Category Archives: Readings

Sublime Lungs – guest poet

1 Reply

It is a great pleasure introducing guest poet Kate Noakes. The four poems are from her new collection Sublime Lungs, published this month by Two Rivers Press.

Carrie Etter writes ‘With each successive poem, Sublime Lungs expands the scope of how this condition affects one’s experience of the world in poems by turns witty and moving.’

You can find Kate’s biography after the poems. On her website you can also find details of future launches in the UK. The online launch is 24 April.

At a lecture on the lungs

Saying they look like cauliflower
is troublesome. I don’t much like it.
Can’t you imagine some other vegetable
for me to care about?

Describing particulate-caused cell change
as columnar to cobblestone won’t do it either.
These are impossible to traverse in heels
and I’ve broken so many stilettos.

Nor does learning of mucus-producing cells,
on the increase and ready for infection,
given this conjures fat black slugs
smearing themselves around in my chest

and in the coastal redwood fog forests,
banana slugs are choking me.

Bronchospasm, barotrauma, embolism

Is it worth it to see anemones
flowering deep, and multi-coloured fish
which never appear to the snorkeler?

Shall I risk it for sea pens and being dyed
by an octopus shooting to her cave
in an ink cloud?

What chances with vicious
silver barracuda and the inevitable
circling sharks?

Enough of purple jelly blobs
faceting rock pools, or their pink selves
unfurled between the tides.

Masked and wet-suited
on the side of a boat
with an artificial lung

a tank of air that will take me, where?
Heaven or hell. Slowly,
cautiously, let me live to tell.

Kent marsh frogs

Oat gold grass, swathes of rush in purple-brown,
the Oare marshes stretch to the horizon.
Mercurial tides leave a slice of silver water
isolating us from the Isle of Sheppey.

Clouds are quickening and the late summer wind
seeds my eyes – a second wave.
Half-blind with redness, I almost miss
the brackish pond with the largest of frogs

– dinner plates are no exaggeration –
and as for the ring-necked grass snakes
waiting in the surface weeds, I watch their vigil
through hay-fever tears.

A snake lunges. And again. The frog
breathes on through skin or mouth or lungs.

Caunes-Minervois

Swifts squadron the sky from early light.
All day they gorge on the wing, resting
only for seconds on the cream-stone sills
of tight-packed village houses.

They catch their breath quick, quickly
under orange-lichened pantiles and are off.
It’s a wonder their small hearts, their lungs
can cope with such long sorties.

There’s never a hint of wheeze
in this warmth and my chest expands
when I can take in the heady scent
of star jasmine. It’s good

there are men in their potagers,
chivalrous enough to cut a stem of roses –
doubles, old-fashioned, and perfumed
to fill my breath with healing.

Biography


Kate Noakes lives in Bristol and has a PhD from the University of Reading. Her new book (her ninth full collection), Sublime Lungs, is published by Two Rivers Press in April 2026. Bog Queens, a pamphlet from Green Bottle Press, is going to be published in June this year.


 She was elected to the Welsh Academy in 2011. Her content rich website, Boomslang Poetry, is archived by the National Library of Wales. Kate’s first non-fiction title is Real Hay-on-Wye (2022, Seren).


During six years in Paris, she was founding president of Paris Lit Up. Kate acted as a trustee for London literature development agency, Spread the Word, between 2018 and 2022 and she is one third of Bristol poetry performance group, Braid. She programmes the poetry events for the Clifton Literature Festival.

For Easter, try egg blowing – guest poet

Leave a reply

Here is a sample poem by our April guest poet Kate Noakes. The poem is from her new collection Sublime Lungs, which will be published by Two Rivers Press on 21 April. This is her ninth full collection. More poems after Easter.

Kate will read at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 14 April. There is an online launch on 24 April. You can find the schedule of online and live launches on Kate’s website

Kate Noakes Breath of Fire

For Easter, try egg blowing

David Attenborough stood on an ostrich egg
to demonstrate its strength once.
‘The toughest egg in the world,’ he said.
He may even have jumped on it for emphasis.

