Sharon Phillips – “Careers Advice”

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Careers Advice

Brenda didn’t try for grammar school
there was no point for a girl
she’d only end up getting married
her mother told mine
and besides she’d never get in

she left school at fifteen
exams would be a waste of time
her mother told mine
young girls should be out having fun
not sticking their noses in books

so she worked in Lewis’s then Meek’s
even did a stint down Wills’s factory
well she couldn’t abide that
her mother told mine
the clocking on and clocking off

I last saw her on the number two bus
one university holiday
ticket machine slung across her chest
I didn’t think we’d see you for dust
Brenda told me

Sharon started writing poems when she retired from her career in education. Since then, her work has appeared in many print and online journals and anthologies, most recently in The High Window and Obsessed with Pipework. Sharon’s first pamphlet, Liven Yourself Up, is published by Yaffle’s Nest.

Jim Murdoch – “The Dream”

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The Dream

Last night I dreamt of pigeons,
common-or-garden pigeons –
Columba livia forma urbana –
frankly the most boring pigeons
one could possibly imagine and
I thought: What a waste!

It would take precisely the same
amount of brain power to dream
of eagles or dragons.

Jim Murdoch: Scot, gatophile, honorary woman, classical music aficionado, novelist, Whovian and producer of half-to-three-quarter-(and-occasionally-actually-fully)-decent poems for over half a century. Facebook – @Jimmy4559

Louise J Jones – “Keepsakes”

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Keepsakes

She put them in a drawer: the spring storm that flung
out bats, the Dutch-orange scarf of crepe-de-chine.
The rushed trunk call that was overheard.

She laid them flat: the slither of mica from northern lands,
the going-along with it again, the staggered night
when neither touched the other. A small cup of rain.

She kept them all: the kink of a word misunderstood,
the scatter of a spaniel’s paws on polished wood,
the wet dawn’s light. The surprise of being sure.

Louise J Jones has been published in various magazines, and several anthologies published by Yaffle Press, and had a poem recently featured on The Verb, Radio 4. She lives in Hertfordshire, UK, and spends her time writing poems and making textile art. Instagram: @wizwords50

Julian Dobson – “Quaker country”

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Quaker country

Utopia’s as real as wet wood
fringed with lichen, squelched
leaves along a narrow track,

rough sheep grazing in drizzle.
The memory chapels keep
when the last caretaker locks up.

It’s the loop that holds an iron gate
in place, a view across uneven fields
towards hillsides contoured with fog.

It’s slow: an alder’s readiness
to stand with sodden feet.
Snowdrops planted

where they won’t be seen.
Utopia’s the risk of stillness. Space
where absences blow through

like long-tailed tits. A place
for drainage: the fells’ alchemy
of holding and releasing rain.

It’s the possibility of what might
have been remembered, the way
trees huddle by a ghyll, hinting of forest.

A flurry of crows, saying something
stirred here centuries back, and
when it settled, silence changed.

Julian Dobson’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines including The Rialto, Stand and Acumen, and in several anthologies. Julian lives in Sheffield.
Blue Sky: juliandobson.bsky.social

Tom Kelly – “Waving”

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Waving
For and to Aidan & Fiona

They are waving to me from the bus stop.
Their smiles are so wide: I am loving it.
My smile lives all the way home.
Sometimes you just know
things cannot be any better,
today is one of those days: it just is.

Jarrow-born writer Tom Kelly, now lives further up the Tyne at Blaydon. His second collection of poems and prose, These Are My Bounds, was published in March and is his fourteenth publication from Red Squirrel Press.

Dylan Stallard – “2-for-1”

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2-for-1

Took him with us just to get him out.
We’ll leave if the film is a flop.
We are at the cinema often enough
to know that plot assumes but character confirms,

and we’ll leave if the film is a flop.
We have not seen any promising reports,
assume he hasn’t either, which he confirms:
she was the one who liked to read all that.

We had not heard any promising reports
but she was with it until the end,
one who liked to read, she was all that.
The last flick they saw together was Jaws

and she was with the shark right to the end.
Final chapter of a Faulkner bookmarked beside her bed.
The last flick they saw together was Jaws 2 sorry
it’s so hard to think of things we did.

Final chapter of a Faulkner bookmarked beside her bed
and we are at the cinema often enough,
know it’s hard to think of things to do so
we just took him with us, to get him out.

Dylan Stallard will soon begin a PhD at the University of Kent exploring class, the anti-pastoral, and Dylan Thomas. He was commended for the Binsted Prize in 2026, and his work has appeared/is upcoming in The Rialto, Propel, Gutter, Tears in the Fence, and Fort Myers Review.

Rachael Clyne – “Unseaworthy”

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Unseaworthy

My face is a creased skirt,
my hands, crabby and stiff
my brain, a shell rolled-in-and-
out, in-and-out of the tideline.

