poetry Archives

Posted on March 7, 2025March 6, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Poem in which I’m a transnational drug smuggler’ by Bethany Handley

Photo of a plane coming into land against a golden sky.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Poem in which I’m a transnational drug smuggler’ by Bethany Handley from her pamphlet Cling Film.

Poem in which I’m a transnational drug smuggler
The guy in front of me is told to remove his leg. He unscrews it and places it in the tub with his luggage.We watch
his leg disappear through the rubber curtain
as he hops through the airport scanner. His stump
is swabbed alongside another guy’s empty boot,
a tube of toothpaste and a wallet. I’m asked to wheel
past the metal detector and to park myself
where the other travellers await their bags.
A female guard cups my arms, my waist, my breasts.
She asks me to raise myself above the cushion, squeezing her hand into the gap between my skin and chair. Below, my five-hundred-pound pressure cushion
protects my skin, bags of coke stashed where the gel
should hold my form. Each bum cheek is perfectly imprinted in bleached powder. Later, when the taxi driver asks
whether my wheelchair is to support my benefits claim, I’ll smirk and nod.

Posted on January 10, 2025January 10, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Birch’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

Photo of bare trunks of silver birch standing in the snow.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Birch’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her sequence ‘The Tree Calendar’ republished in The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems.

Birch
December 24th – January 20th
After Twelfth Night comes the reality
of winter. When the greenery’s stripped down
it’s barefaced, blowing under the door.
Mean days dragging out a fraction more
before dark, make our myth of spring
ridiculous. I walk out into the stark
endless moment of January.
Old snow slumps in the hedge,
stretching the fields
wet to the birchwood, raw
black tangle against the grey.
Mud ruts, brown ice under my boot
snaps and seeps as I trudge up
to the sad ranks of trees, the thin
skin birches in their thaw.
These brittle twigs swept clear of leaves
whipping along the light,
points of dark bud concealing green,
I’ll tie a bundle to my broom, for flight:
no shelter here, the rain falls through
this frostwood, the sky stares between.
The bramble jags, the stag horns of the scrub
bad musk of leafmould, in the dusk
that stirs behind my shoulder.
Birch stems lean to the loud stream
crowding beneath the wind,
thrashing their rods at winter stumps,
at the cracked, dimwit days.
Think of the woods brushed with a green haze.
Think of the covered hills
filling with cleaner light, and a gap
in the clouds for something to glance through.
I stoop in a cold shade
gathering twigs for a journey

Posted on November 8, 2024November 8, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘If We Were in Llandudno’ by Wendy Allen

Photo of Llandudno seafront taken from the pebbled beach.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘If We Were in Llandudno’ by Wendy Allen from her newly published pamphlet Portrait in Mustard.

If We Were in Llandudno
Today you ask if I remember
when we went to Llandudno for my 20th birthday.
You still have the train ticket.
Did we drink tea from polystyrene cups
or pints of snakebite? Did I wear a floral dress
like twenty-four years later
still wearing too much make up?
Your clothes fall off the same way
corduroy sounds in my mouth.
You were always writing something
political in the university newspaper office.
I wrote blank pages, drank pints, thought about how
I was falling in love with you and if
we were in Llandudno again,
I’d tell you—

Posted on November 1, 2024November 1, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Afterwards’ by Betty Doyle

Image of a dying star in the middle of a swirling cloud of dust and light

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This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Afterwards’ by Betty Doyle from her newly published pamphlet Fruits of Labour. Join us on Wednesday 6th November for our joint online poetry launch celebrating Fruits of Labour and Portrait in Mustard by Wendy Allen.

Afterwards
the pain was so much that I curled
inwards as my breath was ripped
out of me: the I of my body curved
until my head was buried inside my belly,
contracting to a dying star. I could see
the implosion at my core, hot-white,
radiating outwards with high winds,
light waves flying out of me
when all I wanted was to unfurl,
straighten, stretch my spine beyond
its half-moon, point my chin sunwards,
uncross myself, stand palms-up, legs spread
mouth wide, to let my face, chest
belly see it all – and feel it.

Register via Eventbrite to join us online on Wednesday 6th November for the launch of Fruits of Labour and Portrait in Mustard.