Of course, no-one had drilled it and sapped its yolk
with mega-breaths and an extra-thick straw,
which is how it withstood his weight, unlike
the three souvenirs we bought in Oudtshorn,
their weakness apparent under failing coving.

They smithereened the carpet and needed
hand picking, the hoover’s inhalations proved weak.
We’d have been better off buying feather dusters
from the hawker pitched outside the super-market.
They’d have been easier to carry home.

Books – Unread & Banned

1 Reply

Last year I wrote about the ‘Ongelezen Boeken Club’ (Unread Books Club), a new venture where libraries promoted books on the ‘null list’ – books that have never been taken out.

This year, the ‘Nationale Ongelezen Boekendag’ (National Day of Unread Books) coincides with another new initiative: De Week van het Verboden Boek (The Week of Forbidden Books). Bookshops and libraries throughout the country are showcasing books that have been or are still censored.

On Wikipedia, you can find an article on book censorship, a list of banned books and the main list of books banned by governments. This starts with the Bible and Albania and ends with Yugoslavia.

If I counted correctly: 66 countries. ‘Almost every country places some restrictions on what may be published, although the emphasis and the degree of control differ from country to country and at different periods.’

Wikipedia lists 66 books that have been or are currently banned in India. A small number, relatively speaking. The earliest is a Gujarati translation of Mahatma Gandhi’s book Hind Swaraj. This was banned by the British Authorities in 1909. In August 2025, the Indian Home Department banned 25 books for ‘propagating false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir.’

Here in The Netherlands, there is only one book officially banned: Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924). In 2014, a bookshop owner in Amsterdam was found to stock and sell the book. There was no prosecution.

However, training for new staff in bookshops routinely includes how to deal with aggressive customers. Library staff find returned books with pages torn out. A Dutch survey last year found that (1 in 7) authors had to deal with aggression, threats, intimidation – much of it online.

Here is the cover of Lale Gul’s debut published in 2021, when she was 23. It’s an autobiographical account of growing up in a strict Islamic family. It became a bestseller and was translated, but Lale has since been in hiding.

If Tallinn is on your bucket list, you can visit the Banned Books Museum while you’re there!

Photo credit: Fuzheado

The Last Corinthians – guest poet

1 Reply

I’m delighted to share poems by Matthew Paul from his new collection with Crooked Spire Press. The poems demonstrate Matthew’s ‘unflinching clarity’, and his ‘fierce attention to detail’. His biography follows the poems and there you can also find a link to his own website.

Spent Matches

Mum lets only Granddad light up in our house.
The second Thursday of every other month,
she fetches Grandma and him over from Sutton.
The chalkhill-blue elegance of the Wedgwood
ashtray rhymes with unfiltered smoke rings
pixilating like Ceefax in the living-room air.

Teatime doesn’t wait for Dad: Hovis, Primula,
Shippam’s fish paste, allotment tomatoes, cress;
mini rolls, Penguins, cremated fruitcake; pots
of Brooke Bond PG Tips; Beryl Ware replaced
by Royal Worcester, on Hay Wain place mats.
Chit-chat wilts like Dad’s California poppies.

Mum fills space with monologues. My brothers’
progress; mine. WRVS activities. Her botched
hysterectomy. We watch Grandma’s must-see,
Crossroads, then ours: ‘Top of the Flops, I call it,’
says Granddad. The outfits, songs, presenters
and Legs & Co. baffle him into silence; except

when Julio Iglesias butchers ‘Begin the Beguine’.
‘Artie Shaw!’ he cries; and his and Grandma’s
memories spool back to bulletins on the wireless,
to Chamberlain’s jubilant declaration of peace.
Barely through the door, Dad re-buttons his coat
to take them home. Granddad beams, ‘Abyssinia!’

Photo credit: Liam Wilkinson

A Common Hand

I don’t have to prove whether I did it or not; if they can’t see it, what kind of damned experts are they? [. . .] I’m not a crook; I’m just doing what people have always done in the history of the world: ever since art was invented, people have made imitations of it.
Eric Hebborn, ‘Portrait of a Master Forger’, Omnibus, BBC TV, 1991

Eric pestles oak gall, gum Arabic, pinches of iron
Sulphate and rain into ink with ‘a gorgeous patina’,
To pen his line on slyly foxed paper, in the styles
Of Pisanello, Poussin and sundry other old masters,
Reshaping preparatory sketches to make pentimenti,
Faking collectors’ monograms as cherries on top.

