Poet of the Month
2021: Poets featured as Poet of the Month
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).
2022: Poets featured as Poet of the Month
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)
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)
September: Tiger Windwalker (USA)
October: Laura Wainwright (Wales)
November: Humayun Kabir (USA)
December: Alan Peterson (USA)
February: Sanjula Sharma (India)
March: Derek Webb (Wales)
April: Jo Mazelis (Wales)
May: Robert Minhinnick (Wales)
June: Sally Roberts Jones (Wales)
July: Tuesday Poetry Group (Wales)
August: Laura Ann Reed (USA)
September: Irma Kurti (Italy)
October: Patricia Nelson (USA)
November: Ann Flynn (England)
December: Merryn Williams (England)
January: Annest Gwilym (Wales)
SAM SMITH (WALES)
Sam Smith (c) Photo 2025 Sam Smith
Although Sam Smith has been editor of The Journal (once 'of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry') for nigh on 30 years due to the rise in costs he has this year had to temporarily suspend publication.
Born Blackpool 1946 Sam now lives in Blaengarw, South Wales. Day jobs have included psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator........ working at anything which has paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters and which hasn't got too much in the way of his writing. Indie publishers have come and gone leaving him with several novels and a few poetry collections to his name - http://samsmithbooks.weebly.com & http://thesamsmith.webs.com His latest poetry collections are The Complete Pieces (KFS publishers) and Mirror, Mirror (erbacce-press).
Listen for the whispers / here come the ghosts
of the children / massacred in Gaza
With a similar silvery translucence / to Hiroshima skin
they join hands now / so many around the Pentagon
and they dance / four steps to the left
five steps to the right
A slow orbit theirs
four steps to the left / five to the right
Days all-ecompassing grey / sad as the rain
slip by / The ghosts of Gaza mothers
and fathers / older brothers and sisters too
have come crouching to search / the pavements
of Brussels / London and Washington
their ghost heads turned aside / listening
Clouds reach to the ground / black roads unshined
wet legs busily / brush by the searching ghosts
Trouser cuffs get snagged / skirts briefly caught
as bent-over mothers / and fathers peer into
the mortar / between the paving slabs
And around the Pentagon / the ghost children's
slow dance / goes on
four steps to the left / five to the right
(c) 2025 Sam Smith
City Scene
Hurrying to the theatre
through the park
a young[ish] woman
iPhone in hand
salutes a magpie
and strays
off the path
to touch wood for luck
In the theatre foyer
are glossy photographs
framed
of the impoverished and abused
(c) 2025 Sam Smith
Mind-Made
Monsters grown out of mistranslation
I exhale the horrors of lonely places
and spit out pestilence
Past & Future
. . . with summer bricks being re-baked
shadows sharpened
this sub-celestial mechanic
heavy through lack of sleep
every time he comes to a halt
his trouser legs
get nibbled at by ducks
A lowering sun
has him see
almost discernible
on a mountain flank the other side
of a tea-dark reservoir
the bobbing pimple shadow
of himself atop this ridge walk
followed by a line
of hurrying ducks
He presses on
Must go on . . .
The Price of Complacency
In this summer of tipping points
ice sheets melting
heat domes having us revel in
the profusion of meadow flowers and
the near constant flicker
of attendant butterflies
up here we thought we were safe
from flooding
Then the tornadoes came
left storm-bent boughs
and fallen trunks
of oak and thorn
Still we congratulated ourselves
that being high we had
avoided tsunamis
More tornadoes came
(c) 2025 Sam Smith
Part Truth
A disturbance in the fabric of acceptance
she arrived oiled
glistening naked as a frog
With a smile of suppressed mockery
she asked
"Is this your life?
To enforce a committee's rules?”
(c) 2025 Sam Smith
Singular
The Unit arbiter of all rules
obedience is the one law.
Led by a combination
of malice and stupidity,
one informing the other, he is
a cruel man, his paunch
held up by a wide belt,
in the short holster
a small gun.
Loyalty to The Unit is all,
obedience the one law.
(c) 2025 Sam Smith
This happened, keeps happening
One push sent the four-wheeled pram
on its own up the short hill.
In the rot of one's self is a memory
like a brown-black knot
within a fallen pine's
decomposing trunk
and which has become
this iron-hard spike
grown out from
deep inside and
outlasting the white-soft
surface splintering
One push sent the pram
on its own up the short hill.
A clap of the hands, a shouted laugh,
and the pram came rolling back.
Became a game: another push,
another clap, and the pram
came rolling back.
One more push sent the pram
up the short hill. A front wheel
mounted an unseen stone
and the pram
too far to reach
tipped onto its side . . .