Em Gray

Welcome!

Photo of a red fox kit who is about 2-3 months old. They have their adult coloured coat and their eyes have darkened now to a dark amber. They are sitting amongst grass with some buttercups growing, and is looking to the left and in profile. They look watchful but calm.

This year's 2 cubs I watch from my window are growing beautifully, and now have their adult coats and eye colours. What a serene looking face this little one has 🧡

We celebrate the bull, believed to have escaped from an abattoir, that ran loose in Birmingham, yet almost everyone participates in the cruel and grisly trade in body parts which keeps abattoirs in business.

obscure and relatable at the same time. May the dreams resolve.

Photo of a fluffy red fox cub. S/he is almost head on to the camera and standing, looking slightly to the side. S/he now has adult colours, although s/he still has the pale (and intense looking!) eyes of cubs, that will probably darken a bit. S/he stands on grass starred with buttercups.

Fox Villas news 🧡 - there are only two cubs this year, but they are beauties - a boy and a girl with lovely chunky legs to grow into. Here is the bolder of the two.

Wonderful!

Photo of a one day old herring gull chick sitting amongst dry moss next to cracked egg shell. Their beak is wide open, their pointed pink tongue protruding. Their feathers are fluffy and beige with dark spots like a pebble/seal pup/the egg they came from.

Welcome, little one. Here beginneth #chick (gull-let? Gullet?) season.

I so loved your poem and reading, Olga - what an unexpectedly magical and meaningful Facebook group to have discovered!

Thank you so much, Corinna, I'm really glad you enjoyed them 💚

Ah, you're welcome! I did some suspicious looking lurking near floral/green places near my flat. Thank you again so much for giving these poems such a lovely home 🧡

Photo of anthology 'To Lay Sun Into A Forest', propped on old stone wall and leaning against leaves and small blue flowers. Cover of To Lay Sun Into A Forest- Poems About Grief by Sídhe Press. On the left there is a quote : The wide-ranging community of poets chart grief across a galaxyof stars, lands, and the oceans, through the shivering leaves oftrees, to the heartbeats of loved ones, their losses are encapsulatedin words that stay with us, long after we close the book. Teresa Pilgrim, academic, creative practitioner, activist, survivor On the right, there is a swirl of a painting, red, yellow, orange, you can see the brushstrokes. On it is the title in a handwriting font.

Photo of poem by Em Gray, titled 'all of this is normal', that reads; to wait at glass for unseasonal butterflies / strange weather / tameness to seek counsel from hellebores / carry a person-faced stone to continue to omit sage / chilli / juniper despite a love for them to adopt a worn shirt as support animal to darn a requiem of socks to fear what is melting but leave the lamp on to hear from the empty kitchen devotions of tea to recur together sleep-limbed in borrowed coats / on unfamiliar benches to press call then name yourself stupid for believing loss a mastless hill / a loft / a swift / a door

Photo of poem by Em Gray, titled 'Remembrance Day for Lost Species' (after The Christmas Island Pipistrelle), that reads: You are two paragraphs. I'm sorry for the Feral of cat, the Wolf of freighted snake and how the microfiction of your body is the size of a prune's dark shrivel, stone heart. All, now, is elegy. I seek the lore of you so always everywhere you'd fly through open doors, missteer into soup but find your seed bead eyes flash-lit, eleven seconds of the last recording of your voice looping its morse as if to be understood.

Honoured to have two poems in this beautiful anthology from @sidhepress.bsky.social. All proceeds go to The Sameer Project. The physical book is available from Amazon, and the ebook is just 5.99 Euros, and can be purchased directly from Sidhe Press here: www.sidhe-press.eu/product/to-l...

Map reveals residential wood-burning hotspots in England and Wales Researchers analyse energy performance certificate data to identify areas with potentially high particle pollution

I'm really sorry, but we just need to stop doing this. Your wood-burning hygge leads directly to people's deaths - other people's and perhaps your own.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Poem by Em Gray titled 'Due to legal guidelines this will not be a march, just a still protest' that follows on from the title, and reads: as in still here, as in still for the camera, as in even so and regardless, as in not moving backwards like in that image of the stages of a species where the one at the back is at the back.

How can I make people care? Disability benefits are not prizes to be won nor luxuries we can afford to live without.

From last week:

How Can I Make People Care?

#Disability #CIADISH #NEIS
louisekenward.substack.com/p/how-can-i-...

Poetry Books for Secondary School Libraries Many secondary school libraries have a very limited selection of poetry books. We try to donate over 1000 books a year to secondary school libraries - with your help!