At junior school, Eric, aged eight, discovered that
Burnt Swan and Vesta matchsticks’ charcoal tips
Burnished imagination’s marks, incurring, firstly,
Welts from a leathering for possessing matches,
Then a three-year stretch in an Essex reformatory
For wilfully setting cloakrooms on fire. A flair for
Painting sees him into art schools, lastly the RA,
Where, though he wins every prize, contemporaries
Remember Eric only as ‘a silent creature’; ‘a joke’.

They would say that, since he’s brought their craft
Into disrepute. ‘Dealers are not interested in art, but
Money,’ he says. ‘The real criminal, if there is one,
Is he who makes the false description; guiltier by far
Than had he manipulated the nib himself. Ignore
The fusspots. Enjoy art, without worrying whether
Attributions are correct.’ Museums have everything
To lose from uncovering Eric’s handiwork; queasily,
They check their acquisitions back to the Sixties
And issue, de haut en bas, highly selective denials.

‘No one is studying art with honesty,’ claims Eric,
Upon the publication of The Art Forger’s Handbook
In Italian. Out in Trastevere three icy nights later,
He stumbles, soaked in Chianti Classico Riserva,
Down a cobbled passage, to his blunt force demise.

In Which I Spend a Fortnight of my West Berlin Summer in 1987 Doing a Few Hours’ Cleaning Per Day in Some Multinational’s HQ

My Iraqi supervisor Zaynab and I enjoy,
for our lingua franca, helpless
amusement. Every day, precisely
at knocking-off time,
we point at the clock, chorus ‘Sechs!’,
then cackle like siblings.

Dieter, fellow cleaner, never gets our jokes.
Just like me, he’s twenty and nearing
the end of a gap year; mandatory,
before enrolment at Humboldt.
Mine’s elective, for my mental health.
He and I view the city’s halves from the roof:
the Wall zigzags like the Western Front.

Afterwards, we take the U-Bahn
—he buys a ticket; I don’t—
to the agency’s office, at Nollendorfplatz.
He translates the clerk: I won’t get paid
until next week. ‘Scheisse,’ I say.
Dieter deadpans: ‘She said,
“Ah, so the English boy
can speak German after all”’

Biography

Matthew Paul hails from South London and lives in South Yorkshire. His second collection, The Last Corinthians, was published by Crooked Spire Press in June 2025. He is also the author of two haiku collections – The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2015) – and co-writer/editor (with John Barlow) of Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (2008), all published by Snapshot Press. His reviews regularly appear in The Friday Poem and elsewhere. He blogs here.

Wendsday – guest poet

Leave a reply

It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Matthew Stewart, with three poems from his collection Whatever you do, just don’t. It was published by HappenStance Press to their usual high standards in 2023. The background of the jacket is an old map of Extremadura, Spain. The poem Gostrey Meadow was published in Stand. See below the poems for Matthew’s biography. I admire the attention to detail, precision, and economy of his poems: so much between the lines…

Banana

Come to think of it, she didn’t tell us
who’d got hold of the banana, or how,
and we forgot to ask, stunned by the news
that at ten years old she’d never seen one.

She was still proud her class had raffled it
for the war effort, still slightly mournful
at it turning black on her teacher’s desk
long before they drew the winning ticket.

She wouldn’t talk about gas masks, the Blitz,
the doodlebugs (how they changed to V2s) —
but she always recalled her fury
at the waste of bloody good food.

Wendsday

Halfway through the word and the week,
my pen used to pause and stumble,
tripped up by my eight-year-old tongue

and even now I still delight
in having learned at last to swap
the n and d and add the e.

I stumbled, too, after coming
to Spain. Shook off routines and rules.
Let a new language soak through me.

Two more hassle-packed, tensed-up days
till vino tinto y queso
instead of cod and chips.

