Quote of the Month
(archive)
February 2024
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"Dick's duck dived as deep as Dick's dog dug"
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From Read Me and Laugh
Poems chosen by Gaby Morgan,
Macmillan Children's Books , London, 2005
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January 2024
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"Schnee ist gefallen, lichtlos. (Translation: Snow fell, lightless.)
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​From the poem 'Schwarze Flocken (Black Flakes)'
by Paaul Celan. See “Black Flakes / Schwarze Flocken:” Celan & Ukraine – Nomadics (pierrejoris.com)
December 2023
"We can all be refugees
Nobody is safe"
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From 'We Refugees' by Benjamin Zephaniah RIP 7 December 2023.
See Three poems by Benjamin Zephaniah | Books | The Guardian
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November 2023
"Terror is incredibly pedantic."
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From 'Utterance Shared Only with the Dishwasher She Sinks Her Hands Into' by Momtaza Mehri
in The Poetry Review Volume 113:2, Summer 2023.
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October 2023
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"(I)t is
forbidden to love where we are not loved."
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From 'Material Ode' by Sharon Olds
in Stag's Leap. Jonathan Cape, London, 2012
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September 2023
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" i could call a cat a meowopotamus,
who would care?"
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From 'Day 71: Honiton' by Stephen Lightbown
in The Last Custodian Burning Eye Books, Portishead, 2021
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August 2023
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"(T)he minutes crawl the way dust gathers on its victims."
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From Pepper Sed by Malika Booker
Peepal Tree, 2013
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July 2023
"It's easier with instructions;
Moses would tell you.
But he wasn't the poet."
From 'If asked to write an elegy - '
Shannon Smith-Meekings
in The Poetry Review
Vol. 113:1, Spring 2023
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'It's not true that our shadows disappear at
at night. They're released
like a breath.'
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From 'A Shadow on the House'
by Philip Gross
in The Thirteenth Angel
Bloodaxe Books, Hexham, 2022
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Quote of the Week Archive
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Week Commencing 24th April 2022.
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'not one of my friends was allowed to live in her body unaccompanied'
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in C+nto & Othered Poems
The Westbourne Press, London, 2021
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Week Commencing 17th April 2022.
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'They're looking people
at the factory,' you tell me, 'to put the crying
in the crying dolls'
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in The Poetry Review: Volume 112:1 Spring 2022
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Week Commencing 10th April 2022.
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'I often regret the time that I've devoted
to regret: thereby sustainably re-wasting wasted time time and again'
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in The Poetry Review: Volume 112:1 Spring 2022
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Week Commencing 3rd April 2022.
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'One fine thought makes more light than bare fire'
Faber and Faber, London, 2013
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Week Commencing 27th March 2022.
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'All my favourite flowers are weeds spreading from stone slab crack to tumbling wall to road edge to
bed, a long string of common names, and when they are torn at their stalks they spring back green
with more cunning and wit.
in Magma Poetry 81 Winter 2021
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Week Commencing 20th March 2022.
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'But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!'
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'From The Ballad Of Reading Gaol'
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Week Commencing 13th March 2022.
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'now literate with demolition.
how sinister and reverent, the touch
that builds a new bohemian amenity.
raised, from the silence of your
seizures. everybody singing:
attrition, contrition, mass-
market ambition.'
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Week Commencing 6th March 2022.
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'Alone with
their songs and calls, birds could hear one another
at greater distances. They began to chirp more
softly, astonished by how loud they had become.'
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Week Commencing 27th February 2022.
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'Hold your ear
to the ground: you can hear
the voices caught in the earth, chattering,
and the rain typing on puddles
and the wind wiping them clean.'
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'I Sit and Eavesdrop the Trees'
Week Commencing 20th February 2022.
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'I never liked Mr Carmichael,
who seemed to be made from
pale grey plasticine and stretched too much.
His fingers fluttered. He oozed words
and always stayed too long.'
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Week Commencing 13th February 2022.
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'Randy Rhoads and Kurt Cobain,
Patsy Cline and Ronnie Laine.
Poly Styrene, Teena Marie.
Timor mortis conturbat me.'
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(Translation: fear of death disturbs me)
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Week Commencing 6th February 2022.
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'The months and the seasons just slip by.
My diary's blank on every page.
We follow rules; try to comply.
Now Rishi pays most of each wage.'
