Nutshells and Nuggets

Nutshells and Nuggets no longer accepts submissions

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Georgia Hilton - Two Poems

Brother Your hair was so white-blonde that in photographs it appeared to be a halo around your head – a translucent golden orb giving the impression that you were a little bit out-of-this-world. * One of the consolations of being a woman is that no one will ever ask me to shoulder a coffin. * Georgia Hilton is the author of 'I went up the lane quite cheerful' published by Dempsey and Windle in 2018. She lives in Winchester with her husband and three children. I particularly like short poems as they are the truest possible distillation of a feeling, event, idea or image. https://www.dempseyandwindle.com/georgiahilton.html

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Maurice Devitt - Three Poems

A Habit Worth Forming Have you ever found yourself queuing in your local café, thinking of nothing in particular besides snaring your favourite seat, when the woman behind taps you on the shoulder, leans in to whisper something in your ear? No, I haven’t either, though I’d hate to miss a day, in case it ever happened. * Lost for Words One day I dropped my dictionary and the words fell out. I was in a hurry so I swept them into a pile and left the house. When I returned the words were nowhere to be seen and now my life is a catalogue of surprises – a strange dog on the couch, unwanted salt in my soup and the unlucky spectre of a fresh crack in the mirror – though, to be fair, I’ve also noticed the reappearance of bliss every time you call. * Nascent Romance This morning the barista fashioned a heart on the top of my latte. I thought nothing of it until you sat beside me and the heart started to quiver, gently at first, but, when you asked me to pass the sugar, I detected a definite skip, hoped you hadn’t noticed, gulped down my coffee and left. It was only later I wondered, whether by chance you had caught me in one of your selfies. * Maurice Devitt is the curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site, a founder member of the Hibernian Writers’ Group and published debut collection with Doire Press in 2018. I love short poems because when you plant them they can turn into epics.

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Penny Blackburn - Two Poems

Coastal Motion The stone bones of the beach exposed, Sand-skin flayed away By gales and storm surges. In the B&Bs, the refugees huddle, Turned inwards to protect Against this aggressive climate. Offshore, a sandbar builds, Stretches out a long arm Reaching for home. * Penny Blackburn writes and performs her work in the North East. She was the winner of Story Tyne 2017 and runner up in the Reader's Digest 100-word story competition 2018. I like short poems because they say what needs to be said and no more. Penny can be found on Twitter as @penbee8

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Belinda Rimmer - Two Poems

Boating With swift strokes the girl's father rows from the jetty. Keep your hands in the boat, he calls, or something will bite them off. The girl laughs – knows the danger to be more about germs or discarded shopping trolleys than flesh-eating fish. She waits for her father to turn around. Takes her chance, dangling her hands over the edge to chase ripples. I envy her defiance, the choice she has made not to keep her hands in the boat. * Swing A boy swings on a yew tree's branches, pieces of bark drop like toy bombs. Blood stains his fingers and knees; he feels no gnarls or splinters. He ascends above the canopy, sun haloing his blond head. I want to call him down; he knows nothing of this tree, how it claimed a life, did it easy as a blade or tablets hidden inside pockets. * Belinda has worked as a psychiatric nurse, lecturer and creative arts practitioner. Her poems have appeared in magazines, on-line and in anthologies. She has read at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. belindarimmer.com I'm drawn to short poems as I like the challenge of saying as much as I can in as few as possible words. Each word has to work so much harder.

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Fran Baillie - Two Poems

Rosebay Willowherb They send out seedsmoke, a nudging, thrusting, abundance hiding, gliding over fences, hitching rides on unsuspecting sheep; oozing, cruising the landscape, streaming, teeming magenta. Each year the same. Hair-triggered by every wisp of breeze, sailing over roadsides, golf courses, building sites, aiming to colonise the planet with rosebay confetti, rising like the phoenix. * Damsel Wummin, scootin aboot yon lochan in yir smirrt silks o turquoise an cobalt, d'yi ken jist how bonnie yi are or d'yi ging aboot the world pynin ti be a licht-hertit Admiral or Cubbage White? Afore lang yi'll be dwynin awa, Mither Nature's wye o daein, laivin iz ahent, heelster-gowdie in luv wi yi, aye myndin o mi wummin in air-blue. * Fran joined the M.Litt at the University of Dundee when she retired. She writes mainly in Dundonian/Scots and has been published in Mixter-Maxter(Grey Hen Press). Small poems involve delving into the essence of things, a satisfying pastime.