Gostrey Meadow

Showing my son round, I notice
a father taking a picture
of his wife and son who’s melted
half an ice cream on his fingers
and the other half on his face.

It’s a copy of a photo
in our album. Same river.
Same heat-laden sky. Same roles.
Same spot on the bank. Same pose.
Our trees were ten feet shorter.

Biography

Matthew Stewart lives between Extremadura in Spain and West Sussex in the South of England. He works in the Spanish wine trade as a blender and exporter. His blog site ‘Rogue Strands’ is a respected source for poetry lovers, and he reviews widely for a range of publications. His first full collection was The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017). Before that, there were two pamphlets from HappenStance:
Tasting Notes (2012) and Inventing Truth (2011).

Speak Easy (2) – guest poet

Leave a reply


Speak Easy was formed at Stretford’s Sip Club by Dave Hartley in August 2015 as a spoken word open mic before the team of Andy N, Amanda Nicholson and Steve Smythe joined forces to take it over at the end of 2017. The night moved to Chorlton Cum Hardy’s Dulcimer Bar in August 2020 and has carried on being a welcoming, supportive, friendly and encouraging night since welcome to both experienced and newcomers with all acts given equal opportunity to perform with everybody who reads being headliners.

(See the end of the post for details and links to social media for Speak Easy, Andy N, Amanda Nicholson.)

Andy N

Andy N is the author of 8 full length poetry collections including ‘Return to Kemptown’ and ‘The End of Summer’ and co-runs Chorlton Cum Hardy’s always welcoming Spoken Word Open mic night ‘Speak Easy’. He runs / co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label, Cloaked in the Shadows and Storytime with Andy & Amanda and does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle.

Three x Winter Haiku

Walking in darkness
your front door briefly lights up
in the heavy rain. 
*
Ripping out the trees
lighting hit the forest hard
flooding the river
*
Sleeping in winter
the trees hibernate alone
awaiting for Spring. 

*

Amanda Nicholson


Amanda Nicholson is an author, poet, podcast co-host and copywriter. She has written several books as Amanda Steel, including Ghost of Me. Amanda’s poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester. She Has a Creative Writing MA, and has had articles published by Jericho Writers, Reader’s Digest UK, Ask.com, and Authors Publish.

Do All These Labels Make Me Look Fat?
 
Like blank sticky labels pressed to my skin
I write on some myself
While people scribble their own words
Over time, the ink fades on some
and others fall off
The one labelled daughter is half peeled off now
Older labels remain stuck fast
But buried by new labels
So people rarely see
Unless they get close enough
And there is always room for more
Some are like tattoos
Only more painful
And others wash away easily

Links
Speak Easy:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakeasymanchester
Twitter: https://twitter.com/speakspokenword
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speakeasypoetryspokenword/
Recordings of Night: https://andyn.bandcamp.com/

Andy N Poet:
His blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
His books can be found on Amazon etc.
Ocean in a Bottle is at: oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andynstorytellerpoet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aen1mpo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andynpoet/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andynwriter

Amanda Nicholson

Her blog is: https://amandasteelwriter.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaSteelWriter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amanda_S_Writer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandasteel37/

Speak Easy (Stephen Smythe) – guest poet

2 Replies

It’s a pleasure to introduce Stephen Smythe. He has been involved with Speak Easy since it started (at the SIP Club in Stretford) and that’s where we met. The SIP Club closed during the lockdown and Speak Easy then moved online. I was able to take part from my caravan in The Netherlands, along with poets and writers from London and the US and elsewhere.


Stephen Smythe is a Manchester writer who achieved an MA in Creative Writing from Salford University, in 2018. He was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, Flash Fiction category, in 2017, and was also longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, in 2018. He won The Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, in 2022, and was placed third in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, in 2021, for his 1000-word story.


His book of forty x forty word stories published by Red Ceilings Press is due out later this year.


Here are two prize winners to give you a taste…

KLEPTO


Bridget took stuff from her work colleagues after they’d gone home. Pens, post-it pads, sweets, even family photos. People suspected her, but couldn’t prove anything. When the company introduced hot desking, Bridget became confused and sometimes stole from herself.

