Friday Poem Archives - Page 4 of 46

Posted on February 2, 2024February 2, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake

Photo of a lone swan swimming away, leaving a trail of ripples in its wake

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The River People’ by Cath Drake from her collection The Shaking City. Cath is running an online Dive into Poetry workshop on the theme of River Muses on Sunday 18th February for poets and writers of all levels. Find out more on her website cathdrake.com.

The River People
One day they just arrived, camped for days
on our river island, waiting for swans, but none came.
We don’t know who they were, why they weren’t
moved on. They were sun-blushed, ethereal,
used hand signals we’d never seen before.
On our daily commute across the highway
from island to city and back, we watched
their canvas tents and sometimes a figure or two
of a man, woman or child walking in the hot dust
like a mirage. The bridge’s heavy traffic drowned
any sound of the birds, tides, their daily doings.
We couldn’t tell them when the swans disappeared.
Would you have noticed if a highway, a skyscraper,
or if the river vanished and there was just gravel
under your feet? Will you still call this place
Swan River? We felt their heavy ochre eyes.
They made a swan shrine from a mass of grass,
bark and reeds: its beak pointing skyward,
long pampas grass feathers flying in the breeze.
Every time we crossed the bridge we felt the loss,
imagined their reflections in the water swimming
with glossy black swans. One day, the River People
just went. We didn’t get to ask them anything.
The shrine eventually let go into the wind,
blowing into the river, into our Swan River.

Posted on January 26, 2024January 25, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘And the Soul’ by Kim Moore

Silhouette of a wolf howling at the sky again a fiery sunset

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘And the Soul’ by Kim Moore from her first collection The Art of Falling. Kim will be joining us online on Thursday 1st February to read alongside Polly Atkin at First Thursday. Stock up for the event by treating yourself to 50% off any of her books between now and 31st January 2024 in our January Sale.

And the Soul
And the soul, if she is to know
herself, must look into the soul...
– Plato
And the soul, if she is to know herself
must look into the soul and find
what kind of beast is hiding.
And if it be a horse, open up the gate
and let it run. And if it be a rabbit
give it sand dunes to disappear in.
And if it be a swan, create a mirror image,
give it water. And if it be a badger
grow a sloping woodland in your heart.
And if it be a tick, let the blood flow
until it’s sated. And if it be a fish
there must be a river and a mountain.
And if it be a cat, find some people
to ignore, but if it be a wolf,
you’ll know from its restless way
of moving, if it be a wolf,
throw back your head
and let it howl.

Friday 26th - Wednesday 31st January. January Sale. Use code JanSale24. www.serenbooks.com

Posted on January 19, 2024January 19, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Heron/Snow’ by Polly Atkin

Photograph of a Heron flying above the snowy ground

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This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Heron/Snow’ by Polly Atkin from her first collection Basic Nest Architecture. Join us online on Thursday 1st February to hear Polly read alongside Kim Moore at Virtual First Thursday.

Heron/Snow
You carry worlds in the cipher of your feathers;
sky and water woven together
by the black of a wood in winter; blue
grey of the lake, half frozen over:
a dull kind mirror to find yourself in
or to knock on in search of another. Is that
why you waited all morning so patiently, planted
like a post in the field in the snow? There is nothing
here by this road for you, surely, but ground
to launch from, and me, to watch you drawing
your perfect arc in the air, diving
silently upwards into the tumbling
white, as though into a weir. The whole
vale is shaking itself into flakes
and falling, or rising. It’s hard to tell.
You in your grace alone remain still
even in motion. I’ve heard a heron
will attack a human if threatened. I imagine
your beak a spear through my skull, and grasp
at last the beauty of the kill.

We’re looking forward to welcoming Polly Atkin and Kim Moore to Zoom on the 1st February to read from their latest books Some of Us Just Fall and Are You Judging Me Yet?. Tickets are £2 plus Eventbrite admin fee. Find out more below.

Buy tickets

Posted on January 12, 2024January 12, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Seen’ by Rachael Clyne

Close up photograph of a person's eye. The majority of their face is in darkness other than the iris which is illuminated by a vertical strip of light.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Seen’ by Rachael Clyne from her collection You’ll Never Be Anyone Else.

