickle
of her breath
waited for the turn but knew
She’s gone, my sister said
not a time to smile but we did
in a shaky kind of gratitude
for easiness
for the flat calm drift of her release
Out there
where the detail deltas into mist
and the sea herself is sleeping, there
is a hard-cropped horizon
flat and finite as the line across her screen
No barriers, no dam
she always said she’d put up no resistance
feared abandonment in jaggedness
some rockpool fetid with decay
content she was with a quiet emptying
While we
like shoreline kids with salty eyes
ran up and down the beach discovering
her footprints were
unaffected by the tide
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jennie Osborne
What Remains Unspoken
Yes, it was me who cleared
my throat on that hot June day
as we pulled into the platform,
said the man in the worsted suit.
The sun had layered light with dust
magicked her shape into being,
as it had been the hour of our parting –
dress bright as a buttercup,
hair drawn back from her face,
eyes misted to an unfamiliar blue.
She pressed a letter into my pocket.
I saw her place the letter in his pocket,
said the station clock.
It was the bright sunshine dress
that caught my attention,
so at odds with how they were;
their fingers lingered, parted only
when arms ran out of stretch,
eyes kept contact until
time and space overtook them.
She waited too long for his reply,
said the picket fence.
I heard she married Tom Brackley,
the post mistress’s son.
The steam couldn’t comment,
it had been lost to the air, unlike
the flavour of their unspoken words
which still clings to the brickwork,
is stored in the memory
of the willow and meadowsweet
around Adlestrop.
When everything’s quiet
it doesn’t mean
nothing’s happening,
said the poet’s ghost.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ian Royce Chamberlain
Ebb
We sat through the tide
watched the ebb and listened
heard the last thin trickle
of her breath
waited for the turn but knew
She’s gone, my sister said
not a time to smile but we did
in a shaky kind of gratitude
for easiness
for the flat calm drift of her release
Out there
where the detail deltas into mist
and the sea herself is sleeping, there
is a hard-cropped horizon
flat and finite as the line across her screen
No barriers, no dam
she always said she’d put up no resistance
feared abandonment in jaggedness
some rockpool fetid with decay
content she was with a quiet emptying
While we
like shoreline kids with salty eyes
ran up and down the beach discovering
her footprints were
unaffected by the tide
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jennie Osborne
FIRST TO BLINK
And on the rain-slick road in front of me
white-staring staring me down
daring me down not moving
luminous in the moment in the car headlight
forty-mile-an-hour moment
flower-face feather-face
saucer-starer Blodeuwedd
taking me in
taking my lethal metal jacket in
and not moving facing me down
claw gripping carcase
pinning me down
till I blink brake swerve
into the risk of oncoming
lifts upward like a leaf
letting go of gravity
curd of mist
of white ash
dissolving to night to drizzle
blurring to peripheral
talons ungrasped
letting me run
leaving me smeared
furred and bloody
on the road
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Graham Burchell
TWO MINUTES SILENCE
At school a boy was allowed to climb the caretaker’s ladder,
clamber to a classroom’s flat roof, step carefully to a corner,
test his vertigo, and wait, trumpet in hand.
The chill snatched his trouser legs, pulled his hair, tugged
a colder place inside while a hush happened and watches
were checked. The headmaster’s was the only one that counted.
Like a bird in a tree and one on the ground each eyed the other,
until the tension would stretch no further.
An exaggerated nod: a hand gesture, and the boy blew,
slipped and slid around the first haunts of The Last Post
until he calmed and his breath brassed music; a sad calling
that stunned even the most unruly child into a chess pawn
on a plain grey board, ground, that for two minutes
would lose its play. It had stiffened – stiffened tighter
when a far off canon underscored. Imagine all their thoughts
spooling from a fax machine in the secretary’s office
for the adults to read about how much so many had yet
to learn of inner reflection, life and its Chinese burns.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And on the rain-slick road in front of me
white-staring staring me down
daring me down not moving
luminous in the moment in the car headlight
forty-mile-an-hour moment
flower-face feather-face
saucer-starer Blodeuwedd
taking me in
taking my lethal metal jacket in
and not moving facing me down
claw gripping carcase
pinning me down
till I blink brake swerve
into the risk of oncoming
lifts upward like a leaf
letting go of gravity
curd of mist
of white ash
dissolving to night to drizzle
blurring to peripheral
talons ungrasped
letting me run
leaving me smeared
furred and bloody
on the road
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Graham Burchell
TWO MINUTES SILENCE
At school a boy was allowed to climb the caretaker’s ladder,
clamber to a classroom’s flat roof, step carefully to a corner,
test his vertigo, and wait, trumpet in hand.
The chill snatched his trouser legs, pulled his hair, tugged
a colder place inside while a hush happened and watches
were checked. The headmaster’s was the only one that counted.
Like a bird in a tree and one on the ground each eyed the other,
until the tension would stretch no further.
An exaggerated nod: a hand gesture, and the boy blew,
slipped and slid around the first haunts of The Last Post
until he calmed and his breath brassed music; a sad calling
that stunned even the most unruly child into a chess pawn
on a plain grey board, ground, that for two minutes
would lose its play. It had stiffened – stiffened tighter
when a far off canon underscored. Imagine all their thoughts
spooling from a fax machine in the secretary’s office
for the adults to read about how much so many had yet
to learn of inner reflection, life and its Chinese burns.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________