Category: Poems

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

1 ‘Would you mind not parking on our land?’ She said, as we walked back to the car — The land in question being the grassy verge Of a lane marked ‘private’ and leading to A country pile called ‘Wilmshurst Cottage’. In an estate agents’ evaluation (I researched online later that evening) Now the most … Continue reading Parking in Fletching

This poem is written through Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale, which was recorded in April 1967, for me a lifetime away in years, and released the following month as their debut record. It reached number 1 on the U.K. singles chart on 8th June, 1967, marking the beginning of the Summer of Love. … Continue reading The Battle of Hyde Park