The Poem of the Month for September 2025, selected by 2025 Anthology editors Val Braendler and Ben Adams, is Installation in Cast Iron by Elaine Barker. The commended poems are Performance by Veronica Cookson, Food Writer by Leon Ferrante and Between the River and the Sea by Alan Branford.
Installation in Cast Iron
Elaine Barker
Jonnie Dady Standing Work, no.3, 2008
It’s unsettling to see you planted here
free standing, perhaps abandoned,
your three legs lanky and rising
roughcast, surrounded by low bushes,
a grassy plot, a jacaranda grove.
It’s a quiet spot with music floating down
from the Conservatorium close by –
Constantin Shamray perhaps, rehearsing
Rachmaninov for the concert tonight.
I hear you kicking off your rusty old image.
Think chopsticks, syncopated rhythms,
Liberace and Elton John and now
Col Porter is crooning along.
You’ve no ivory keys but I sense
your music rising – great chords,
and falling rhythms so throw off
your rusty image, work on another riff.
Quicken your tempo and yes,
why not take up a honkey tonk stance?
Feel free. Play on. Anything goes.
Get these passing students dancing.
Performance
Veronica Cookson
(Slava and Sharon Grigoryan)
In the projection room,
an Alfred Hitchcock silhouette
beams bright lamps onto blue curtains,
settles arc lights on the duo.
The guitarist hunches forward
cradles his instrument,
plucks an intricacy —
lined brow older than his days.
The cellist, skilful fingers
blur up, down on the fretboard
her bow weaves backwards, forwards
in harmony. Between songs,
left hand rests at her side,
flexing, stretching, while
right hand whisks a wing of hair
behind an ear.
His slight nod, her brief smile
their only signal.
The wine-drinking audience are rapt
at their entry to a realm bright as hope.
None dare break the spell, glasses
carefully replaced at their feet.
We wish the magic to go on.
At concert’s end, still awed by that
perfect fusion, all is briefly silent,
returned to reality as Alfred Hitchcock
flicks off his lamps, before standing acclaim
pulses through the floor, tickles our toes.
Food Writer
Leon Ferrante
She’s a food writer
She eats and eats
Regurgitates
Opinion based on
Special skills
Reveals her tastes
No time to waste
She’s a food writer
She eats and eats
Regurgitates
Opinion based on
Her reader base
Flavoured by
The need to rave
She must be brave
Meanwhile
Over there
They eat grains of rice
It may be nice
No choice
Living on an oily rag
Insects for protein
An egg if you’re lucky
She’s a food writer
She eats and eats
Regurgitates
She gets her food for free
Breakfast
Lunch
And tea
She’s a food writer
She eats and eats
Regurgitates
Her pen is powerful
She can make you shine
Give you stars and
Help you climb
The shaky ladder of success
Or knock you down
And close you down
She’s a food writer
Tells us where to go
To taste her tastes
Follow her lead
Eat her recommendations
She’s a food writer
I’d like to tell her
Where to go!
Between the River and the Sea
Alan Branford
The land between the river and the sea
Was Canaan in the Iron Age times.
The Israelites developed from within,
A large, monolatrist sect, faction, group.
At first, they worshipped solely Jahweh’s realm,
The minor god of storms and war.
But, later merged this concept with god El,
The chief of all the Canaan gods.
From this derives the name Is-ra-el-ites,
And Ga-bri-el, and on it goes.
Yahwism was just part of Canaan’s lore,
Until the exile period.
In Babylon, Judaism was born,
A monotheist faith emerged.
There was no Covenant ’tween God and Man,
Of land for men with foreskins cut.
Genetic research shows that all Levant,
Including diasporic groups,
They share substantial Canaanite DNA,
They’re all just cousins in that land.
Semitic is a class of languages,
So, Arabic and Hebrew both.
Semitic peoples speak Semitic tongues,
They’re all Semites, not just the Jews.
A busy square in downtown Tel Aviv.
A Hamas fighter lurking there.
Like Gaza, blast the precinct off the map?
T’was Hamas used a human shield.
Our history is full of evil deeds,
Zionists were Hamas in their day!
O, would that all could live again as one,
And share the Canaan land in peace.