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 
January: Annest Gwilym (Wales)
February: Sam Smith (Wales)
March: Dave Lewis (Wales)
April: Scott Elder (France)
May: Angela Kosta (Italy)
June: Abeer Ameer (Wales)
July: Jenny Mitchell (England)
August: Sydney Lea (USA)
September: Richard Collins (USA)
October: Mark Lewis (Wales)
November: Robert Nisbet (Wales)
Clare E. Potter (Wales)
Rhoda Thomas (Wales)

 

 FEBRUARY POET OF THE MONTH: 
MIKE EVERLEY (WALES)

                                                         Mike Everley (c) 2026 Mike Everley                                        
                                    

Mike Everley has been a writer for over 50 years. Born in the South Wales Valleys when coal was King, he was a mature student at Coleg Harlech, Aberystwyth and Leeds Universities, obtaining a MA and MPhil in Philosophy. He has had articles published in literary, specialist and general magazines and journals. Also, short stories and poetry in literary magazines such as: The Anglo Welsh Review, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, The Seventh Quarry, and Outposts. While at Aberystwyth he edited the student literary magazine Dragon.  Before retirement he was a member of both the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Authors, and acted as a tutor on creative writing courses run by London School of Journalism and Writers News. Now retired, he has taken up the creative pen as a Silver Scribbler. He has self-published numerous books on Amazon, covering family history, philosophy, art and creative writing.



Evening At Bracelet Bay

Far ahead, on the long blue horizon,
the grey shape of a tanker moves slowly
beneath shafts of light from an ebbing sun.
Waves roll in towards the rocky coastline
breaking suddenly on granite elbows
stretching and nudging the pewter water.
Clouds hang low and still in the light blue sky.
A fox snuffles along the grassy bank
in front of the few cars parked alongside.
She sniffs the crisp air and then pads onward.
The light starts to fail as I turn the key.
The engine comes to life. I drive away.
In the mirror I glimpse white crested waves
and the failing light of the dying day.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Swallows

My uncle and I flew paper swallows from the high bedroom window. They caught the lifting wind, drifted above the narrow road and pointed metal railings, that had somehow escaped the Spitfire Fund, into the small park with its swings, roundabout and curving metal slide. Origami birds designed centuries before man took to the sky. I make them still. But now they fly over a far different world where computer obsessed children view them with indifference. There is something therapeutic about working with paper: fold left, press along the crease, fold right, press along the crease until the skin's impression is absorbed and incorporated into the structure, part paper part person. Unlike merely pressing a key or moving a joystick on a video game. In Ancient Egypt, birds were thought to carry the souls of the dead. I fly many swallows now, one for each of the lost. They soar high over fields lush with grass, towards the waiting arms of the sea. Do they carry the dead souls of family and friends? Or are they carriers of my hopes and memories, riding the wind of imagination to a better place. I fly my swallows for those who are gone. Who will fly a swallow for me?

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Gravity

Rain breaks circular

on windscreen glass
            stretching
            elliptically
            downward
through curvatures
in space-time.
We also
            fall,
alone and together,
in our own time.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Journey's End

A field of neon buttercups
lifts up its petals to the night.
In this city of greying rain
that strokes the windows of the train
and runs in rivulets down glass.

It could be anywhere.

Only its name, painted in bold
letters upon a faded sign,
preserves a dark identity.
Scraps of litter swirl in the breeze
along the grubby platform edge.

Rootless, we scurry by.

Safe behind newspapers and eyes
that dart from shells and quickly stare
at passing landscapes, caught by light,
ephemeral against the sky.
Lost in thought, we sit, strangers still.

Waiting our journey's end.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Winter Windfalls

A blackbird pecks hungrily
at summer's windfall apples
left in the rough uncut grass.
Perhaps fieldfares will come,
as they did one cold year
in coats of brown and grey,
along with mistle thrushes
puffing their mottled chests.

The apple tree stands guard,
leafless now and garlanded
with holly round its gnarled trunk.
Food is scarce as the year turns
on its cold, wintry axis.
The quiet tap of blackbird beak
against hard rind fills the silence
with a melancholy beat.

Tap. Tap. The rhythmic sound
of the old year ending.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


The Suitcase

Disappointment, folded in creases,
lies within an open suitcase
waiting to be worn once more.

It is a suit of dark grey
absorbing all hues
draining them of colour
in an empty hotel room
within hearing of the sea.

The man stares empty eyed
into the steamed mirror
brown patched and silver peeled
hanging crookedly by the shower.

The universe turns slowly
on its star clustered pivot
unknowing, uncaring . . . eternal.

Hope checked out early that day.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


The Owls

Only the owls live here now. In this house of falling stone. High in the eves they nest. Swooping at night on silent wings. Once home to a nameless man toiling with bare hands beating the worthless soil into submission. Sweating under too many summer suns. Turning the dry earth ready for planting. Crouching in winter before an open grate filled with twigs. Shivering before a paltry fire. Drying sodden clothes as best he could. A solitary life, only the two graves outside tethered him here along with the dark secret that could never be shared. Just the thought brought shame that no amount of sweat could wash away. In silence it festered inside, until one day it snapped. Taking the hempen rope, used to hold the rusty gate shut, he slipped it over the low rough oak beam and hung. The rope burnt into his flesh. Then it was done. Only the owls live here now. At night they swoop on silent wings. The hunting is good.

                              The owls are hungry
                               haunting the ruined cottage
                               with their eerie calls.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Storyville

It's gone now,
crumbled to dust,
where once stride players
hurried punters on
in red lit rooms
down dim alleys.

Sex and jazz                                                         
washed down
with bootlegged bourbon.
Noisy neighbours
jostling, hassling
along Basin Street
with the blues
drifting on scented
night air.

A Saint Louis woman,
with diamond rings
on every finger,
once swayed along
to Jelly Roll's beat
along streets now
sanctified.

It's all gone now,
passed into history,
only the music survives
mellow and smooth
but with the hit
of smoky rye whisky.

(c) 2026 Mike Everley


Acknowledgements:

Evening at Bracelet Bay was first published in Poetry News (Poetry Society), Summer 2024.

Swallows was first published in Acumen Volume 111, January 2025.

Gravity was first published in These Pages Sing Issue 2, Winter 2025.

Journey's End was first published in Train of Thought Anthology, 2024.

Winter Windfalls was first published on the Green Ink Poetry Website,
November 2024.

The Suitcase was first published in The Journal of Undiscovered Poets Volume 7, 2025.

The Owls. Haibun. Based on a ruined cottage in mid Wales where  in the past a man hung himself. First published in Presence Haiku Journal.

Storyville was first published on the Jerry Jazz Musician website.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Mike-Everley/author/B07H6WRG2B?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

https://welshwriters.co.uk/mike-everley/