Jodie Duffy

Threshold Fireworks crack and crackle in the distance, outside the bubble of silence that rests over our pensive house. I listen for stirring from my daughter’s bedroom, but the stillness holds firm against the booming sky. Flashes shoot through the gaps at the edges of the curtain, tagging the shadows, who turn, then return to their slumber. I lower my feet onto the carpet, gently replace the duvet, then soften my knees to descend the stairs. At the front door, the key turns with a click, the handle shudders, the metal cold on my skin. The night breathes on my face. I step aside to let the old year pass; hold the door open wide to welcome the new year in.

A poem for New Year’s Eve

Christopher Bertram | ‘Core Protection’ Refugeehood is not supposed to be like this. The ideal envisaged by the Refugee Convention is that refugee status should...

‘The UK’s refugee protection regime has always involved hypocrisy, as successive governments trumpet their adherence to humanitarian principles and the international order while doing their best not to incur the costs and obligations of those commitments in practice.’

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/no...

Just one day left to send your poems to the @cheltenhampoetryfestival
Festival's International Poetry Competition!

We welcome poems from all over the world!

To enter and find out more info visit: www.ticketsource.co.uk/cheltenhampo...

things i have to do today: think, ponder, wonder, analyze, ruminate, reflect, speculate, dwell on, imagine, question,

At a foodbank near you. 😢

The quiet anarchy of the volunteer who cannot be in the photo with the MP.

#poetry #foodbank #poverty #CeasefireNOW #welfarerights #politics #GazaCeasefire @teamlabouruk.bsky.social @plaidcymru.bsky.social @libdems.org.uk @socialistworker.bsky.social

🧱 Class, Work and the Politics of Poetry
Ruth Beddow asks who really gets to write — and how class, time, and labour shape the poetry we make. A powerful reflection on access, identity, and creativity in a working world.

🔗 poetryschool.com/the...

❛ A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight...

Ursula K. Le Guin, born #OTD in 1929.

❛ What. / The fuck. / Is this leaf. / Doing. In my–– / And this. / And fucking this.

A poem for your Sunday reset – by Dawn Watson, from Issue 25. 🍂

Congrats to the winners and I look forward to reading all the poems in the anthology!

Yay! 🥳 Very happy to have 2 poems longlisted in this competition.

Room with speakers on stage, with screen with session title ‘Pathfinding: Motherhood and Freedom, in front of audience

At Cheltenham Literature Festival this morning for Pathfinding: Motherhood and Freedom

Writing & Poetry Competitions, Submission & Opportunities in August 2025 — WORDBOX Over 150 calls for literary competitions and submissions including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography, and more - contests, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or ...

Mid-August submission deadlines alert! 44 literary journals, competitions, publishers and residencies all with deadlines by 1 Sept, 14 of which are closing over the next week. Don't miss out! www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

How to be hopeful: Alice Oswald’s poem Mist The poet on the startling wonders of the natural world

Poem of the day: Mist by the marvellous Alice Oswald who was arrested yesterday in the Palestine protests. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Competition time! Our latest competition is on the theme of Turning Points judged by Rebecca Watts. All info available on our website.

#poetrycompetition #poetry

Body-swap – Lesley Curwen Body-swap . . Lesley Curwen is a poet and broadcaster from Plymouth. She won the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize and was a finalist in Wales Poetry Award. Her pamphlet ‘Rescue Lines’ i…

Body-swap – Lesley Curwen @elcurwen.bsky.social

atriumpoetry.com/2025/07/25/b...

Friends, I wrote a piece on poet Laura Gilpin, who died of glioblastoma in 2006.

She is best known for “The Two-Headed Calf.”

With gratitude to the Poetry Foundation for allowing me to try to restore this remarkable healthcare practitioner/poet’s legacy.

www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/170...

'In my garden' by Mariann Johansen-Ellis, contemporary printmaker #ReframingWomenPrintmakers

Today on Anthropocene new poetry by @julwe1.bsky.social
🦢🔮🦢

A Teasmade Museum, for it is International Tea Day. Teasmade.uk

Yorkshire Times Poem of the Week: 'Nurse at a Bus Stop' by Simon Armitage
www.yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

It’s so good!

Ooh love this!

Cover of 52 ways of looking at a poem by Ruth Padel

This was a great find in the Oxfam bookshop this week

In light of yesterday's guilty verdict for the two men who felled the magnificent old tree at Sycamore Gap, I'm re-sharing my poem, 'Sycamore's Prayer', published by the wonderful @atriumpoetry.bsky.social. 🌳💔🪾

Lies I've Told My 3 Year Old Recently Trees talk to each other at night. All fish are named either Lorna or Jack. Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose. Tiny bears live in drain pipes. If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky. The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago. Everyone knows at least one secret language. When nobody is looking, I can fly. We are all held together by invisible threads. Books get lonely too. Sadness can be eaten. I will always be there. - Raul Gutierrez

The ending on this, a gut punch.

Unsolicited writing advice: no.2167
That thing you always wanted to do. That novel, that poem, that piece of art. Start it now. Don't wait. Make time. Give yourself permission to start. It will never be easier than it is now: maybe harder, but never easier.

Heading to Bristol for @lyrafest.com this afternoon 😊 Looking forward to the Women Poets Network open mic and @pascalepetit.bsky.social Fran Lock & @concordmoose.bsky.social

Birdsong There is a bird who sings to me, each morning from the old lime tree. I wonder what he’s trying to say? Stop fucking up. It’s not too late. It’s such a happy, joyous sound! Little bird who chirps so loud And brightens up my day with song. Stop standing there. You’ve not got long. I wish I could translate your words, my faithful, a cappella bird, who sits upon the lime tree bough. And still you wait. You must act now. All’s quiet in the tree today. I think perhaps he’s moved away. There’s silence these days everywhere, the ghost of birdsong in the air.

Here’s a poem for Earth Day. It’s called ‘Birdsong’.

Submissions are open for VERVE’s Poem of the Month
This month’s (optional) theme: everything is weird & that’s ok

£100 prize
£3 per poem / £5 for 3
Max 3 poems
No AI. Just YOU.

Closes 20th April.
Submit now: [insert link]

#Poetry #PoetsOfBluesky #CallForSubmissions #PoemoftheMonth #VERVE

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