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Daniel Bennett - Three Poems

Note Our lives and how they fray at the weave: the bark of birch trees unrolling like paper. * The Library You measure a life in stages to understand its cost: pennies dropped inside a bowl, a library moved, book by book. * A Decade There are stories to tell about sleeplessness and early food, the rooms you have forgotten, the songs. I remember a family of foxes sheltered in the garden all of us woken early, a car alarm in the storm. * Daniel Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives and works in London. His chapbook 'Arboreal Days' is published by Red Ceilings Press. I like short poems because they act like charms or spells, conjuring lives and worlds with brevity and measure. absenceclub.tumblr.com @AbsenceClub

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Janis Clark - Two Poems

Evenings Winter evenings were the best, curtained in as last light faded while moss-bearded logs crackled and spat out warmth that settled on hands wrapped round mugs of Earl Grey. We shared the silence then, or else made plans for how to spend our mad, endless future. I don’t remember how the mugs were cracked or when you went off first to bed, leaving me to finish my book alone, watching flames die. * Crow It lay on the lawn, wings outstretched like a torn umbrella, an actor’s final curtain call, an infinity of crows reflected from its eyes, caught in its stare, daring me to inch no further, as strength defied weakness, even in death. * Janis Clark has poems in various magazines and anthologies. She has been commended in a number of competitions. I like short poems because every word counts in conveying emotion

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Hilaire - One Poem

my quiet is an unlaid egg fashioning its shell a pebble salvaged from a storm-tossed beach midnight streets emptied of sirens a cat gathering sunlight in its fur * Hilaire was poet-in-residence at Thrive Battersea 2017. London Undercurrents poetry project,co-founded with Joolz Sparkes, was recently awarded Arts Council funding. The best short poems expand in the mind. http://hilaireinlondon.wordpress.com

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Eddie Gibbons - Three Poems

A Word in Her Ear This morning, my wife queried a word I’d used when describing a funny tweet I’d read, in which a girl got one over a know-all bloke. So I sat her down and very softly, very slowly, with emphasis on each syllable, spelled out to her exactly what Mansplaining means. * Swarfega Washing off the marking blue with the green jelly of Swarfega, I think of my father doing the same after each shift half a century ago; his orange overalls smeared black with oil, his hair greased back with Brylcreem, and for a moment my right hand is his right hand washing my left. I clasp to hold him there but my hands slip apart and leave me standing, open armed, like a man about to embrace a ghost. * Tête à Tate This earnest lad with his Debenhams Diva imagines himself a bristling bridegroom, little knowing this relationship will stretch him like a canvas to the limit, unaware how much he’ll fracture, or how quickly love’s lava cools from lover to hater, from love her to hate her, from glider to Stuka – how the lily fields turn into battlefields and yearn for her becomes Guernica. * Recently published by Bloodaxe Books, Eddie has 5 poetry collections. Shortlisted for The Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, 2011. Editor and cover artist for Tapsalteerie and The Poets' Republic. I like short poems because they make me look taller. WEBSITE- https://heartstations.weebly.com/

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Roy Moller - Two Poems

Reading Room

Here air conditioning drums as loud as turbines churning Atlantic; veterans sit and splutter up a rasping phlegm crescendo. An old boy scans the broadsheet, scrunches his eye and searches for clues, A stray piece of tape, Police - Do Not Cross - clings to his surgical shoe.

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The World At War

Time marched on, time launched a blitz, time has torched the paper list of people I used to speak to. Nothing’s quite as snug anymore as winter Sunday afternoons, together the three of us sitting, watching The World At War.

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Roy Moller lives in Dunbar and enjoys railways and Elvis Presley. His work has been published in journals such as The Lighthouse and anthologies such as Neu! Reekie! UntitledTwo.

