Category: Poems

Out of Hong Kong’s nearly 7.5 million people, 340,000, around 5 per cent of the population and 10 per cent of the working population, are foreign domestic workers. Most of these are from the Philippines and Indonesia, with some from Thailand, Sri Lanka or Nepal. 98.5 per cent of these workers are women, many of … Continue reading Settling In

Kowloon, the smallest and most densely populated of the three regions of Hong Kong, is an urban area on the mainland, from which ferries run across the harbour to Hong Kong Island. Although most of Hong Kong is on the mainland, this term is used by Hong Kongers to refer to the People’s Republic of … Continue reading On Kowloon Ferry

‘We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth. It will cease to exist.’ — Yoav Gallant, Israel Minister of Defence At one minute and fifty-one seconds In the drone footage you’re alive, a man Walking up a hill, swinging his legs and arms With a will and intentions, and, … Continue reading Khan Younis, February 2024

Because I do not own a rifle My loaded words must serve as bullets And when you tell me they’re not legal I’ll know exactly where to shoot it. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, a statutory duty was placed on U.K. police, education, health and local authorities to prevent terrorism by identifying citizens … Continue reading Extremism

When I met the ‘you’ of this poem in 2011 and began to write poetry again, she told me of an encounter years before when, during a period of sadness in her life, she had travelled to the north coast of Cornwall and, from a cliff top, saw a grey seal with whom she performed … Continue reading South Winds

Fight and Flight: Poems 2012-2023 — 29 August, 2023 by Simon Elmer Paperback £15.00 Hardback (forthcoming) Look Inside ‘A luminescent and transporting first volume. Its range, depth and nuance — formally, thematically, cognitively and emotionally — are exceptional. It’s a work I’ll find myself returning to. And quoting!’ — Steve Venright, author of The Least … Continue reading Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023

Night, when the constellation of crane lights Rises in the West, and the thrum and hammer Of a perennially dug-up road Begins its bedtime prayers; in the glare Of diodes in car lights and council blocks, From which the orange haze of street lamps Offers something almost like relief; When the last smokers from the … Continue reading London Loves

for Linden Brough Fear in the figures on a TV-screen, In the mouths of liars paid to deceive; Fear in a handful of dust was enough To bring a fearful nation to its knees. Though I do not see the world in colour, In the night I see clearer than you — Mewed the cat … Continue reading The Burial of the Dead

I am a man, upo da land, I am a selkie i da sea. 1 How far have you come? she asked when we arrived. As far as it’s possible to go, I sighed, And from what feels like another country. And to all her other questions I replied: Like a lizard crawling out of … Continue reading The Cantref of Pebidiog

Nor did I deem your decrees so strong That you, a mortal man, could overturn The gods’ unwritten and unfailing laws. — Sophocles, Antigone, c. 441 B.C. Back again, but for how long In this brief respite from incarceration? Air and sea now banned to us By an Iron Curtain of regulations, Locked in a … Continue reading Freedom Day