The Nib's Featured Poets

Author of twenty titles, J.J Steinfield.

Nicola Harrison is the critically acclaimed author of: The Wordsmith’s Guide.

Poet and writing coach Anne Tannam

Irish Poet Amy Barry

Migrations  A boy in the darkness burning candles, shadows on the ceiling so playful so yellow, reads Crime and Punishment, follows furious light inside the sullen…

Paul McCarrick is from Athlone, Co. Westmeath. He holds an MA in Writing from NUI Galway. His poetry can be read in the Bangor Literary Journal, Boyne Berries, Skylight 47, Crannóg, and The Stinging Fly among others, and has been longlisted for the 2018 Over the Edge New Writer competition. His novel Happy-Cry with My Brilliant Life was longlisted in the 2014 Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair Competition.

Linda McKenna is originally from County Dublin but has lived in County Down for more than twenty years. She has had poems published in A New Ulster, Skylight 47, Panning for Poems and Lagan Online.

Carborundum The father of Socrates was a stone cutter and he grew, that child, watching the perfect tilt of chisel cutting the line of stone, the grain…

Work from previous featured poet, Therese Kiernan

Anthony Lawrence’s most recent collection ‘Headwaters,’ (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016) won the 2017 Prime Ministers Literary Awards (Poetry)

Helen Moore is an award-winning British, Sidney based, ecopoet.

Tracy Gaughan presents the popular arts show ‘WestWords’ on Ireland’s Community Radio Network.

Alan Britt served as judge for the The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award in 2018

Jennifer A. McGowan has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Rialto, and The Connecticut Review.

Elliott Freeman is a poet, educator, and game designer living in the mountainous hinterlands of Southwest Virginia.

Paige Elizabeth Wajda is a Choctaw writer from California and Head of Poetry for The Selkie.

As an undergraduate, Bill Cushing was referred to as the “blue collar” poet based on his previous years working at shipyards.

Lepanto (im Cy Twombly) It’s a wake of sorts: procession passing,  scrim of dream, blazon of nightmare.  …

A Dodge poet, Lois Marie Harrod is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey.

AFTER MAKING LOVE WITH THE LIGHTS ON, DOORS WIDE OPEN resting my head on your shoulder…

Womankind In my Irish childhood, men were at work. Children and women had the run of…

Alec Solomita was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal, and named a finalist by the Noctua Review.

STYX AND STONESa Clare born priest-poet and philosopher advises     that one be consoled by      and sure about          …

Le FayHer paper-skin peels and burnsrevealing words underneathsentence-seams stitched togetherparagraphs blurring in and outa kaleidoscope soulliving casing clenchesand unclenchesthrobs, pulses, breathesone…

Nothing by Mouth She tapped the tracheal plug  into his neck and spooned cold  spaghetti into…

LONE TRAVELLING Whitby, July 2019 Up cobbled streets I do not know I wade through my…

NOVEMBER SENDS ME A POSTCARD Across the wan November sky a lone heron is ferrying the slack…

Wake up call and other poems

GOLFING ON THE MOON 5 Poems for The Blue Nib By: J….

BETWEEN BEAUTY AND DECADENCE Like a shred of satin Crumpled and creamy It caught my…

Celeste Aida The rain falls with blunt determinationbut there’s a sun behind the flat white skywhose intangible glow glosses the wet pebble edgingand in-your-face…

Helen Boden is a Yorkshire-born, Edinburgh-based writer, educator and editor, with poems in magazines and anthologies including New Writing Scotland, Mslexia, Lighthouse and Butcher’s Dog. She also collaborates with visual artists to make responsive poems and place-specific text.

On the ward this is about a pad. a thick one, hospital-walls green. I’ve run out. a one-day mother in pink pajamas with out-of-season snowmen. Don’t you have your own? a piece-of-liver…

In Praise of Grey Far from black and white now the season of grey in all its rainbow light sea grey, rain grey wet granite day grey pewter, silver and…

A SMUDGE OF CINDERS My teacher looked at me as if breezeblock wasn’t a word she knew. I had pushed my sock down. It was itching the scabs…

Process of Detachment I expect my son will let go of me when he’s five. I will go back to just being Clara. So ready to unspool…

strike The farmers held Dead rats in their mouths, Wearing green loin clothes Hiding what is left of their pride. They sit in the capital city Waiting for some eyes…

A Stain the Shape of Italy It’s when I least expect it Stilled in a queue, perhaps, Or stalled at traffic lights, That the fingers of my memory Pick…

QUEENS OF THE MAY Mayday. White afternoon light in the white mouth of the year. Follow a blue thread of sound to the braid of girls in their convent-school…

Hill of Moses That argument about the Brontës, I am thinking of it again – of Emily, I mean, the unremarkable virgin – I am thinking of her out…

Since January stole my tongue and tied it into knots, the house has become a blank verse.

A Girl There was a girl Who lived in a glass mind And carried her emotions From room to room In a brown suitcase. Blackbirds pecked at her Through see-through walls, Hissing…

THE CONFESSIONAL BOX Women cluck like hens outside the door, they interrupt Fr. Doyle’s thoughts. Joan doesn’t cluck, her voice a double bass, her laugh, a well-tuned string. He…

The Fates You sit and cry at her polished porcelain feetwith moss and gravel for a bedand grieve the un-lived life.Her frozen…

Carlow Poem #61 In the dream I’d shrunk to the size of a pea. Maybe that way I…