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Week Commencing 30 January 2022
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'And Johnson says
it hasn't happened, so
it hasn't. Hospitals are as safe as houses
and our graves are rose gardens.'
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Poem featured in Poetry Book Society
Winter Bulletin 2021, issue 271
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Week Commencing 23 January 2022
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'This flat,
Too small to hold both you and your anxiety.
One must go.'
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Poetry London Autumn 2021. No.100
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Week Commencing 16 January 2022
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'I can't help but learn again, the dirty truth,
hatred brings pleasure to multitudes.'
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The Poetry Review Vol. 111:4, Winter 2021
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Week Commencing 9 January 2022
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'With tomahawk and knife we hacked
the flyblown tatters of old meat,
gagged at their carcass-smell, and threw
the scraps and watched the hungry eat.'
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edited by Germaine Greer
Faber and Faber 2001 edition
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Week Commencing 2 January 2022
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'I know not what to do:
will the sound break,
rending the night
with rift on rift of rose
and scattered light?
will the sound break at last
as the wave hesitant,
or will the whole night pass
and I lie listening awake?'
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Week Commencing 26 December, 2021
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'The Greeks
thought of language as a veil
which protects us from the brightness of things.
I think poetry is a tear in that veil.'
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in Poetry Review Vol 103: 4 Winter 2013
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Week Commencing 19 December, 2021
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'So tired, so tired, my heart and I !
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.'
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See: 'My Heart and I' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Poetry Foundation
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Week Commencing 12 December, 2021
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'as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pyjamas.'
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'After Making Love We Hear Footsteps’ by Galway Kinnell
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Week Commencing 5 December, 2021
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'And anyone who begins a sentence, "As a poet I...",
can't possibly be one. That's like calling yourself a saint.'
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Michael Longley in interview.
Poetry Review Volume 103:3, Autumn 2013.
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Week Commencing 28 November, 2021
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'Love is the boy I broke up with years ago.
He lived on a grey estate in Upton Heights.
He bought me tins of cider and Marlboro Lights...'
'Love' Hannah Lowe
The Kids Bloodaxe Books, 2021
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Week Commencing 21 November, 2021
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'I want to be friends with
everyone, and yet know I must have enemies too, if only in order to
maintain my friendships.'.'
'Cities and Memories' Richard Gwyn
in Poetry Review 103:2 Summer 2013.
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Week Commencing 14 November, 2021
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'The clock's reached six and you know what that means
it means the end of the working day.
Not for us.
I place my hand on the radiator - and nothing:
nothing has changed.'.'
'In Memory of My Lack of Feelings' Tara Bergin
in Poetry Review 103:2 Summer 2013.
Week Commencing 07 November, 2021
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'Let the sky rain potatoes!'
Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Act 5, Scene 5. William Shakespeare.
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Week Commencing 31 October, 2021
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'Absorbed was righteousness
As of the raging flood;
Satan in his excess
Sucked up the guiltless blood'
'The Ballad which Anne Askew made and sang when she was in Newgate'
Anne Askew (1546) in
101 Poems by 101 Women Edited by Germaine Greer
Faber and Faber, 2001.
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Week Commencing 24 October, 2021
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'In this pain I was a charred donkey in the office chair - stupid and unusual'
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'from God Complex' Rachael Allen in
The Poetry Review, Volume111:3 Autumn 2021
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Week Commencing 17 October, 2021
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'To walk away from poetry
Is poetry, too'
'Różewicz: A Farewell' in
Invisible (Bilingual Edition) Jacek Gutorow, translated by Piotr Florczyk.
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Week Commencing 10 October, 2021
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'When the weather comes on, we'll feel the sweet relief and sorrow
at seeing all the days of snow that lie ahead.'
' Ganfer', Roseanne Watt
in Poetry London, Summer 2021, Issue 99.
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Ganfer: the apparition of a living person thought to be a portent of
that person's death...
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Week Commencing 3 October 2021
'but i feel i will never be fluent in bureaucracy
so all i have is a tesco tortilla, spotify playlists
and my name in an english accent'
'My Name In An English Accent', by Carmina Masoliver
in The Rialto, no 96.
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Week Commencing 26 September 2021
'and the devil said no god isn't
the ice he's under the ice
but you have to be very very very hot to burn your way
through to him''
'Witch and the Devil', in Witch by Rebecca Tamás
Penned in the Margins, 2019.
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Week Commencing 19 September 2021
'I grab the fellow by his tail,
but he still escapes through the gap in my throat.''
