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Beth Brooke

@bethbpoet.bsky.social

Poet, Quaker, retired teacher, socialist, runner (just) , proud Omi . She/her

1947 Posts2243 Follower 1054 Folgt

Dithering Chaps - submissions open @ditheringchaps.bsky.social · 10h ago

We've been marvelling and worrying in equal measure about how AI is affecting poetry submissions. The change over just two years in what AI can do is startling - we ponder this, giving examples, in our latest blog. www.ditheringchaps.com/blog/towards... We'd love to hear what you think...

ditheringchaps.com

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 10h ago

We are on overnight grandparent duties. So far so good: he’s asleep and we have had no potty accidents either. I count this as a win 🥇

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · yesterday

Well I couldn’t resist it, @zoomburst.substack.com #OddChallenge

Und so weiter

At 6:38am you realise that you are properly awake
and so you read the online newspaper until 7:38.

7:39am becomes Sudoku, the medium difficulty and
the hard to take you up to 8am.

Get up, have breakfast, make a list.
Do the list; have a coffee at 11am.

Read, do a bit of gardening until it’s lunch
at 1pm.

Go out for a walk at 2, except on Thursdays;
cup of tea at 4pm.

At 5pm turn on the radio:shout at the news;
some days it’s just ridiculous.

5:45 prepare the evening meal. Eat. WatchTV.
Retire to bed at 10.

Read. Sleep. Wake up again.
Und so weiter.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 3d ago

For what it’s worth I now have a tentatively complete manuscript. I will send it to my poetry mentor tomorrow. 🙀

@poemtoday.bsky.social · 3d ago

Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love There is no chance that we will fall apart There is no chance There are no parts. June Jordan

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 3d ago

This is a really interesting read

Ex-ape-?@jimbucktoo.bsky.social · 3d ago

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/o...

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 4d ago

Spent the morning and part of the afternoon trudging through a wood with people I didn’t know to try and cut down the brambles etc that have made the right of way almost impassible. Only about 7kms but very rough going. I am, as my Mutti would have said, knackered.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 4d ago

Watching Pink Floyd’s concert film, A Delicate Sound of Thunder and feeling sad and nostalgic for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · 5d ago

A poem of mine for today ~ Lammas ~

We are made of bread
and light, and love that is the song
of a blackbird to the morning, a bat's wings to the night air.
The moon, a scythe, to reap us, the sun, a child that sails away -
we weave a religion
full of fatherless sons
and immaculate women
that only gods may touch.
We have always made our own kings, and tasting hunger, truth has watched, its crow's eye upon the work
of harvest and plough.
To cut the sheaf, then the earth, these dark sods, rich
as blood, raised, but a promise
even as they harden - of hope perhaps, in a seed or the black tips of a hare's ears, in the secrets of our grandmothers.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 5d ago

Brilliant poem here

Betty Stanton@fadingbetty.bsky.social · 5d ago

I took a break from posting here because months have been insane in good and bad ways, but I recently learned my poem in @rowanglassworks.bsky.social was nominated for Best of the Net! Guess I'm back! www.rowanglassworks.org/flash-glass-... #poem #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #amwriting

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 6d ago

Morning #BlueskyPoetry it’s #PoemsAbout Friday. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk The #LastTrain theme sparked an idea, but as usual I couldn’t quite write it out as imagined. Sorry. Armageddon on the brain this week! Will enjoy seeing what shows up today. Thanks for reading.

A 2 stanza poem by Debbie Ross entitled

No Escape

Text follows:

I think we missed it.
The last train left the station some time ago.
We're stuck here
waiting on the platform for a departure that will never come.
Wish on the stars, pin your hopes on Mars.
It's pointless waiting - unpack your suitcase,
throw your lot in with the human race.
Let's do something while we're waiting...

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 6d ago

Here’s one for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Last Colliery Train The future had gone
before the train did. I climbed the same steps,
laid my hand
on the same worn controls. The rails were rusting beneath us, as if the earth
had begun
to take them back. Behind me, the black wagons drew slowly
from the pithead.
On the bridges, men who had worked below, women who had waited children lifted high enough
to remember.
Nobody cheered. They watched us pass as they had watched their fathers leave for work, their husbands return
with darkness
worked into their skin.
For years, these tracks had carried coal from beneath the valley
and wages into its houses. That morning
they carried neither.
At the main line I brought her to a halt
and shut the engine down. The cab trembled,
then settled. And in the silence
that followed, it seemed the whole valley
was listening
for a pulse
that did not come again.

Kyla Houbolt @luaz.bsky.social · 5d ago

Here's another #LastTrain poem, @thebrokenspine.co.uk , with thanks to @frankhudson.bsky.social for sharing the Langston Hughes poem, thanks to Hughes, and to Elizabeth Cotten, here is "Freight Train":

Freight Train

You know? I feel that solar flare
shoving through my chest like a freight train.
Not like a kindly old passenger train, but
a train on serious, industrial business!
Heck, maybe you don’t know. But try,
just once, to breathe, deeper, deeper –
and then notice how hard it is
to let go.

Langston Hughes tells about
a box car forgotten on a siding
in a small town. It is the lonesomest
sorrowful vision, just sitting by itself,
not even a hobo to keep it company.
Draw your heart on its side with
that red spray paint, please, and say
I sent you there.