Join Poetry Launch. Portrait in Mustard by Wendy Allen and Fruits of Labour by Betty Doyle. 6pm Wednesday 6th November. Online via Zoom. All welcome. Book via Eventbrite.

Posted on September 6, 2024September 6, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘There Is An Indescribable Joy’ by Marianne Burton

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘There Is An Indescribable Joy’ by Marianne Burton from her collection Kierkegaard’s Cupboard.

There Is An Indescribable Joy
There is an indescribable joy
that rises of itself
that takes in the city
and the city’s thought
as when a sudden gust of wind
breaks the string
and the kite staggers away
not in a horizontal flick
but perpendicular
as though fall
were impossible
up until perspective
shrinks it out of sight.
Imagine how we look from there.

Posted on August 30, 2024August 30, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Danger’ by Rachel Carney

Photo of a single jellyfish floating in the shallows, its pale body hidden amongst the seaweed.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Danger’ by Rachel Carney from her debut collection Octopus Mind. This weekend is your last chance to get Octopus Mind (and lots of other great books) half-price in our Summer Sale. Use the code ‘summer2024’. Sale ends 11:59pm Sunday 1st September.

Danger
We were warned about the jellyfish,
where we paddled, tentatively,
in the shallows, our backs to the sun,
feet braced against the slap of wavelets,
eyes alert for anything globular,
for anything pale, or stringy.
And we were warned about the sinking sand –
sluggish, wet,
sucking at our shoes,
swallowing our shoes.
And the cliffs that might collapse at any moment,
that might crumble to dust
and bury us alive
in a heap of rock and fossils.
They warned us about the danger
of talking to strangers,
of strange men in nightclubs
offering to walk us home.
We were warned to say,
before we set off,
into the mountains,
which path we planned to take,
and exactly when we planned to return.
But nobody warned us about the danger
of sitting, alone, on the sofa.
Or the danger of forgetting to eat,
of not wanting to get up from the sofa.
And nobody warned us of how difficult it can be,
sometimes, just to lace up your trainers,
to open the front door,
to take a deep breath and brace yourself.
To walk outside.

Posted on August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘First Job’ by Bryony Littlefair

Close up photo of stacked, chocolate coins wrapped in shiny golden foil.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘First Job’ by Bryony Littlefair from her debut collection Escape Room.

First job
I worked at Boots on Thursday evenings,
stacking shower gels in unnatural colours,
telling blurry-looking women where to find the ibuprofen,
but usually I’d be on the downstairs till,
where a customer came every twenty minutes
grabbing a salad for a late dinner, a stick
of deodorant or baby wipes. They’d meet
my eyes so briefly. Boredom spread
like liquid magnolia soap. Once I picked up
the magazine they kept by the tills –
Health and Beauty, on which
a smiling white woman
played volleyball on the beach.
Suzanne, who was neither unkind
nor stupid, only tired and harassed, said
Don’t read that while you’re on the till.
There’s no one here, I said, looking around,
but I did as she asked and put it away
feeling a twinge of annoyance,
but a strange, building feeling too
not unlike excitement – not because I refused,
but because I was growing an understanding
of what was being asked of me, and I turned
that new knowledge over
in my closed mouth,
like a chocolate coin.

Posted on August 16, 2024August 16, 2024 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Peau’ by Damian Walford Davies

Photo of a dusty road bending to the left and disappearing into rocky mountains

This week’s Friday Pome is ‘Peau’ by Damian Walford Davies from his collection Viva Bartali!.

Peau
Tour de France, 1938; Stage 14, Col d’Izoard, 22 July
From the dustcloud belly
of the baggage train, a megaphone
bawled out your lead in cracked
Italian through the moonscape
of the Casse Déserte. There was
time enough to notice
how a fine grey dust descended
on your arms, like mamma’s
sifted flour from a sack
the colour of the Virgin’s cloak,
parching then to snakescale
crust, sweat slaking it to clay
until the staggered watchers
at the summit saw a man of ash
thrash past, his face a mask,
and wished him such a steeping
at Briançon as would be
the utter shedding of a skin.

Viva Bartali! and lots more great poetry titles are currently available half-price in our Summer Sale which runs until 1st September 2024. Use the code summer2024 for 50% off any featured title.

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