(Winner of the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2022)

COLD CALL


‘Wait!’ Dad yelled down the phone.
He put his specs on. ‘That’s better, I can hear you now.’
He listened intently, frowned deeply, then hung up.
‘A conservatory?’ He snorted. ‘Your mother would kill me– if she were alive.’

(Second place in the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2019)

Links to 1000-word stories


Love Your Neighbour


The Fourth P (weebly.com)


Al Pacino of the Welsh Valleys (weebly.com)

Granny (weebly.com)

Poetry
Sommelier 2020 – Janus Literary

The Other (Michael Conley) – guest poet

Leave a reply

The Other has been running in Manchester since January 2016. Michael Conley and Eli Regan organise the event where writers are put in pairs to read and perform each other’s work, with plenty of time beforehand to prepare. It is a fascinating idea.

During the pandemic The Other moved online and I took part in a memorable Zoom session where I was paired up with Adam Farrer. The Other is now ‘live’ again. Dates are on Facebook and Twitter. Sessions also raise funds for Manchester Central Foodbank.

It’s a pleasure introducing Michael and a sample of his writing.

Michael Conley is a poet and prose writer from Manchester. His first prose collection, “Flare and Falter” was published by Splice and longlisted for the 2019 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.  His latest work is a poetry pamphlet published by Nine Pens, called “These Are Not My Dreams…”

At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings
 
Possibly somebody loves,
or at some point has loved,
this man. But it’s hard to imagine
right now. It’s hard to imagine
that for most of his life
he hasn’t been stuck 
at this ninety-degree angle,
fists flailing, jeans sagging
at the waist. He’s so angry
with the railings, 
with the soft mud under his boots
and especially with the teenagers
who are laughing at him
from the picnic benches.
 
You could empty a whole tub
of vegetable oil onto his neck
and tug him out by his belt loops
but he wouldn’t thank you for it.
And of course you can’t ask him
what he was trying to do
in the first place.
He doesn’t know 
what his pain looks like
from the outside.   

Website: https://ninepens.co.uk/2022-poets/michael-conley

Poetry in Aldeburgh

Leave a reply
Scheveningen, S Hermann/F Richter on Pixabay

On Monday, my journey to the other side of the North Sea involved five different modes of transport: taxi from Aldeburgh to Ipswich, National Express coach to Standsted Airport, Easyjet flight to Schiphol, Intercity to Den Haag Centraal, tram to the flat. All clockwork, no delays. It was dark when I got back home.


Taking part in the ‘live’ Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival has been a joyous experience. The highlight was the reading Our Whole Selves with poet friends. Poet Kathy Pimlott and I wrote several blog pieces about the readings, workshops, performances, open mic. These will soon be on the official website. A big thank you to the small organising team which managed to arrange a wonderful programme.


The poems I read were from my new collection Remembering / Disease, published by Broken Sleep Books last month. I opened my set with Nautical Miles (from my collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous). When I looked at an old photo, I saw that only Hoek van Holland is ‘less than a hundred’ nautical miles. Good reminder that poetic truth matters more than the accurate facts…

Nautical miles

Outside the Sailors’ Reading Room, the sign:

thin wooden planks, painted white:
Den Helder, IJmuiden, Hoek van Holland.

Across the horizon, they are less than a hundred
nautical miles from Southwold in Suffolk

where the narrow beach of pebbles –
grey, brown, black mostly –

is held together
by couplets of groynes, slimy green.

Both our languages have the word strand.

Note: The Sailors’ Reading Room, Southwold is a Grade II listed building from 1864 and still a refuge for sailors and fishermen.

In Aldeburgh: Poetry

Leave a reply

Haibun


Yesterday’s journey: comfortable Eurostar from Rotterdam Centraal, a sit-down at Soho & Co, Liverpool Street Station for food. The unexpected ‘red signal’ at Colchester turned out to be ‘waiting for British Transport Police’. They escorted a couple off the train. Missed connection at Ipswich gives an unexpected hour to mull and ponder. The friendly taxi driver from A2B and warm welcome at The White Lion where the bar is still open.

we smoke fish
open
we catch raw words