Tessera

Bad Lilies

@badlilies.bsky.social

A digital poetry journal, edited by @kathryngray.bsky.social and @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social Enjoy our blooms! badlilies.uk

213 Posts1979 Follower 422 Folgt

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 4w ago

Festival-goers of Edinburgh! Our co-florists, Kathryn Gray and Andrew Neilson, will be reading poems in a cracking lineup on Wednesday, 26th August. Wine, candlelight, poetry...

Les Bijoux:
Poetry at The Boundary
KATHRYN GRAY
ANDREW NEILSON
AMY JO PHILIP
RACHEL PLUMMER
ROSS WILSON
26th August 2026 6.30 Doors Open
397 Leith Walk
Wine, candlelight, poetry

Ewen Glass @ewenglass.bsky.social · last mo.

Adore this poem by @emmaharding.bsky.social that I stumbled across in @badlilies.bsky.social ( 🔗 to full poem below )

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · last mo.

Just under a week left for submissions! badlilies.uk/submit

Judge's Impatient Gesture

ALT: Judge's Impatient Gesture

static.klipy.com

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · last mo.

Just under a week left for submissions! badlilies.uk/submit

Judge's Impatient Gesture

ALT: Judge's Impatient Gesture

static.klipy.com

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

badlilies.uk/submit

Bad Lilies
SUBMISSIONS FAQ
Our submissions window is open for the month of July.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

badlilies.uk/submit

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣 News alert! We are opening submissions up for the month of July. More info soon at badlilies.uk/submit

Submission FAQ — Bad Lilies

Guidelines to submit to Bad Lilies

badlilies.uk

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣 News alert! We are opening submissions up for the month of July. More info soon at badlilies.uk/submit

Submission FAQ — Bad Lilies

Guidelines to submit to Bad Lilies

badlilies.uk

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've finished spotlighting the poets in our latest issue! Read the whole thing here: badlilies.uk/issue-twenty-four

Issue twenty-four — Bad Lilies

Issue twenty-four of Bad Lilies

badlilies.uk

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We've finished spotlighting the poets in our latest issue! Read the whole thing here: badlilies.uk/issue-twenty-four

Issue twenty-four — Bad Lilies

Issue twenty-four of Bad Lilies

badlilies.uk

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Ben Verinder badlilies.uk/ben-verinder

Perseids
I'm on the dead grass by the laundry block.
Planes wink in transecting arcs
and bats, touched by the courtyard lights, pluck at the extremities of thought.
The warm air smells of bay and smoke from coals. A hare stretches
out of the tender dark.
The meteors appear
scratch their itch of night and just as suddenly depart.
I watch the steady passage of a satellite, a star unfixed and always falling.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Becoming the Prayer' by Maryam Alsaeid badlilies.uk/maryam-alsaeid

Becoming the Prayer
Some nights when I am flat and resentful (wishing God made me another way)
I cannot bring myself to sit on the prayer mat
my limp limbs cannot fold
and sajda* needs a head that submits; remembers itself in the tapestry of dead things

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Ben Verinder badlilies.uk/ben-verinder

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Becoming the Prayer' by Maryam Alsaeid badlilies.uk/maryam-alsaeid

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'My House is Not on Fire' by @bookninja.bsky.social badlilies.uk/george-murray-1

My House is Not on Fire
From the hammock, the leaves of the tree above are a green doily hung from a sill to catch the light.
The season is unsettled again, the flagstone's heat vying with the northing wind in a gentle fight
for control of the temperature. The sky is clear as thought, the mind zoned into a spot right

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Eamonn Shanahan badlilies.uk/eamonn-shanahan

from A London Irish Lad
#1
As I have to I imagine you coming home late
Gladstone bag in hand
you hang up your coat and hat in the kitchen spam fritters because we're still in rationing then chatting to mummy
about the general election
when you tell her you voted Phil Piratin the Communist Party candidate for Stepney and a week later she left you
she went back to Portlaoise to her father
to her Lord Jesus Christ.
Piratin. She remembered his name.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'My House is Not on Fire' by @bookninja.bsky.social badlilies.uk/george-murray-1

