Monthly Archives: February 2020

OUR MEETING ON Tuesday, March 17th. IS CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19.

Unfortunately this means we will not be able to hear the winners of our 2020 Open Competition, nor hear Carrie Etter reading from her own work, as planned.

However, we will post the winners’ names and their poems here on the website. (Winners have already been informed.)

David Smith is a member of the Society and this poem was selected by our external judge for Folio #72, published in 2018.  A writer and poet, David is also a perennial local performer, and a driving force behind Voices.

Jump

Caught in that half-moment between sky and gravity
I am weightless.
I bubble-wrap that moment to keep it forever,
Locked in a place where no one can steal it.
It is mine, and mine alone.
 
I am the child thrown in the air.
I feel the hands slip away, the wind in my hair.
I am the fledgling blackbird
Taking that first leap of faith from the nest,
Unfolding my wings for that first freefall,
The ground rushing up towards me.

Susan Wicks is one of the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society’s most widely published poets, with collections from Faber &Faber and Bloodaxe. This poem won first prize in our Folio competition in 2018, and is collected in her forthcoming Dear Crane, due from Bloodaxe Books in June 2020.

Explaining Snow

Don’t cry, darling. It does that,
falling on a skylight flake by flake
until the topmost balcony is blotted out,
the ash tree all but gone. It falls like rain
but white, opaque – and bit by bit
the grey goes black, so when the sun comes up
it’s shining through a wad of white
that melts to tears and slowly
slithers down the slate. But what it also does
is fill the holes, the pavement underfoot,
cover the rot, the criss-cross footprints in the mud,
the shit, the chewing-gum, the polystyrene cup,
the weeds, the blackened flower-buds
and highlight each recessive twig.
Between this square eye and its lid,
look there’s a trapped leaf, and green in it.

The competition has now closed. Thanks to all who entered. JA.