'A Lizard by my Hospital Bed', Mir Mahfuz Ali in
Poetry Review Vol 102:4 Winter 2012.
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Week Commencing 12 September 2021
'And then it was all over,
the rain stopped,
the earth drank,
and the lawn steamed in the sun:
all of it tut-tutting.'
'The Storm (Coleshill 2013)', Neil Rollinson in Talking Dead
Cape Poetry, 2015.
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Week Commencing 5 September 2021
'Better than Batman's robin
Rougher than Robin's bat
Faster than Spiderman's spider
Cooler than Catwoman's cat'
'Superman's Dog', Paul Cookson in Read Me (Collection of poems chosen by Gaby Morgan)
MacMillan Children's Books, 1998.
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Week Commencing 29 August 2021
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'The Swan hisses, hisses. Even her neck is a twisted S.
She's resident, common, depressed. She was once a princess.'
'Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe', Clare Pollard in Changeling
Bloodaxe Books, 2011.
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Week Commencing 22 August 2021
'Ponder mulled it over
Wonder merely thought
Whilst Maybe didn't commit
And Stubborn wouldn't try.'
'One Morning', by John Linney in Huddle of Poems
Amazon, 2013.
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Week Commencing 15 August 2021
'In my fantasy I am badly hurt but not so bad that I cannot text her, from the ambulance, "I've just been hit by a car." '
'Filter', by Luke Kennard in Truffle Hound
Verve Poetry Press, 2018.
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Week Commencing 8 August 2021
'and so we mark up bench or skin or book
with blade or blood or ink, for good; come look.'
'Dymock vi', by Antony Dunn in Take This One To Bed
Valley Press, 2016.
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Week Commencing 1 August 2021
' so she brings down birds and tears from the sky
mourns them, transforms them, relearns how to fly.'
'Sonnet for a twelve year old', by Sonya Smith in every robin i never quite saw
tall-lighthouse, 2021.
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Week Commencing 25 July 2021
' I just stopped running and
my soul grew calmer as the air grew cleaner.'
'Brigaki Djilia: Sorrow Songs', by Karen Downs-Barton in the North Issue 65 January 2021.
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Week Commencing 18 July 2021
'Given a month of outrageous privacy
what a mouthy collection of cells I am.'
'Phallus Impudicus', Tiffany Atkinson in Poetry Review Volume 102:3, Autumn 2012.
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Week Commencing 11 July 2021
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'I am lucky not to be absent from my mind like a baldhead.'
'King David Cooks Ital in Port Antonio',
by Fred D'Aguiar, in Letters to America , Carcanet, Manchester 2020 .
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Week Commencing 4 July 2021
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'It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home. '
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'Three Lions' ​
Song composed by Ian Broudie; lyrics by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner.
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(Indulge me, poetry and football are my two passions.)
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Week Commencing 27 June 2021
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'It's my turn Tagay!
When I get home my bag will burst
with Toblerone and Cadbury'
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'Tagay! [Drinking Lambanog with my Filipino Colleagues]'
by Romalyn Ante, in Antiemetic for Homesickness,
Chatto & Windus, London, 2020.
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Week Commencing 20 June 2021
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'Look,
the flamingos have returned to Bombay.
Look how this carpet of pink brightens
the day.'
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'Hope is the Thing' Tishani Doshi in Magma Poetry 79.
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Week Commencing 13 June 2021
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'Maybe your too-hasty breath
flustered the tea leaves'
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'Everything you told me came untrue' Geraldine Clarkson in The Poetry Review Vol 111: 1 Spring 2021.)
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Week Commencing 6 June 2021
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'They bleat and bleat and bleat
as if they were men. They blather nonsense,
and we believe them.'
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'This is an age of goats' Barbara Cumbers in Acumen: A Literary Journal January 2021.
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Thank you to Barbara Cumbers for allowing the use of the whole final verse on request.
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Week Commencing 30 May 2021
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'i love it when cows eat the floor'
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'Hello' Crispin Best (the opening line) in Hello Partus Press, Oxford, 2020.
Week Commencing 23 May 2021
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'and weed and warm and
warm and
weed - '
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'Nudibranch' by Jen Hadfield in The Stone Age Picador Poetry, London, 2021.
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Week Commencing 16 May 2021
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'One day. One Day. One Day. One Day.'
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'The One Day Plan' by Ramona Herdman
in The Rialto 95
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