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)

 

Merryn Williams (c) Photo 2024 Merryn Williams

 

       Merryn Williams grew up in Hastings, studied English at Cambridge and worked for the Open University for several years.  She was the founding editor of THE INTERPRETER’S HOUSE magazine and has published studies of Thomas Hardy, First World War poets and Victorian women novelists.  Her latest poetry pamphlet is AFTER HASTINGS (Shoestring Press).  During lockdown she edited an anthology, POEMS FOR THE YEAR 2020: EIGHTY POETS ON THE PANDEMIC (also from Shoestring).


SHARDLAKE

He was a shard, sunk deep within the lake

of history.  It was dark.
The lake stretched leagues, and he was scarcely known,
an awkward and a solitary man
who moved unmentioned among flashier players
that strutted, and wore velvet, round the throne.
No records name him.
But if you can, dive miles down, and retrieve him,
bring out that jagged shard that gives you pain.
He died – he must have – but we don’t know when.

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

ELEGY FOR RUTH BIDGOOD

I learned of your death in a crowded seafront café
between trains, flicking casually through my smartphone
as everyone does.  I should have expected this news
but didn’t.  You’d not have felt at home in this place,

distrusting the sea, turning back to the mountains. So
I went for a last look, and spent a half hour counting
the waves, remembering how I’d watched them crashing
off Hengistbury Head, on the actual day you died.

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

HE REVISITS EARTH

I landed feet first, in a rush of wind.
Grey-silver light.  I saw the rarest owl
sail past; time was when I’d have noted that.
There’s dust on my binoculars.  And all

seems much the same.  She’s sitting in my chair,
red-eyed, and some years older.  But the gate
hangs loosely, not the way I liked.  I can’t
unlock the window.  Bring me up to date.

Where are the children?  No response; the house
is firmly barred, they’ve left me far behind.
I stand here shivering; February stars
chill to the bare bone.  Who has seen the wind?

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

ONE MORE STATISTIC (for Susan)

Yet another devoted wife, a woman
I liked, and much more glamorous than me;
indeed I felt quite envious at her wedding.
But as she cooked the family meal one evening,
he briefly phoned.  He wanted to be free.

And there it went – kaput!  But decades later
we met.  She didn’t seem in any pain
and smiled a lot, but once said, ‘never again’.
I watched; the slow years wore away her glamour.
Her sons encircled her.  She died of cancer.

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

HIS DEMONS

Entering the empty flat, we were surprised
to hear the radio’s normal cheerful blaring.
It seemed the tenant couldn’t face returning
from work, to be tormented by the silence.

And when his demons drove too hard, he locked
and double-locked himself inside.  That way
he knew he couldn’t rush out to the railway
temptingly visible from his flat’s window.

But if asked why he walked away from those
who loved him, he’d say the alternative
was breakdown, suicide.  It did no good
to argue, nothing left us but to grieve.

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

GOSSIP                      

Being an invalid, he took an interest
in other people’s lives, as people do,
became a gossip.  One could call it harmless,
a way to fill his dreary days.  Have you
gossiped yourself? Or lent an ear?  Yet I
was furious when his gossip touched on me.

‘She robbed the Post Office’.  ‘He’s got a girlfriend –
his wife is older, plain – her brother too
was sectioned for a year – and did you know
(if not, I’ll tell you now) that So-and-so
is homosexual.  Oh yes, it’s well known’.
So spoke he, chucking word-darts from his throne.

‘Lay off, you nasty little man’, I said,
(he won’t be hurt by reading this, he’s dead).
‘I know you’re sick, but you could use your mind
more fruitfully on something less unkind.
I’ve heard enough.  I’ve nothing more to say’.
He looked quite shocked.  I got up, stormed away.

Well, why do I recall him?  That was then.
I’ve grown up since, and mixed with better men.
‘You hurt the poor chap’s feelings’, I was told,
and truth is, he did not live to be old.
Gossip?  It’s gone on since the world began;
so rest in peace, you nasty little man.

(c) 2024 Merryn Williams

ORCHID IN A FIELD OF DANDELIONS

‘I have more than one face’,
the child said, ‘one I wear when I am at school,
another one for when I visit my father,
and this one is for now, when I’m talking to you’.

‘And when I go
to drama class, I pretend to be all sorts of people.
I’ve been Iphigenia, I’ve been the Snow Queen,
and I can put on a very good Irish accent’.

Her grandfather
has just one face, and you know just where you are with him.
Rightly, she loves him better than she loves me.

For this child,
an orchid in a field of a hundred dandelions,
I think it’s sensible to have more than one face.


(c) 2024 Merryn Williams