Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume One
November- December 2025
Permeated Landscapes, poems by Colin Dardis.
Permeated Landscapes
Thesis:
To make a spade
of your own head
and dig within,
a hibernation
for all seasons.
Antithesis:
To be the torch-lit
flood onto nations,
however small,
building constellations
one star at a time.
Synthesis:
To welcome sun
and shade, infused;
flash of and dark amid
the lighthouse turn,
finding all weather fair.
The Cost of Poetry
Due to circumstances beyond our control
the cost of poetry will rise this year.
The ongoing Brexit situation has meant that metaphors
are now as a premium, and similes are in danger
of running out unless ministerial forces urgently intervene.
Blank verse will continue to rise in line with inflation,
but the use of form will be strictly controlled
by a government task force to help reduce spiralling prices.
Having long imported the finest Ukrainian semi-colons,
the current conflict means than we are left with little option
put to past on the increased cost to the reader
in order to continue to meet punctuation demands.
As Russia threatens to cut off our supply of rhyme,
rhetoric and refrain, we need to manage national reserves.
Erroneous use of these devices will be punished.
Meter will be restricted to a maximum of three feet.
Dactyls and anapests in poetry are forbidden.
All caesura will now be stopped.
Thank you for your understanding.
The Morning News
Often, when it is already daylight
and the night has disappeared
around an hour which we rarely see,
I find you awake, with your phone
lit up like a church candle:
you are still in your reading,
the typewriter rock of your eyes
silent upon our mattress.
Perhaps you fear of waking me,
but often, wait until my first
moonless exhalations, signalling
the gear shift out from sleep,
until you tell me your reports,
what your morning forage
has gathered from the electric forest.
© Colin Dardis
Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent writer, editor and sound artist, his work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and the US. He co-hosts the long-running open mic poetry night, Purely Poetry, in Belfast, and is editor of the Poem Alone blog.