In a Poetry Archive, Examining Box No. ——, Belonging To —— ——— - by Jane Burn
March 26 VERVE Poem of the Month winning and shortlisted poems.
This article features the winning and shortlisted poems from March’s Poem of the Month.
THE WINNING POEM
In a Poetry Archive, Examining Box No. ——, Belonging To —— ———
Jane Burn
Jane Burn’s poem unfolds as a kind of séance, a prose-poem in form mirroring its subject: a single, unbroken stanza that accumulates like the examining box and the contents within, layered with observation, and speculation.
It loosely gestures toward March’s theme REWIND / REMIND \ RESHAPE through ideas of preservation, legacy, and what’s kept - what we choose to keep - from the past, but it does so obliquely through open inquiry. The poem is rich in tactile and sensory detail, with its “Yellow felt tip pen has left a circle of dissolving sun”, “mothy staple holes,” and “bloody welts of corrective red” creating a textured intimacy with object that contrasts sharply with the emotional distance of the archive. Burn employs repetition (“Perhaps… Perhaps… Perhaps…”), while the redacted names (—— ———) enact the very secrecy the poem questions. There is a tonal pivot midway, where the gaze of the archivist fractures into something more immediate and personal, collapsing time between the preserved past and the speaker’s present emotional life. The closing lines deliver a sharp, almost irreverent rupture, bringing the poem out of its hushed, museum-like, time-taking atmosphere into the rushed, raw, human, and unresolved.
In simple terms, it’s a poem about poetry and writing poetry with its body metaphor (a poem is a body, the archive is a body of work, the body embalmed is the physical), and the references throughout on lines, paper, practice, pages, ink, manuscript, but most of all this sentence : “For most of us, // those scratches we shaped across the page will quickly heal.” is the reason poets write.
The shortlisted poems move with striking range across form and imagination. Van Der Have’s piece fractures language into something incantatory and unstable, into herd and myth, while KSMoore’s poem pivots on a clean conceptual premise, using juxtaposition and pared-back structure to place sharks and trees in a quiet, philosophical dialogue about time and power. Houston stretches a surreal conceit into a long, narrative drift, balancing humour with an undercurrent of loss as the ordinary tilts into the impossible, and Cenciarelli offers a restrained, precise meditation on doubling, where absence and imagined connection blur the edges of the self. Bajaj’s poem threads together personal history and cultural inheritance through a sustained metaphor of connection and rupture, layering image upon image to explore what binds and what frays.
THE SHORTLIST
in the house of ruminants - Milla Van Der Have
If sharks are older than trees then - KSMoore
All my friends are floating away - Jack Houston
Twin - Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli
Threads - Khushi Bajaj
Winning Poem
Jane Burn
In a Poetry Archive, Examining Box No. ——, Belonging To —— ———
- Jane Burn
What is to be done about secrets but keep them to ourselves, forever
and ever, amen? Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Perhaps
we were all meant to fade, and these boxes are an abomination. Perhaps
these boxes are our only chance for an afterlife. Perhaps this is heaven.
Who decides which body is worth this buff embalming? For most of us,
those scratches we shaped across the page will quickly heal.
These boxes smell of prying, of patient gathering, of too-close scrutiny,
of insurance policies against amnesia. Of oubliettes. Each yellowed sheaf
has been combed and consecrated. Handled with gloves and laid
to manila rest. Oh, for the chance to have your past reordered,
relished, reshaped. I do not know if they smell like —— ———,
for I never met them, and would not have smelled them if I did.
Surprising how old and right it looks to see a typewritten manuscript—
faded text where the ribbon has been struck too many times, rips
in the corners, mothy staple holes, rubbed out pencil, bloody welts
of corrective red. Yellow felt tip pen has left a circle of dissolving sun,
and every so often, the pages wear the ley line of an opened fold.
There are jokes in here that have not stood the test of time.
The box is seagull grey. The contents are tied inside with thick,
calico string. I’m thinking that this room is too much like a dungeon.
Claustrophobic, exactly the sort of place where you might imagine
everything in the end, submits to death. I’m bored with these sheaves
of invoices—the way they remind me that everything to do with poetry
has a price. I am glad when you text, but your message is crisp and cold.
You are busy today. Much too busy for this.
As I close the box, I slip a weary breath beneath the lid. This is the closest
I shall come to such eternity. I imagine you wrote that message wearing
your most professional smile. At least break my heart on paper,
you bloody blasted b—. At least use sympathetic ink.
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets – Paul Tournier
Shortlisted Poems
Milla Van Der Have
in the house of ruminants
sing me oh muse manmade tumble-strung into a wrath again
that was never mine
make me mumble
about what else is left of pretty sieges and uncounted days with their keen
edge of teeth, so battle
wrought
make me numb
touch-struck by a lightning yet unknown to me
my body wilderbeast
stutter me blind
a herd within a herd, fog-thought
when displacement is no longer a theory but a failure to believe
like how a war-mad bull instills heroes with a blessing
like a coat, it fits
but cannot hold unless you lose your frenzied skin
like Jeff disappearing
into the river singing, singing into the river
he disappeared
never to be found never to be dead
because lost in the herd the herd is lost
the great ones become
small ones and the small ones are broken like swords
from our hymns
call me Ajazz murderer of innocents
if sheep ever truly are benign
they are warm and kind of fatty and in their eyes a different
underworld appears, one where
hardship breaks from hardship
and secrets swallow their name
just before the drowning moon
with only a sullen god to cling to
and where
I am the one who
laments and will speak
to whomever has killed me so far
KSMoore
If sharks are older than trees then
the first shark
traced by scales
to an Earth bathing in Panthalassa
gave the globe its blue
bared its teeth
as tree roots
gently spidered underground
building a wise sentence.