Kyla Houbolt @luaz.bsky.social · 5d ago

"What if I am the suspicious activity?"

Beth Brooke@bethbpoet.bsky.social · 6d ago

@thebrokenspine.co.uk #poemsabout. @alanparrywriter.co.uk Here we go

The Next Station Is…

The voice tells me
where I am going, where
I am not.

Tells
what to do
in the case of suspicious
activity.

What if I am
the suspicious activity?

We slow down.
The voice reminds me
to keep my baggage with me
at all times;

This is unnecessary;
I always carry it, never
leave it unattended.

My baggage is full,
full
of promises betrayed,
failed attempts at
reconciliation, rolled up
and crammed
between the socks and
running shoes;

there are moments of
hopelessness mixed in with
my dirty underwear.

Doors open.
I am told to mind the gap
between the train and
the platform edge.

This I know is
the crux of everything.
The gap is a chasm,
sides sticky
with the lubricant of
a million wheels,

choked by drifts of
cast off skin:
sloughed dead cells of all my
other lives.

Mark Hamill @markhamillofficial.bsky.social · 6d ago

See, it's funny because it's true. #Sad

Oliver@oliver48.bsky.social · 6d ago

The thin line between US President policy making satire and reality ... via Arthur Barnes

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 6d ago

Good morning! Happy Friday! For #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Thank you, as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Poem:

Vantage Point

I never rode the City of New Orleans
or the Orient Express, no train to Marrakesh
or across frozen steppes,

I’ve heard freight trains sigh,
clang, and clatter, just a trace
of Woody Guthrie and hobo blues

in their doleful whistles
as they carry chemicals and coal.

My dad wanted railroad magic,
sleeper berths gently rocking him through
western mountains and deserts,

“Such beautiful vistas,” he wrote.

I hold the postcard,
braked at the junction of memory and regret,

we think there will always be another train.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 6d ago

@thebrokenspine.co.uk #poemsabout. @alanparrywriter.co.uk Here we go

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 6d ago

Been for a run 🏃🏻‍♀️😁

Matthew Stewart @roguestrands.bsky.social · 6d ago

I'm the Guest Poetry Editor for the October issue of The Madrid Review. Subs are now open and I look forward to reading your poems...! themadridreview.substack.com/p/submission...

Submissions for the October edition are open!

Please spread the message far and wide and we'd love to read your work from wherever you are in the world!

themadridreview.substack.com

Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 6d ago

Is “pragmatic” the new, “grown up” word? Andy, there’s nothing “pragmatic” about drilling for more oil & gas - to even consider it with the planet literally on fire is total madness. How many times must we say it will do nothing for energy bills or security? It would be an act of utter recklessness

Burnham promises ‘pragmatic’ approach to North Sea oil and gas

PM tells reporters the government cannot ignore the energy resource ‘when people are struggling’

theguardian.com

Mary Mackey, author @marymackeyauthor.bsky.social · 7d ago

“I opened this book in the middle and read the first poem on that page. I was stunned. That such beauty and fierceness can reside in one poet amazes me. Mary Mackey is a national treasure.” -Amazon review rebrand.ly/hjv44l1 #PoetryLovers #poems #poetry #PoetryCommunity

Bylines Network @bylinesnetwork.co.uk · 7d ago

Earth Overshoot Day: how many Earths do we need? Earth Overshoot Day is the exact date when humanity's total demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that same year, and in 2026, it falls on 30 July northeastbylines.co.uk/news/environ...

Earth Overshoot Day: how many Earths do we need?

Earth Overshoot Day marks the exact date when humanity's total demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in that same year, and in 2026, it fal...

northeastbylines.co.uk

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · last wk.

Let’s have a poem

Marriage Portrait

When my mother was a spider, she ate my father;
liquefied his insides and gobbled them up.
She hung his desiccated exoskeleton
by a single silken thread to persuade the world
he wasn’t dead, but resting.

And so he dangled, twisted in the breeze.
The sun made shadows of him which danced
through the changing light of afternoon.
Then autumn blew and carried him away.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · last wk.

Let’s have a poem

Pluto Press @plutopress.bsky.social · last wk.

All of our books are 40% off until July 31st📚

Pluto Press @plutopress.bsky.social · last wk.

Our Solidarity Summer Sale is on NOW: www.plutobooks.com/product-cate...

John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍@johnadlam.bsky.social · last wk.

Still buzzing - will be buzzing a while yet! - that this poem has been nominated for Best of the Net 2027. Thank you again @paulwritespoems.bsky.social ! This is my Substack repost with a wee commentary and more promotion of the anthology Unwhispered Legacy! 🥰 johnadlampoems.substack.com/p/wetland

Wetland

Dry is but the domain of distant memory.

johnadlampoems.substack.com

London & Southeast🔅@thesnowdreamer.bsky.social · last wk.

Today experienced the 24th day of year hitting 30C in London. For perspective in whole of 1980s we had 21 days.

The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign

ALT: The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign

static.klipy.com

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · last wk.

open.substack.com/pub/bethbroo...

Sometimes I just write about weird stuff.

I have reached that point in my writing life where I am bored with the usual: there’s only so many poems about corvids or seasonal weather that I can be bothered to write.

open.substack.com

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · last wk.

I am *absolutely sick* of hearing about young people as 'benefit scroungers'. Nearly 60% of welfare spending goes on pensioners! The people writing this stuff know that too.