Established 2006 · An independent poetry social enterprise
Widening the room for poetry, and for the people who make it…
Poetryspace is a small social enterprise publishing contemporary poetry, running open competitions and supporting workshops. Every book sold helps widen participation in poetry and other creative writing.
Editor’s choice
poetryspace · October 2025
Believing in the Planet
by Myra Schneider
A pamphlet of insomniac poems written in the smaller hours, when the house and the mind go quiet.
Poem of the day
Today · 27 June 2026Work and Duty
— Johanna Boal 2026
In the beginning, at the train station: bells and whistles chimed.His careful hands specialised, pry apart her eyepicking out the coal grit, boiling water for the tea,steam rising and paint peeling on the walls. She thought of a miner – his high-visibility clothing –the gabardine coat, teacups clinked, engine drivers chatting,hanging from the big ceiling the chandelier actedas his hard hat with Davey lamp lit the refreshment room. Casually they meet on Thursdays to watch the filmsintense and emotional Rachmaninov music:Back at the station, engines running, ticket inspectors,the black soot on the tracks once in the seam of a wall of coal, honourable backbone, they want to love each other but the heavy-dutymachinery of convention – married to other people.Both aware of the tearoom assistant tidying the table and chairs.She cries at home and her husband thanks her for coming back to him.
Blood Relatives
— Patricia Brody 2026
Slicing rare beef, she hears chatter from the cooking showher husband watches daily,We’re in Budapest, Bourdain says, Let there be blood!Let it be in this form, let the blood squirtacross your plate when you press itwith your fork Her husbandfrom Poland, eats pork, and she, not koshereats it too, at Christmas with cloves.He’s never got used to being un-nativeAnd they joke about Godhis, hers, they talk Jesus, they talk liver,talk chicken fat vs. butter.Not to stray from the beastthey love best: he who meows keenlyat the door, this buttery boy is who she would beif she were four-legged.Siamese dancer, seal-point so cuddled –Do you know how they look: Black nose,four black paws, black tail, black, apple-heart shaped face,snowy chest and body, blue eyes crossed,peering, peering into your eyes come morning.
Deer on Purgatory
— Patricia Brody 2026
On rusty bikes we pedal the road by the seaOcean left / meadow right(Daughter a lilac streak in the dusk)Loom loam island rushThe smell of wild thymeThese herbs: Sea lavender white hibiscus rosehipHeather cattail scrub sageLast evening five deerCome to sup on salty seaside grass: Such succulent dining!≈Three young bucks, a doe,White-spotted fawn still spindly – –Daughter a lilac streak in the duskWe biked to the crest, in the evening’s cool relief.Inhaled the meadow tea: Grass, mint, rosemarythis nerve, this island pungencyBike field fog sea≈One of the bucks stalked us:Strode his slender, fine-turned limb with its hoofInhaled our breath in the evening’s coolCrack & roar of rising tideRocks mussels waves mess ≈≈≈All to my right sweet lilac green the girlRumble Crash off to the left Thick, white, wet fogAhead … behindWhat did he mean to impart to us, antlers spread to the sky?Stared me straight in the eye. His hoof raised,he stomped, snorted as if he would lunge ––to chasten the girl at my side & me? The smell of wild thyme.
Breakfast at Skukuza
— Jan Moran Neil 2026
And what quintessence of dustare you my beautiful buck,ballerina of the bushveld,tomorrow’s breakfast? A rhetorical question. What remains?Not even the bones of youwhen the scavengers are doneculled and absorbed as you might beinto the innards of one more powerful. At daybreak we eat soft-boiled eggsas Jacob says,‘She survived the night.Random scrolling.’
Scheurer’s Green
— Jan Moran Neil 2026
Matilda Scheurer painted and preenedpretty poisoned wreaths in shades of green.Wealthy fashionable women’s attirewere drop dead gorgeous and subtly dire.Hats and gloves and even the seamsof emerald ball gowns were all dyed greenby Matilda Scheurer’s deeply stained tintin hues of apple moss, forest fern, mint. When suddenly her fingernails turned lime shade;the whites of her eyes the colour of glade.Everything she saw had a patina of green.She foamed at the mouth and even her spleenwas coated in a shade of Paris green. Matilda Scheurer was only nineteenwhen she fluffed those leaves in shades of green.And inhaling her last green breath she died –of that Victorian devil: arsenic trioxide. For Matilda Scheurer, 1842–1861
The march for clean water
— Hilary Hares 3 November 2024
We muster at Vauxhall at 11:30. We’re all wearingblue because today we’re the voice of the water. We set off at the pace of a sea-snail. Above our heads a shoalof dead-eyed fish swim to nowhere on the tips of bamboo canes. A vast black whale constructed from plastics recovered from the river trundles along on unseen wheels. Beside us the Thames, depressed and turgid, struggles to keeppace, its murk-choked depths no longer able to reflect the sky. The placards come straight to the point: Cut the Crap!Species not Faeces!! No shit, Sherlock!!! As we near Lambeth Bridge two ten-foot inflatable turds skip past us chanting mantras. We’re surrounded by mermaids, people in diving gear, kingfishers, water-voles. Even Neptune has forsaken the benthic depths to join us. In Parliament Square a bank of TV screens reminds usof a world of water we no longer recognise. The activists – Olympic rowers, sailors, surfers, wild waterswimmers – take to the stage to give voice to our message. They hurl our disdain at the walls of Westminster. It falls on deaf ears … today is a Sunday.
To Autumn
— John Keats 1820
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twined flowers:And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady thy laden head across a brook;Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Song
— Christina Rossetti 1862
When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain:And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set,Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.
Barter
— Sara Teasdale 1917
Life has loveliness to sell, All beautiful and splendid things,Blue waves whitened on a cliff, Soaring fire that sways and sings,And children’s faces looking upHolding wonder like a cup. Life has loveliness to sell, Music like a curve of gold,Scent of pine trees in the rain, Eyes that love you, arms that hold,And for your spirit’s still delight,Holy thoughts that star the night.
A Clear Midnight
— Walt Whitman 1881
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,Night, sleep, death and the stars.
The bookshop · 5 titles
New & noted on the shelf
Open submissions · closes 30 September
Autumn Showcase 2026
Each autumn we publish a curated showcase of new work from poets writing in English — online, in print, and read aloud at the launch. Free to enter, open to all, with selected poets paid for their work.
News & features
All news →May 24
Feature
On the slow art of the chapbook
Why small-press poetry collections are having an unexpectedly loud moment — and what the chapbook still does that nothing else…
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May 20
Interview
Eleni Cay in conversation: writing between languages
The author of Celestial Heteroglossia on code-switching, the music of translation, and why she writes her first drafts in two…
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May 17
Workshop
Free online workshop: Writing into uncertainty
A two-hour generative session for poets of all experience levels — places are free thanks to our 2026 partners.
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May 11
Long read
Twenty years of widening the room
Founder Susan Sims looks back at two decades of community readings, prizes and stubborn independent publishing.
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