Sigriddaughter, Silver Leaf Monkey
A lively, light filled glimpse of nature, this poem captures the unbridled joy of a young silver leaf monkey at play. Swinging fist over fist, upside down and right side up, the creature tumbles among green leafed twigs with purpose and delight. Its acrobatics are not merely movement but an expression of life itself. a celebration of being. The imagery sparkles with freedom and innocence, leaving the reader with the impression of vitality uncontained, a reminder of how pure and simple happiness can be.

Blanket by Yuxing Xia
Tender and intimate, this piece recalls the layered history of a century-old blanket. Bearing both scars and stains, the fabric becomes a vessel for memory: a shield in childhood games, a comfort in cold nights, and a thread carrying the grandmother's calm voice across generations. The poem is a quiet elegy to resilience, warmth, and the echoes of love that endure through time.
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......... Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Burying the Goldfinch: This poem tenderly mourns the fragile weight of a goldfinch whose life was ended by a collision with glass. With precise, sorrowful detail, it captures the immediacy of loss, the feathers left on the window, the still open eyes, the bird's body cooling in the speaker’s palm. The repeated refrain, “My fault," threads through the piece like an unshakable echo, binding grief with guilt. More than an elegy, it is a meditation on responsibility, fragility, and the way even the smallest life can leave an indelible mark on the heart.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Rooted in memory and the textures of place, this poem returns to Lily Pond as both a landscape of childhood and a reservoir of Christmas spirit. Sheehan entwines skating, laughter, and the turning of seasons with the continuity of friendship and song. The lines move like the skaters themselves, sometimes swift, sometimes lingering, until they resolve in the heartfelt simplicity of “Merry Christmas." It is both nostalgic and enduring, carrying forward the warmth of community and tradition.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.





Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.



Alfred Lord Tennyson
An excerpt taken from In Memorium.

This poem confronts the brutal legacy of the First World War through both history and personal memory. Written for the poet’s grandfather, a survivor of Kut-al-Amara, it weaves together battlefield horrors -- shrapnel, gas, burning oil fields-- with the inherited grief and futility of conflict. The piece bridges 1918 and today, questioning how war is remembered, justified, and repeated, its closing lines an indictment of ongoing violence in the name of empire and resource.

Powerful and unsettling, this poem gives voice to the haunted history of Rottnest Island, once used as a prison for Aboriginal people. The boy’s voice becomes a guide through its layers of violence and erasure -- unmarked graves, starvation, hangings --beneath the surface of today’s tourist idyll. The repetition of “Starved, Hung, Banished" tolls like a bell, reminding readers that beneath leisure and landscape lies memory and mourning. Winnaitch, “the forbidden place," is revealed as a site of both pain and ancestral endurance.

A bilingual poem written in Scots and English, Dark Matter imagines the unseen substance of the universe not as physics describes it, but as the collected dreams, thoughts, and stories of all living beings. With playful yet profound turns, it suggests that memory, imagination, and literature are themselves the hidden fabric binding existence together. The poem moves between Scots’ rooted, musical language and English reflection, inviting the reader to close their eyes and glimpse this vast invisible weave.