Poem of the month

Each month the two FSP editors select a poem, from those read throughout that month, as the poem of the month. A laminated copy of the poem is awarded to the poet at the next FSP City meeting. This is peer recognition of a poem of high quality.

July Poem of the Month

The Poem of the Month for July is Toy Boys by Elaine Barker. The Commended Poem is Not Much Left by Ivan Rehorek. The poems were selected by FSP 2018 Anthology editors Veronica Cookson and Lindy Warrell from poems read at the July Open Mic.

Toy Boys by Elaine Barker

The gnomes I chose are stop-at-homes.
This spot in my garden is the place
they gaudily claim. Though gnomes
do roam — you hear of them
disappearing months at a time.
They send cards from wherever
they’ve been, only to reappear
one morning tight-lipped, benign.

Yet no such trivial travel
would ever interest my gnomes.… Click for more

June Poem of the Month

Congratulations to Erica Jolly for her Poem of the Month for June, This Business of Learning, and to Pat Lee for her Commended Poem, I Am One.

This Business of Learning by Erica Jolly

It seems as if I have to wait till now
trying to find out how the process works.
One thing I think I know at last
is this. Probably it began unspoken
the day my father did not come home.

Was that the moment I lost it –
joy in laughter, delight, trust in love
since comfort in my childhood was gone?
Was that the day my childhood died?… Click for more

May Poem of the Month: Roger Higgins

The Poem of the Month for May is Mirror Image by Roger Higgins. The Commended Poem is Check-mate. Game! by Martin Christmas. Poems selected by Anthology Editors, Veronica Cookson and Lindy Warrell from submissions by FSP members read during May. You can read the poems below.

Mirror Image by Roger Higgins

The mirror stretches the full length of the wall
above twin sinks and a ledge cluttered
with skin creams and cosmetics.
You cannot help but see yourself
in excruciating detail from top to bottom,
by which I really mean buttocks.
Hair is thick but more grey than the brown it was
and too long for your age and demographic,
chest hair also grey and not a suitable camouflage
for dark brown barnacles and sunspots,
your heritage from a younger life
of beaches and back-yard games.… Click for more

April Poem of the Month: Louise Nicholas

Triple Trounced by Louise Nicholas
 
She left school at fourteen but when our mother’s mind
wasn’t Webster’s Dictionary, or Miss Manner’s Book
of Common Courtesy, it was a Letraset jumble of letters
that spent part of each day falling in and out with each other:

  • three-letter words beginning with ‘a’,
    seven-letter words that housed a ‘z’,
    four-letter words with no need for an ‘e’.

On rainy days, the Scrabble board emerged
and we’d no sooner placed the three-letter
Nip-and-Fluff word we’d spent ten minutes excavating
from a dictionary already bloodied with our desperation,

  • than she would trounce it
    with a ‘j’ on a triple-letter
    or a ‘z’ on the double word.
… Click for more

March Poem of the Month

The Poem of the Month for March, selected by Anthology editors, Veronica Cookson and Lindy Warrell, is Whassup Mozart? by Gordon McPherson. The Commended Poem is I am not your lover by Alison Clifton.

Whassup Mozart? by Gordon McPherson

How I wonder
you holy grailers,
galactic sailors,
and serenaders
of space time,
blinking and hoodwinking,
through the cosmos,
the universal BIOS,

How I wonder
you disco glitzes
when you power up
your Ritzes
and your ditzy minuets
and jet those rays
around and down
and blitz
the frowning ground,
starfound,
with your rainbow outfits,

How I wonder
you tinsels,
when you sprinkle
your ticker tape parade
on the stellar freeways,
those ballets
and screenplays
of technicolour highs
and ballroomeyes,
when your cries
sing like millions
of magic flute sighs
in the quicksilver hordes
aboard the night sky,

How I wonder
you Cosi Fan sparklers,
in the rococo thunder
of your torn asunder
starbrights,
kinking the gravity fields
and sinking your far heights
in the light’s plunder,

How I wonder
you Big Bang strays,
you supernova front pages,
you red shift tearaways,
and how I ponder
you Mozart DJ’s,
what you wanderers
what you twinklers
really,
really are.… Click for more

February Poem of the Month

The February Poem of the Month, selected by Anthology editors, Veronica Cookson and Lindy Warrell, is The Man Who Walked by Fred Willett.

Here is Fred’s poem:

THE MAN WHO WALKED by F J Willett

His days were bleak and grim and gray.
His mood was dark and fell and fey.

Her hair was black. Her raven hair
That framed her face and haughty stare.

He walked alone without a hope.
He never saw her, never spoke.

He walked across the village square.
He passed the woman standing there.

She had no smile for him that day,
No smile to light his shadowed way.… Click for more

+ More