Poem of the Month. April '25 Winners Announced!
Our first monthly poetry competition celebrates humour, heartache, and the wonderfully weird.
What even is Poem of the Month?
We believe poetry should be wild, inclusive, unpredictable, and accessible. VERVE’s Poem of the Month is our new monthly competition for poets who dare to do things differently.
Every month, we invite poets from anywhere and everywhere to send us their freshest, fiercest, weirdest, or most heartfelt work. Some follow our optional theme. Some don’t. We love it all.
It costs £3 per poem, or £6 for three, with £100 awarded to the winning poet (*did we say monthly?) and all submission fees go directly back into VERVE’s free community poetry programmes, including:
Our Open Door open mic.
The Collective (a mentoring and development programme).
Free workshops and activities for children and young people at our festival.
Poem of the Month is not a profit-making scheme. It’s a creative outlet, a spotlight, and a reinvestment in the wider poetry community.
APRIL’S THEME: everything is weird & that’s ok
We were overwhelmed by the range of submissions in our first month. Nearly 500 of you submitted poems! Choosing a shortlist was tough. Choosing a winner — nearly impossible.
But after much reading, here are the poems we selected.
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO RHIAN ELIZABETH FOR THE WINNING POEM AND A MASSIVE WELL DONE TO ALL SHORTLISTED!
WINNER
to the girl who said i’ll never be happy
by Rhian Elizabeth
you preferred orange juice to apple.
this, i discovered,
the morning after
the night i had to sleep in the spare room
because your breathing reminded me of my
grandmother’s old fashioned kettle whistling
in the kitchen whenever she made herself
a cup of tea. after that,
just to prove my unfastidious-ness,
i took to bringing my own carton of apple juice
round for breakfast, and even tried
looking past the fact you never laughed at my
leave the gun, take the cannoli
joke when i handed you the bag of pastries
in the italian bakery.
who the fuck
hasn’t seen the godfather?
and who the fuck
doesn’t know every single word
to barbra streisand’s
the way we were?
i put up with a lot.
oh, and by the way,
i’d never dated someone
shorter than me before i met you
but i never looked down on you,
not even for that.
SHORTLIST
Maria Taylor
8 mins, 32 secs.
by Naomi Wood
Sometimes we play them in double time on the school run, in the lunch break or slowly we savour them while washing up.
We snatch moments where we can, to cross cities and schedules. I receive them like my favourite band has just dropped a new banger. These personalised podcasts, love notes with no strings, full body— I want you to hear all of me— even the space between brain and mouth, how I sometimes double back and doubt myself. I want to know you.
On the bus, our sleepy voices, kids in the background.
One friend makes notes on paper before they press record, I hear them turning pages as they respond to points from a previous train of thought.
Other friends drop separate staccato messages sharing shades of feeling, out of breath while roller-blading or singing, in the sun free-wheeling.
7mins 12 seconds—We apologise for the length, say sorry I rambled, sorry I intruded on your day— a hangover from all the ways we learnt to not be too much of anything. But these are intimacies.
And sure, sometimes I listen back and it’s like hearing myself have a breakdown in slow motion. You try and trace the thread hoping someone can piece it all together.
Instead, they send their time, possibly the most precious thing we have since we told each other which berries were safe to eat, since Posties brought news from the frontline, since the telegram or the telephone or we texted ‘don’t worry, I’m fine’, but I know that you are busy and we are nothing if not resourceful. So I’m here to remind you—
6mins 45 seconds— the work you do is important, don’t be too hard on yourself, I hope the baby slept through the night.
Next month will be quieter, here’s that recipe, did the exam go alright?
People say voice notes are self-indulgent but they are smoke signals, stealing seconds, they are me cheering you on from everywhere. You can write it on my gravestone— you can reach me anytime.
F Glorious F
by Rob Walton
I’m posting sandwiches
through all the letterboxes
in my street
which I think you’ll find is quite all right
because I warned them about it
by drawing chalk menus
on the sides of their houses/flats/vans/coats
hoping they would tick first and second choice
which I obviously tried to make as varied as possible
only I don’t actually have any income
so many of the proposed ingredients
seemed somewhat out of reach
but I visit lots of my friends’ places
with a bag for life in each hand
and an eye for the unloved
and between us all we’re cranking up
the community spirit and I have leaflets
very nearly almost sorted out
giving information about stomach problems
well I will have
when I find some more
wall/vehicle/clothing space
and buy some more chalk
but as you may recall
I don’t actually have any income
but I may be able to sell some of the sandwiches
people have already started pushing back
through my letterbox.
Knock Out Coach
by Kadie Newman
Coaching is better than teaching
Because you don’t have to pretend
To know the answers to everything
You just ask questions
Which, without context
Are incredibly catty
And verge on psychological torture
Like why do you think
It didn’t work out
The way you wanted it to?
And what are you going to do about that?
I can’t believe I’m finally getting paid to be awful
Smiling at the serious foreheads of strangers twice my size
And making maaaaaaaad threats like
Do you want me to hold you accountable? On paid company time
And the craziest part is, they love it
Everyone thinks I’m so well-adjusted and kind
Which got me thinking, what if the inverse is true
And when I think I’m being nice I’m terrifying?
Like that time I sent someone a bouquet of flowers
Thinking we’re friends, right, this will be such a lovely, anonymous surprise
And they freaked out about it thinking they had a stalker
Which, in hindsight, and from many inhabitable perspectives
Does sound quite plausible . . . absolutely mortifying
Trying to make friends, it’s like mispronouncing your own name
In front of a classroom packed with huge, gangly teenagers
And you’re not even drunk or high or medicated anymore
Just a pillar of wet sand
Trying to hold all of the razor shells inside
On the first day of a new teaching job
Wishing for the tide to turn immediately
The Next Song on the Radio
by Syd Meats
The next song on the radio
will be written and sung by dolphins.
It opens to a Neolithic flute solo
over contemporary Latin lark jazz.
The verses will be palaces of red
brick, mud, and caramel wafers
as a newborn language resonates
like springhares tap dancing
on a ten-gallon drum. No hint
of autotune. Chorus harmonies
by children who have yet to
learn dissonance. A middle eight
so infectious, furniture joins in
with the rose-crowned fruit dove
conducting above the breakfast.
Delighted to see Rhian Elizabeth’s fine poem celebrated 👏👏👏