Seen
My winter face stares back,
dares meto meet its decline.
I survey my map of mishaps,
try to recall when I was last held.
I look at a photo of me aged twenty:
her smoulder-eyed beauty,
her blank-page face;
waiting for its story.
Mind riddled with gaps,
and gob full of opinions,
this body still stands, bends
and carries despite subsidence.
At my retina scan today, I saw the backs
of my eyes like unlaid eggs, an eye-tree
of scarlet tracery. The scan man said,
You still have fabulous retinas.

If you missed it, catch up with Rachael’s episode of The Seren Poetry Podcast Series 2 where she discusses You’ll Never Be Anyone Else in detail with our Deputy Publisher Sarah Johnson. Search for The Seren Poetry Podcast on your favourite podcast app to listen now.

Posted on January 5, 2024January 5, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Reaches of Light’ by Sheenagh Pugh

Photo of a stunning orange sunset in winter

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Reaches of Light’ by Sheenagh Pugh from her Selected Poems.

Reaches of light

The old man and his old dog stroll
stiffly, stopping to chat, often
resting. The last light of the sun
wells up: ribbons out like oil

in water. The vast sky is filling
from the west: a bright flood disperses
through winter grey; reflects in his eyes.
He is greeting someone and smiling,

passing on the light; his acts and speech
gentle, as ever. He strokes the dog’s head
absently, like a lover. Gold and red

pale to pastels; rose, mauve, blue; reach

the far shores of greyness, as if there were
channels for colour, as if no edge of sky
could exclude it: a cosmic courtesy
to animate a face, or light a winter.

Posted on December 22, 2023December 19, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Rememory’ by Nerys Williams

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Rememory’ by Nerys Williams from her third collection Republic. You can listen to our in depth interview with Nerys about Republic in episode 6 of The Seren Poetry Podcast Series 2.

19. Rememory
I am lost in the contorted image of a pub. I scroll back to the pedestrian image but cannot get away from a couple who have ordered their dinner and are waiting. Faces pixelated, seated at a polished table. Thankfully I see the emergency exit. My cursor and I stumble down the patterned carpet step, finally to air and traffic.
I have been “home” already, though home is a walk from my ex-boyfriend’s house near a cathedral graveyard. I never noticed that we had a back gate, it was rarely warm enough to hang our washing. Bell practice every Wednesday night, even with closed shutters, ear plugs, trying to enter Californian poetry for its last glimmer of warmth – discordant knells punctuated words. Naming the plants I never saw: Meadowsweet, Queen Anne’s Lace, Morning glory. Winter’s dazzling days, snow on the morning street. Marrow-cold in a house with only a small gas fire, cotton duvets, sheeted ice, socks in bed. Desperate for a taste of sun, the philosopher and I bought avocados, mashed them, added lemon and salt, turned up the heater. Our knitted-selves toasted dappled light with each dip.

Memories of my younger self often circle gatherings at modest feasts. Follow the cursor to a café filled with coffee, panettone and ice cream, orange, pink and green sweet boxes stacked on the shelves. Or, do I turn the corner to find my student-self? Encountering a stalker past bushes and winding river, I ran home breathless, sick. The night of celebrating scholarships to the US the philosopher, filmmaker and I were manifesto making. A night imagining passage on a liner, careering to Sinatra, romanticising ourselves in steerage. The figure at my heels gaining the measure of my two-step, three-step, four-step five-step, six, seven, eight…

The full box set of The Seren Poetry Podcast Series 2 is now available to listen to on your favourite podcast app. Search for The Seren Poetry Podcast and click like, follow or subscribe to have all future episodes delivered straight to your podcast feed.

Posted on December 15, 2023December 15, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘The Crux’ by Vanessa Lampert

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The Crux’ by Vanessa Lampert from her debut collection Say it With Me. We recently interviewed Vanessa about the book on The Seren Poetry Podcast. Listen & subscribe on your favourite podcast app.

The Crux
Through layers of Christmas
you come back to haunt us,
the sink’s greasy burden
unmanned by your absence,
the turkey more lunged at
than carved. How many years
since you ended it, eleven?
My mind’s eye has you restless
as you were. Muscular and lean
as a much younger man
thanks to all that running,
which, as it turned out
was away. You left us to guess
what hell it was
that hunted you. That’s the crux
of what’s haunting us now.

Posted on December 8, 2023December 8, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘The Larder’ by Judy Brown

Wheels of cheese sitting on a larder shelf.