This shark was a weapon
greatly feared
just as sharks are now
while trees grew fern-like
feathery tall
known as Wattieza.
Shark teeth were prized
and worn at the throat —
the source of all power
while trees lightly touched
a stranger’s face
made him question his shadow.
Together they are an ancient force
The white of a tooth can colour a page
and trees are pages
turning turning
Jack Houston
All my friends are floating away,
&
as Barrie reveals his plans for a range of copper-pan speciality jams
his heels begin to lift, to twirl him softly
into flight. He’s busy explaining how you’ve got to watch
each batch close, rare-breed gooseberries uneasy
when heated, & so’s not clocked what’s gone on,
but noticing we’re no longer on a level, he grabs at a lamppost
which slows his ascent, a bit, but his palm-slid chafe
soon reaches the bulb-housing above us. Well,
above me at any rate. He’s stuck clutching Perspex,
screaming at me to get a rope, get something, anything,
but there is no rope, no something, anything, no hope
for Barrie as his hold on the downward facing lantern
starts a skin-on-synthetic preeeeep into nothingness
& he’s sucked into the less-pressured air overhead.
It’s cold up there, I’m guessing, & Barrie’ll find it hard to breathe,
just as Miranda, Josie & Faisal, will too, all grappling
the underside of a balcony on the flats to my left,
toes flapping like children practising at the edge
of a swimming pool, fingers losing what little grip they started with
while Leo & Nathan, too, desperately cling to the twigs
of a tree across the road as if this might save their lives.
Leo & Nathan are a couple at least, so would doubtless wish
to face this fate together. Unlike Nadine & Steve. Who aren’t.
A couple that is. Not anymore. Nadine’s just called things off
but Steve still thinks they’ve a chance if things can be talked through.
This admittedly less likely now they’re piercing the stratosphere.
All my friends are floating away, some gently, some hard,
many coalescing with the wistful contrails that slice
an otherwise imprecise sky, but unlike the passengers relaxing
into their seats as they weigh maybe one more
quick complimentary drink, my friends will not return easy.
High, where sky has bite, is now their home, so no,
they need not be made rain, collaborate to soak
my un-umbrellaed head along this longly lonely road.
Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli
Khushi Bajaj
threads
“Rahiman dhaaga prem ka mat todo chitkaye
Tute se phir naa jude, jude gaanth pari jaaye.”
“Rahim do not break the thread of love
Once broken, it is impossible to mend,
and even if you do mend it, it will always contain a knot”
a hindustani poet from centuries ago once sent me a message through my textbook
in school. it made me think of the first thread that bound me to my mother
of how she had to rush to the hospital because I managed to entangle the umbilical cord around my neck somehow and it was her decision to cut that cord early that kept me alive.
i run a hand through the curly locks emerging from my head
caressing my face and clearly tracing a curvy line from my mother’s genes to mine.
it reminds my skin of the scarves that my nani used to knit and how once a pattern i done it is important to tie a knot at the end to keep it from unraveling and leaving your family cold in the night.
i smell the garden of my childhood where a long string vowed to bear the weight of my entire family’s clothing and how the detergent-scented drops would be falling and touching my knuckles as i stretched out my hand to attempt to balance myself on the railing of the staircase next to it and on the wires that my father switched
to convince himself that the pain that his mother was sending his way was actually coming from me. i think of never wanting to accidentally wrap my neck in what feels like my life source again and i wonder if Rahim imagined me standing
in one corner
and you in another
too scared to grow too big for the threads binding us to hold our weight anymore. i wonder how he would feel about us deciding to move closer to tie preemptive knots and strengthen the places where they start to thin.
i wonder why such few men make it to the crafting circle
i wonder if seeing us knit a quilt together would make him rewrite his couplet
Thank you for reading.
Take it easy. Take care of yourselves.
With love, light and joy,
Hayley
x
NEWS.
For the first time since April 2024, VERVE Poetry Press are opening a month long submissions window to find a limited number of poetry pamphlet manuscripts. Those that are successful will either be published later in 2026 or early in our 2027 season.
Unfortunately we aren’t able to open for full length poetry collections this year.
Our submissions window for pamphlets will open at 0.01am on April 1st 2026 and close at midnight on April 30th.
We’ve got another month of workshops on Tuesday eves throughout April, a Poetry Pamphlet short course (which keeps selling out) and the online reading event of the winning poets from our POEM OF THE FESTIVAL competition on May 10th.
See you at one of them!
We’re celebrating 1 year of POTM and have published all the themes for the coming 2026-27 year on our website. April’s theme is OOMPH, and no, it isn’t a fool.
OUR ONLINE poetry only bookshop is filled with the books we know you love and contains books from all our favourite publishers!
Books on How to Write Poetry, Exciting forthcoming books, Imported titles and of course our VERVE Poetry Press books!
Any profits from book sales from this site goes straight to support our many community projects and of course will help us bring back our festival in 2027. Have a browse - we know you’ll enjoy it!
Thank you for reading poets. We are so very grateful for your continued support. As a CIC, VERVE Poetry Festival relies on funding to keep our work open and accessible. Subscribing, if within reach, supports this.
Wow. Beautifully written.