You know you’re getting on when you start to notice white hairs on the heads of your children … In ‘Stopping at the Sleeper Bridge’, Patricia Pogson treads a well-worn path through a familiar landscape and half a lifetime of memories, in the company of her daughter.

Read the poem>>

I missed you by a quarter of an hour.
I should have hurried through my morning shower,
missed eating breakfast in the sleepy sun
or read no emails, or replied to none …

Sue Millard’s granddaughter Naomi died last year of a rare form of cancer – Wilms’ tumour – six weeks before her sixth birthday. ‘Missing’ is the harrowing yet cathartic poem written in response. Read more>>

The children are ahead, pretending to be adults
walking and talking fast.
We are dressed like old people.
Even our stooped shoulders look real.

At a time of year when many parents have just deposited their children outside university halls of residence, Elizabeth Stott puts her eye to the other end of the telescope in Alumni>>

Don’t giggle at its shape –
girls have had babies with vegetables before …

If RS Thomas had been a lass, would he have written something like Josie Shinn’s ‘Supper in Wales’? Just a thought. Probably a stupid one. To see what we mean, click here>>