Poet of the Month

January: Rebecca Lowe (Wales).
February: Jim Gronvold (USA). 
March: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld (USA).
April: Tozan Alkan (Turkey).
May: Byron Beynon (Wales).
June: Michelle Chung (USA). 
July: Jim Gwyn (USA).
August: Jonathan Taylor (England).
September: Beata Poźniak (USA).
October: Maria Taylor (England).
November: Stanley H. Barkan (USA).
December: John Dotson (USA).

January: Maria Mastrioti (Greece).

February: Gayl Teller (USA).
March: Mike Jenkins (Wales).
April: Cassian Maria Spiridon (Romania).
May: Simon Fletcher (England)
June: Sultan Catto (USA)
July: Vojislav Deric (Australia)
August: K. S. Moore (Ireland)
September: Kristine Doll (USA)
October: Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan (USA)
November: Christopher Norris (Wales)
December: Maria Mazziotti Gillan (USA)

2023: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 

January: Samuel Ezra (Wales)
February: Tôpher Mills (Wales)
March: Rob Cullen (Wales)
April: Mandira Ghosh (India)
May: John Greening (England)
June: Rosy Wood-Bevan (Wales)
July: David Hughes (Wales)

2025: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 

 

Annest Gwilym (c) Photo 2025 Annest Gwilym

 

Annest Gwilym is the author of three books of poetry. Surfacing (2018) and What the Owl Taught Me (2020) were both published by Lapwing Publications. What the Owl Taught Me was Poetry Kit’s Book of the Month in June 2020 and one of North of Oxford’s summer reading recommendations in 2020. Annest has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, both online and in print, and placed in several writing competitions, winning one. She was the editor of the webzine Nine Muses Poetry from 2018-2020. She was a nominee for Best of the Net 2021. Her third book of poetry – Seasons in the Sun – was published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch in September 2023 and was Poetry Kit’s Book of the Month in November 2023 as well as being one of their Christmas reading recommendations. She was nominated for the Wales Book of the Year Award 2024/Gwobr Llyfr y Flwyddyn 2024. Seasons in the Sun is available from: https://carreg-gwalch.cymru/products/seasons-in-the-sun?_pos=1&_psq=Seasons+in+the+Sun&_ss=e&_v=1.0
Amazon and other places. It is also available from most bookshops in Wales.

 

Beach Pottery Mosaic

 
Storm-washed sand-stormed jigsaw,
            your voices sing
as the tide comes in.
            High-tide the moon rides
the waves like a hag,
            disturbing
the sea’s mirror
             I’m in a million
pieces on the beach;
             nothing aches like
the static of tides.
             You chafe my sharp edges,
silky stories in your hand.
             I gather my broken pieces
and send them spinning
             into Andromeda,
Whirlpool, Sombrero.
             The hurt breakwater
and Via Lactea
             pause,
whisper that even
             my broken glass
can become sea treasure.

Note

The 'beach pottery mosaic' is a piece of wall-art I made from pottery shards found on various Welsh beaches, while recovering from a spell of mental illness. This process felt as if I was putting my own broken pieces back together as well.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

Last Night I Became an Emperor Moth

I rode through the liquid night,
as a melon-slice moon crested a bank of cloud.
Part of the hush and curve of the universe;
Pleiades above me a diamond cluster ring.
Clothed in starlight, wings powdered,
furry belly glossy and plump.

Left the moor for a jaunt to the seaside,
over towns with flickering lights and strange smells.
Saw the sea corrugated by waves,
tang of salt quickening my senses.
Shimmied and played chase with the ladies,
rested with them on marram grass.

Birdsong ushered in the return of the sun;
drowsy, went home to sleep in the heather.
There to wait for my lover; my musk strong,
it will draw him from miles. He will come,
wings taut with blood. Antennae fresh as ferns.
Owl eyes pulsing with life like coals.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

The Moon Hedgehog

One night the moon cracked open
and out he tumbled, with newborn spines
that pricked the air in their fire-beauty,
while the constellations sang.

Golden-tipped sea urchin, he fled
through looms of leaves fingered by spiders
and night-crackling grass while the moon,
tangled in branches, smiled her lamp.

Hedgepig, he sucked milk from drowsy cows
as his black-star eyes bored holes in the night.
In spotlit hedgerows he snuffed for snails,
while a fox bark thrilled the slumbering wood.

A barn owl chafed the caverns of sleep;
all night he snuffled, snaffled slugs and worms,
blackened his lips with soft blackberries,
fell asleep at dawn drunk on moon-juice.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

Fair Maids of February

Necks arched like swans,
their flickering leaves scull
the frost-fringed moss,
last year’s rain-gnawed leaves
where the bright beaks
of blackbirds stab and scour.

They form a chill flotilla on the hill
beneath woods where winter-bare
trees scratch a colourless sky
and a watery sun sits
on the horizon
like an over-fed cat.

Their pure lamps
shiver in needling wind
where all is quiet apart from
the black squabble of crows.
Heralds, they bring in
the sharp green scent of spring.

 
Note

Fair maids of February is a folk name for snowdrops.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Seagull

Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I

The world was born
From the point of light
In a seagull’s pale eye

II

Beneath the sign
DON’T FEED THE SEAGULLS
The seagulls feed themselves

III

In the sea’s deep crypt
Two oysters and a mussel
Dream of seagulls

IV

In the woods of confusion
The way out is marked
By a trail of seagull droppings

V

The sun plays Midas on the water
While two seagulls play Mars
Over a limp sandwich

VI

A flock of seagulls
And a raven
Is still a flock of seagulls

VII

In a castle’s cobbled forecourt
A seagull and a collared dove
Hold court

VIII

When skies are violent
A seagull’s muscular wings
Hold up moisture-rich clouds

IX

Killers from the egg
Each seagull knows
How to catch a pike

X

In a manor’s formal gardens
Where a marble fountain tinkles
A seagull’s cries are informal

XI

From a train’s rectangular window
Seagulls chase after a plough
Like a sudden snow blizzard

XII

One of Braque’s birds
Dreamt that in another life
He was a seagull

XIII

Alone on a beach, a child watches
As a dead seagull’s wing flaps
Quietly in the breeze

 
Note

‘Killers from the egg’ is from Ted Hughes’s poem Pike.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

Hinterland

Arrows of light pierce
the grey spaces of winter,
each wind-warped tree
budding a troubled green.

The storm-light sky sheds
a wave of birds, quicksilver-bright,
their alliterative song ringing
in the bruise of dawn.

The wolves of winter
are silent now like fossils
as the moon’s sickle fades
in the scalpel-sharp air.

In the hinterland of spring
I cling to the undertow of night,
my thoughts drift moth-like
still stitched on winter.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym

Twilight

 
The sun’s ore is quartered, spectral,
quiet as a broken egg.
Seams of indigo slowly fall on saffron clouds,
coppered with failing light,
reaching towards the horizon’s altar.

A ragged litany of birds, like a dark tide,
tilt, soar, swerve, weave in the sky’s glass,
their purpose mysterious and their own.
Water droplets, like beads of sugar,
start forming on darkening threads of grass,
releasing the mossy green scent of damp earth.

On the beach, a prayer of crows
pick at the carcass of a dead seagull,
clean white feathers landing on the sand
like a sacrifice. Twilight softens and blurs
their laser-sharp outlines.

The curtain falls silently,
without a shout or a whisper.
On the shore of night,
my pebbled heart is made of air,
distilled to a tangle of birds, sky, water, earth.
The wings of night alight on a sadness of waves,
almost like love, or a blessing.

(c) 2025 Annest Gwilym