Clare Proctor

Brigid sitting on a highland cow, framed by an arch of books and birch trees. Over her head pages of the written word are floating, accompanied by a poem by Nikita Gill. The leaves in the trees also resemble book pages.

#FolktaleWeek prompt #4: Book

Brigid was the Celtic goddess of poetry & wisdom. Christian monks later made Brigid the Saint of poets. It seemed only fitting I should quote an Irish poet here: the divinely talented @nikitagill.bsky.social

@FolktaleWeek
#FolktaleWeek2025
#FolktaleweekBook

Thank you!

Billy Collins

The top of a carrot peaking through soil.

"I have left my body many times. Once I misplaced myself
inside my mother’s voice. She was peeling a carrot with
a small knife, the blade so thin it sang against the curling
skin."

Contributor and poetry reader @andhow.bsky.social has a new poem in @diodeeditions.bsky.social ❤️: buff.ly/yTTHHpD

can't wait to read your poems. Send me your bangers, both quiet and noisy!

As a child By Vidyan Ravinthiran because my voice was not the right voice and could not be understood I stood before the mirror — a murky glassen word this mouth can’t shape right to this day — and was made to watch my teeth and lips being imprecise. So this is why I come across a Southron and not from Yorkshire, or Sri Lankan; but I’ll complain no more about this clarified and potent tongue for when the moustached gent at US Customs asked me in his hapless twang are you a terrorist, my borrowed posh it sure abashed that poor colonial; and it was of course what my child-face perceived or could not in the glass which made of me a scrutineer of sound, a listener for and into every glitch in the aathma, the script, the avid void of English.

Congratulations to Vidyan Ravinthiran, who has jointly won (with Karen Solie) the Forward Prize for Best Collection with Avidyā (Bloodaxe). Its brilliant final poem, "as a child", describes how an early speech impediment led him to be "a scrutineer of sound" with a love of "the avid void of English"

At least - Forward Arts Foundation it is said/ that they died/ in their sleep/ one might imagine/ a peaceful state/ at least/ at least/ the...

forwardartsfoundation.org/poem/at-least/

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it? Love is for the ones who love the work. —Joseph Fasano

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

❛ Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

Denise Levertov, born #OTD in 1923.

❛ What. / The fuck. / Is this leaf. / Doing. In my–– / And this. / And fucking this.

A poem for your Sunday reset – by Dawn Watson, from Issue 25. 🍂

If you are based in or near York (wish I was!) just look at this amazing opportunity… @poetrypharmacy.bsky.social

From: Bruce Taylor, No End in Strangeness: New and Selected Poems (Cormorant, 2011).

RIP Liverpool’s own Brian Patten 💔

#TheMerseyPoets

Certain numbers accompany us through our lives, connected to our memories of people and places, of significant events. What numbers remain with you decades later? And why?

This poem is taken from Whatever You Do, Just Don't (HappenStance Press, 2023), my second full collection...

For You Who Are About to Give Up Do it. Give up the old ghosts, the old fears; give up the shadowy house of childhood, the voices like knives spilled in the kitchen; give up the stories you never meant to be, your father's rage, your mother's silence inside you. Stay, stay in this one world but give it up, give it up to wonder. I am here. I will hold you through the hard part. I will thumb away the cold thorns from your face. And then, my love, when you are ready, when you've told yourself no one is ever ready, give up that life you never meant to be, those clothes that have worn you like old ghosts, those dreams you have carried in you like winters. Give up and walk out through the rivers and look at it, that old moon in the spruces. She is trying, she is still trying to tell you: like a child, like a bride stepping from a wedding dress, give up every heft you have borrowed and live the life you have imagined. In your life is where the dead are saved. —Joseph Fasano

For You Who Are About to Give Up

This absolutely stunning poem from @jaxxi.bsky.social has won the Artemesia Arts poetry competition…

Wincing at details of a choppy 20s then lol at "Torn". From v good Joy is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney via @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

the deep / rosined bow sound of the living

Dorianne Laux, “Cello”
#smallpoemsunday

Image of two brown oak leaves, floating on the surface of a light blue swimming pool

Last swim in the outdoor pool:
chlorinated leaves
and the steam, rising…