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This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The Larder’ by Judy Brown from her collection Lairs. You can listen to her talking in depth about the collection on Series 2 of The Seren Poetry Podcast. Listen and subscribe on your favourite podcast app to listen to the series so far.

The Larder
In the shop’s moist basement the red wines lay
prone in their cool dormitory. Beyond
the jars of lobster bisque and canned truffle sauce,
both Lancashires sat squat on their wood: Tasty
and Mild like a pair of underground kings.
No satisfaction in breaching the waxed cloth,
breaking the stiff robes they were buried in.
Only the owner had the right to draw the cutting wire
twice through the horizontal before quartering.
It was ritual, to bear each portion upstairs to the shop.
Later we’d peel the cloth off the soft edge
and unpuzzle the grain of the clotted blank face.
Down there, too, was where they kept the unripe moons
which were soft as what’s inside a baby’s unfused skull.
In the dark they would salt to rock and start to spin.
When at last the old satellite has worn to a nub,
an uncut cheese will rise, white and purposeful
with the sun’s reflected buttermilk light, to do its work.
Think of the store of teeth a shark is born with;
which, one by one, drift to the front of the mouth
to take their turn to be the ones to shine, to bite.

Judy also appeared on the Mouthful of Air podcast to talk specifically about ‘The Larder’ with Mark McGuinness.

Listen

Posted on December 1, 2023December 8, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Moon phases as seen from Earth’ by Glyn Edwards

Phases of the waxing and waning moon from crescent to full.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Moon phases as seen from Earth’ by Glyn Edwards from his collection In Orbit. You can listen to Glyn talking in depth about the book now in episode 3 of The Seren Poetry Podcast Series 2.

Moon phases as seen from Earth
There are crescent moons forming
up my fingernails and crescent moons
bitten at their end. The bare light bulb
is a full moon. Briefly, the flaring cigarette
become a full moon. When I stare through
the new moon at a bottle’s top like it’s a telescope,
I find another new moon. Last night, a storm
bent the oaks into waxing moons and now
there’s too many moon seeds at their roots to mass
into polished handfuls of moon rock.
Boys kick a full moon around the car park.
There is a quarter moon curvature to the unlit lane
where memories pass like waning moons
of an argument, when mouths were gibbous moons
with malice. A busker now has a new moon
in the middle of his guitar and the new moon
at his feet is half-filled by full moons. His black dog
has two moons behind clouds for eyes. I cover
my face to hide the cold moons on my cheeks.
Moons catseye the carriageway below me
and full moons are fastened to the front of cars.
The rain is making moons at my feet.
Every distubed puddle is a moon phase.
The moon is so-called as it measured months.
moon, mona, metri, mensis – you made us chant it,
made us discover moons everywhere. A person jumps
from this crescent moon bridge every month.
Six moons have passed since you died.

Posted on November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Against Blood’ by Katherine Stansfield

Close up photo of a rusty old door locked with a padlock and chain.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Against Blood’ by Katherine Stansfield from her collection We Could Be Anywhere By Now. Katherine will be reading alongside Lynne Hjelmgaard at Seren First Thursday at Carnegie House in Bridgend on 7th December.

Against blood
A cutting-edge DNA test could determine how Welsh you are
– BBC Ne
ws, 24th September 2014
To say this is the way
you decide who I am and who I’m not,
a sample of body that speaks only
couplings and accidents,
emigration and abandonments,
Scotland and Ireland, to Buffalo and back.
To say this is the way
you sanction my belonging and my not,
like those wet days at school
that kept us penned in the hall,
the Cornish kids playing
genealogy games all through break:
and his father and his father.
To say this is the way
you prove what’s home and what’s not,
that identity is a permanent code
you can map in a lab
when a swab can’t show
all the timid love I have.
To say this is the way
leaves me on the wrong side
of a locked door I’ll never open
when for the first time I’m trying
the handle, trying to come in.

Join us on Thursday 7th December at Carnegie House in Bridgend for First Thursday. This month we’ll be joined by Lynne Hjelmgaard and Katherine Stansfield reading from their collections The Turpentine Tree and We Could Be Anywhere By Now. Tickets are available in advance via Tocyn.cymru, or on the door. As usual, the main readings will be followed by our popular open mic. You can also watch on Facebook live. We hope you can join us.

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