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Eamonn Shanahan badlilies.uk/eamonn-shanahan

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Cartonnage' by Selena Wisnom badlilies.uk/selena-wisnom

Cartonnage
Entropy tends
the world to yellow
skin turns to parchment
parchment to papyrus
bandaging bruises
in bilirubin
as magnolia shrivels
like ageing paper.
Your shell retains
its olive tone
wrung round
in dark locks
as you sleep enclosed
in stuccoed poems
discarded scrolls
slapped with plaster

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Committal' by @samueltongue.bsky.social badlilies.uk/samuel-tongue

Committal
A hill to die on, not once but many times.
Even in this airlock of a burial cairn, I hear the drumming of a big heart, a sizzle of rain, & the newly electrified trains running their static. This lair is a quiet den, a bone-deep home, the wind about its business outside, & the motorway full of toys.
I lost my gloves climbing this wet street, a scuff quartered from a precious hill.
The ancients ourselves knew to keep the dead tightly bound, ligatured for birth through death's tight canal.
Fine pottery, stone-axe heads, food & drink. We have finished the bread you had left in the freezer, the last piece as good as the first. On a clear day, we can see coast-to-coast from here.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Cartonnage' by Selena Wisnom badlilies.uk/selena-wisnom

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Committal' by @samueltongue.bsky.social badlilies.uk/samuel-tongue

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Anthony Lawrence badlilies.uk/anthony-lawrence

Octopus
Having knocked the lid from the cooler it roped out onto the jetty to confer with knots in stained timber as to which direction lay water
and which the dead heart of overexposure.
Despite knowing how survival and escape were one in its drive to return to the sea I cut its path to freedom off

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Belisha' by Claudia Daventry badlilies.uk/claudia-daventry

Belisha
A half-cleared table, glow of plates in dishwater that blinks soft orange light through slats, in from the darkened street.
Upstairs your hair ignites against the pillow in the chiaroscuro of your room: you sleep, tinting and untinting amber, not a care:
your shoulders glow and don't and glow in semi-dark. The beacon signalling its love for every last pedestrian out there,
a monument to anyone who crossed the road - or anything, or anyone - warning trucks of sand or stones to stop
and cede priority. To care. Down here, woman hugs her coat about her: steps onto the barcode, walks across, away.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Two poems by Anthony Lawrence badlilies.uk/anthony-lawrence

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Belisha' by Claudia Daventry badlilies.uk/claudia-daventry

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Walking past the secure unit' by @adrianmasters84.bsky.social badlilies.uk/adrian-masters-2

Walking past the secure unit
Then your steps falter
at a shout from the secure unit,
at the sandpaper sound
of a cockerel crowing from an allotment,
at the synthesiser pulse of fledgling jackdaws.
Then your hand slips in air where the fence is broken.
Don't broken fences show where other paths should be?
Beneath your feet, catkins on concrete curl like crumbling chrysalids.
Behind, another shout from the secure unit, another crow from the allotment.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Secret Nuclear Bunker' by John Challis badlilies.uk/john-challis

Secret Nuclear Bunker
Eighty feet below the surface, at the bunker at Kelvedon Hatch, the tour-guide wheels open a blast door as thick as a man.
In the soundless plotting room, almost hear the bleeps of sonar tracking routes to impact,
northern cities reporting on their losses
and the new leaders mounting the rehearsed offensive.
With every rumble overhead, lamps shake their skirts of dust,
bulkheads moan whale song, jets of mist punch from pipes, and the world begins to tilt.
A suited man made out of plastic,
our field of vision shaky now, is settled behind the microphone to orate us out of history.
He doesn't even flinch.

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Walking past the secure unit' by @adrianmasters84.bsky.social badlilies.uk/adrian-masters-2

Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'Secret Nuclear Bunker' by John Challis badlilies.uk/john-challis