My eyes are grazed
by morning’s razor-light.
I must have walked ten miles
through dunes and rock pools
until tangled in drift nets
and bottom-trawled to oblivion.

Today brings tasks I am not fit for –
lists to obey, deadlines to gather.
Instead, I scratch the page
in a crustacean script
I cannot decipher.

My life tugs at its line,
but am I seaworthy?
Better to write, help me!
Bottle it and throw myself
into the day.

Rachael Clyne, from Glastonbury, is published widely in journals. Her collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams) concerns our broken connection with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem and latest collection, You’ll Never Be Anyone Else (Seren Books) explore identity and otherness, including migrant heritage, LGBTQ+ and domestic violence. rachaelclyne.substack.com @rachaelclyne.bsky.social

Richard Devereux – “old hippy beach at Paleochora”

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old hippy beach at Paleochora

at the end of the track
an effort to arrive

rock
campervan

40 going on 50
GB plates
right-hand drive

mesh of tamarisk
figs

perhaps a pilgrimage
back to youth

long hair and beard
white now

kaftan
beads

skin wrinkled
under many suns

smoke
soon rising

Richard Devereux lives in Bristol. His great interest in life is Greece. His pamphlet, Coal and Fire, has recently been published by Culture Matters. His poem, “Beirut”, won the Mist and Mountain International Poetry Prize 2025. One of his main themes is conflict. His greatest poetry influence is the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos.

John Short – “Elevation”

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Elevation
Barcelona

Your new home’s an elevation:
a remote edge of city before hills
that stretch away to wilderness

as locals compare song birds
warbling from tiny metal cages
and sun sends shadows over stone.

Roaming through narrow streets
we cross a park where people
cram a marquee, applaud dancers

and spill outside with champagne.
We sample tapas somewhere
in a buzz of bars and restaurants,

and after panting up gradients
step into this light-infused room
where rooftops spread to sea.

John Short lives near Liverpool after a previous life in southern Europe. His poetry has appeared in about 80 magazines and ezines internationally. He has a pamphlet and three full collections, the latest is In Search of a Subject (Cerasus 2023). His new pamphlet is The Company of Birds, which is due to appear from Cestrian Press later this year. He reviews for The High Window.

Heather D Haigh – “Girl, Do You Ever”

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Girl, Do You Ever

picture yourself three decades from now, obscured in a brown checked midi coat, sloping off to the bingo, and weep?

Do You Ever Go Clothes Shopping and arrive home with six outfits when you went for one—none of them right, and your purse empty? Do you count the cash in your emergency jar, half-hoping there’s enough, half-hoping there isn’t. You sure as hell aren’t letting him pay, because then he’ll think what they always think.

Do you leave the changing room littered with oh-God-nos, you’re-bloody-kidding-mes, and what-the-hells? Do you trudge home, squashed against the bus window by a man-spreader reading The Sun newspaper, to strew your bed with just-mayyyyyyyyyyybees.

Do you strip to your underwear, tugging up gusset-saggy tights and find your gaze skimming a pair of silk stockings rolled up on your dressing table. Stockings you only wore three times, before you realised Mark and John and Liam thought they were the most interesting thing about you.

The green wool turtle-neck is soft and warm, but it looks so boring he’ll think you want to be his mother, and—sod that—he can bloody well wash his own dishes, and actually there’s something about this guy that makes you think of greasy pots stacked high in a grime-ringed sink and your mam staring out of the window with a fag hanging from her lips and a scowl on her face, while the latest man of the house emits beer-sour farts and snores off his hangover.

Do you ever think, shit—the Paisley screams drugs and free love; the ruffled plunging neckline shouts good-time girl, but the blue trouser suit is pure Aunty Vi—and you’re fucked if you’re gonna start hiding the bog roll under the lace skirts of some po-faced plastic doll.

Do you ever think bugger it and stuff the lot in the back of your wardrobe, then watch Coronation Street with a microwave curry and a bottle of shandy?

Do you ever run your hand over brushed cotton and recall a rose-bud nightshirt with a wonky hem and the second-hand smell of Old Spice and Drum tobacco and feel your chest tighten like your bra is four sizes too small while your heart thumps and the breath catches in your throat. Do you find yourself longing again for that flood of relief when Mam got home? Do you own fifteen pairs of neck-to-ankle ribbed-cuff pyjamas?

Heather is a working-class Yorkshire writer, published by Oxford Flash Fiction, Fictive Dream, Bath Flash Fiction, The Phare, and numerous others. She has won or been placed in several competitions and is Pushcart and BOTN-nominated. Loves the sea and is addicted to cheese.
Find her at https://sites.google.com/view/heatherbooknook, https://www.facebook.com/Heatherbooknook