Short poems defuse the welter of words pouring through my modem.

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Kitty Coles - One Poem

Your Name It's too soon to say whether your name is like grain and, the more I throw it to the air, the more of it roots deep, sprouts green, settles for harvest; or whether it's like coins, growing soiled and dull the more it's passed around, thinned and diminished by the hands of others. * Kitty Coles is one of the two winners of the 2016 Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize and her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife, was published in 2017. I like short poems because, for me, what's unsaid is often more interesting than what's said.

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Lynn Valentine - Three Poems

Back Yard Three crows last year and now there are nine, a nest in the rowans and a mess on the grass. My neighbour says shoot them, they’ll only get worse. But there’s grain in my purse and a black gape widening. * Lick your wounds The name of that dog is long gone but I still remember the way it lapped at the tap for a drink, not trusting the bowl or the hands that filled it. * Alphabetically Seated (for KLV) If I’d met you earlier we would have sat at the back of the class, never getting things done. Giggling together, a twin-shoulder shake, giving the world the V’s. * Lynn is a dog-walker and lives on the Black Isle. I like short poems as they never take the long way round.

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Jenna Plewes - Three Poems

Layer on Layer In my grandmother’s womb lay the seed that is me, in my mother the seed of my child, nested like Russian dolls. My daughter tugs at my nipple, fingers kneading my breast, eyes searching mine and I try to comprehend a granddaughter waiting in her womb. * Handcuffed This little lane dips its feet in the sea blackberries taste of salt gorse and bracken crowd my walking stick booted, I stand in the surf reach out my arms handcuffed to the sea. * Thirst a swarm of stinging sand whirls across the beach whitecaps stream like dolphins surfacing plunging away here behind rocks the air is still a gull stoops pulls at a thread of water a single drop catches the light * Jenna Plewes has poems in anthologies and magazines. Her collection Gifts is available from Amazon. Pull of the Earth 2016 and Salt 2014 are published by IDP. Short poems are like a sip of wine that lingers on your palate for hours. http://www.jennaplewes.com/

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Paul Clyne - One Poem

Lift It is the jugular of the high rise and keeps things moving. It serves a regular purpose though it often stinks of piss. It boasts no blue-eyed bellboy, no bossa nova music. Its graffiti is scandalous. * Paul Clyne lives and works in Fife, Scotland. He likes short poems because he doesn't have much time for longer ones since the recent birth of his twins.

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Mat Riches - One Poem

Tableau And there it is; the inelegant half-drape as some sort of sigh that will re-appear in 10 years, or next to no time. Your hips send the eyes one-way, your head another. I cannot be certain of much, but this comes from your mother. * By day Mat is a researcher for ITV. He has previously been published in And Other Poems, Obsessed With Pipework, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Snakeskin Press. I love writing and reading short poems as they are almost the perfect example of poems for me; they are the best thoughts in as few words as possible. https://matriches76.wordpress.com

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Kitty Coles - One Poem

The Lake You were superstitious about touching the sleeping water, piercing its flawless surface with a finger-prick or toehold. I let my hand sink in up to the wrist and wake whatever lay there, knowing its retribution mattered less than things that you and I'd already broken. * Kitty lives in Surrey and her poetry has been widely published.  Her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife, will be published by Indigo Dreams in August 2017. www.kittyrcoles.com I like short poems because, for me, poetry is often more about what you don't say than what you say.

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Phil Wood - Three Poems

Beaked Thieves I'm sitting near the rim of the tarn's ice-bright silence; within its mirror unfolds the pomegranate bloom of dawn; and I do not wish to hear across the track that overflowing bin stealing into solitude with its murder of crow. * Her Morning Goodbye It's like the way a well-made door can shut. Not with a resentful slam nor a slow reluctant drag across the carpet. Hinges are oiled, the closure a minimal kiss. * The nail neither out nor in, but bent: this hammer too heavy, that wall too hard; or happenstance of her kissing him before the moment. * I like the fact that short poems often invite the reader to continue the write. Phil Wood works in a statistics office. He enjoys working with numbers and words.