Wow. We are over half-way there. So grateful for the extraordinary response to this appeal from our community. Thank you.

We're starting to reach out to schools, plan boxes to send out, & get those books onto library shelves.

Please help us spread the word!
#poetry

fundrazr.com/22Wg69?ref=s...

Photo of 'Two Boys at Midnight' by Matt Barnard, that can be found with a recording in the link.

Just reading the National Poetry Competition winners' anthology - love this moment of noticing by Matt Barnard, that feels like a rites of passage. poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/two-bo...

Love this 'grotty sponge' of a heart.

This 'little goblin' is strangely comforting.

Oh no! Well, it feels an importance to reply to this as an 'I see you'.

List of words banned from federal agencies

Hey poets! These are the words now banned or discouraged at federal agencies—on yer mark, get set, ✍️….

Photo from above of 'Ten Poems for Wellbeing' selected and introduced by Vanessa Lampert and published by Candlestick Press. Here is a matching bookmark and brown envelope too, on a wooden table surface. The cover is illustrated with a watercolour painting looking down towards the surface of a pond with orange/red fish, lily pads and flowers and dragonflies.

#Poetry post joy this morning from @candlestickpress.bsky.social 💚 edited by the lovely Vanessa Lampert, and including my poem 'Symbiosis'. Much gently nourishing noticing here (swallows, a cat to confide in, a heart x-ray) and a humanity that is tender and relatable in this fragile world of ours.

Screenshot of Elaine Ewart's poem titled 'Take the collared dove' from atriumpoetry.com. It reads; Do a thing badly, often enough, and it becomes success. Take the collared dove: fucking all year round, pushing out eggs into a construction of three twigs balanced on the bracket of a satellite dish. To spot their nests, look up from the smashed shell and dirty yolk at your feet. Yet they throng the air like clumsy angels, sweeping down to narrowly miss your face. Once, on the hottest day of the year, as we lay late into the morning, sweating in the sheets, we heard a squeak and clatter at the window, where they'd started to build on the open hinge. All they do is persist. A million breeding pairs, coo-coo-coo, as I move house again without you, tell the removal men, Put the boxes anywhere, fall on my unmade bed, listen to the storm carry the dustbins down the hill.

Loved this poem by Elaine Ewart in @atriumpoetry.bsky.social Dear collared doves and their three-twigged embracing of all that's precarious. And such poignancy in the 'without you'.

atriumpoetry.com/2025/03/14/t...

This looks brilliant!

A photo of two books published by Broken Sleep books and a bookmark fanned out on a white background. The books are the anthology 'Opening Line', edited by Aaron Kent which has a swirly orange and peach coloured cover, and 'A [Cupboard] Full of Tomboys' by Jay Farley, which features a poem presented/shaped like a washing label, with the words in larger letters at the top '100% NON BINARY?'. The bookmark is a blank reading list with columns for 'title', 'date started' and 'rating'.

Exciting book post today. I was rapt by @jayfarley.bsky.social 's #poetry at a recent @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social reading, and moved by how they spoke of finding their writing/performing voice when discovering their non-binary identity at the age of 48.

Image of the cover of the issue with the words 'Full House Literary 2025 issue 1. Poetry, prose, hybrid, art'. The list of contributor names are then featured. There is a sticker saying now live! The cover image features deep red areas with fine crack-like patterns, framing bright blue sections. Organic, vein-like red lines flow through the blue, resembling tendrils or roots.

Happy Sunday! A new issue of FH just dropped! It's fantastic, even if I do say so myself. The gorgeous piece on the cover is by Shee, and you can read the thread to check out the featured contributors. Access the PDF, listen to recordings, and enjoy ❤️

www.fullhouseliterary.com/issue1-2025

Thank you so much, Corinna x

A screenshot of a poem titled [soliloquy] by Em Gray that is right-justified on the page and reads; lately you have seemed absent not like a commuter kited by birdsong but a phone ringing out by shoes and you have seemed full not like a glass but a bathtub curbed dark rain and you have seemed empty not like a room to be painted or the beat before applause but forgetting the words of your song and you have seemed far not like a plane — fields an abstract you need to step back from to know where to land but a plane that has only a box and the box is a vault a plane that is lost over fog because fog lies low seems more than vapour the wall of it

Glad to have a #poem in the new issue of @fullhouselitmag.bsky.social . Thank you to editor, Leia for all her care and work. www.fullhouseliterary.com/issue1-2025

A brilliant evening!

Ah, Nia - I delight-giggled at your comment :-)

Oh gosh, what a lovely post, thank you so much, Roger! I'm touched that my poem is on your phone's notes.