Poets Corner

This is a new section for members to compose their own poems or submit work from others that are inspired by life on the allotments

Winning Poems from our 2025 Show

These are the poems that won awards at this years show in September

First Prize
My grandad's allotment
Lucy Dye, aged 7

From the gates of the allotment I can see lots of apples and plums growing on the tree.

Once neighbour Jill showed me an empty nest.
I think the birds had flown off heading North West.

I actually grew carrots and beetroot straight from seed.
My Grandad said, “Champion, that's just what I need”.

At the allotment I always have fun,
I love picking raspberries and blueberries in the sun.

I also love to fish in the pond with a net,
Holding it carefully so it doesn't get wet.

I help grandad to pick tomatoes from the greenhouse.
Some had holes in - perhaps it was a little mouse?

After such a busy allotment day, my gardening work is done.
And I've got a basket of plums and tomatoes to take home to my Mum.

Lucy Dye, aged seven

Second prize

The roots of memory
Pam Brown

Deja vu - that feeling again, frowning
I shake it off. But it's unsettling
inexplicable, is my memory confused?
Think!
has this happened before?

Unseen, yet embedded deep inside, I feel the tendrils
of the ancients surfacing, protecting - fight or flee?
Adrenalin pumping, just modern-day stress
or some cautionary warning rooted in my ancestral brain.

I see the child, a frock from the fifties,
black plimsolls for garden work, hair tied back
elastic band too loose, she kneels in the dirt,
mother watching, smoking, father supervising.
A square yard of earth, a world of caterpillar smells,
nasturtiums and the blue of cornflowers, easy things
"just to get you started".
Hidden roots are revered -
like a surgeon's scalpel, the child's trowel works delicately
picking out the weeds amongst the jewel-like colours of orange, greens and cerulean petals.

We came from Africa, our ancestors survived migration, planted crops
and settled here, laying down their roots in this temperate climate.
But the roots of our memories are deeply entrenched,
some sixty years old, some six thousand.

Third prize

Sonnet for plot 59a
Anne Noble

In the winter my plot sleeps deep and sound,
Nurtured by goodness seeping from above.
It waits for the new planting in its ground
Dreaming of a new beginning with love.

But in the spring it's slowly wakes again.
As days grow longer it is filled and sown,
It's soil is gladly broken without pain
As it looks forward to some new plants grown.

And in the summer it breaks forth in glee
Exub’rant, happy, bountiful and proud
Of all the produce that it gives to me
Who tends it every day in sun and cloud.

Then autumn comes and gives ripe fruitfulness:
Pickling and freezing, bottling, preserving
To see out the winter, so I can bless
Those days that I've laboured and wealth can bring.

My little plot you give me so much more
Than into my heart I can ever pour.

Waiting for the light…….!

I sit out, belligerent.
Jumper or blanket?
…another mediocre nothing day, stealing Spring so fast
the world feels flattened.

Pull the cuffs down tighter – grip each arm into a strait jacket
- the blanket waits inside…with a baskets of scarves, hats…

Time has been stolen! So many grey days!
Sitting, staring outside - a night frost
bulbs emerge, white, blue
then recede, unpicked and bedraggled
buried for another year.

THEN the light arrives! …….in all its biblical glory,
smashing its way to earth as the last grey cloud moves east.
- it bathes my bones in a Hollywood spotlight -
and the world shifts into technicolour of yellow, scent and sound.

Birds test their voices, mixing with bees and hoverflies
cuffs are released
sleeves rolled up
face angled
eyes closed
……eyelids appear translucent, red veins quivering.
The heat breaks through black leggings, a motley design
of red and cream as the wooden warmth of the bench imprints itself.

Book set aside,
sunglasses (encased in moths), click open!

Breath in a memory!

Hyacinths – the blue scent of April.

We were all just here, waiting,
waiting for the light to return.

Written by Pam Brown

Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Submitted by David Callan

2024 was the year of the Slug

Slimy, slippily slithering,

bulbous, blubbery, bulging,

sliding, sluggishly slinking,

undeterred by eggshells, coffee grounds, copper tape

and other children of wishful thoughts,

you cross damp earth and abseil up a lofty stem.

You shred fat flesh with sharp tiny teeth,

tunnelling down, and gouging out

a dark, damp haven boasting gingerbread walls.

In joint enterprise with pigeons, caterpillars and snails

you transform my proud upstanding cabbages

into ragged, rotting, drooping ruins.

You are both father and mother, super-breeder,

hermaphrodite, the ultimate LGBTQ.

Where are the starlings, blackbirds,

thrushes, hedgehogs and frogs which,

once upon a not so distant time,

used to keep your numbers in check ?

Are slug killers helping to finish them off?

You thrive in cold, damp British summers.

2024 was yet another Year of the Slug.

Written by Bob Heyman