The Fig Tree - Issue 10
with Featured Poet Adam Strickson
Welcome to the tenth issue of The Fig Tree.
Our Featured Poet this month is Adam Strickson, who has had poems in both the regular Fig Tree and the Coal Mining special issue.
I met Adam at The Fig Tree Anthology launch in Doncaster. It was a fabulous event and I'm looking forward to repeating it for future anthologies.
If you are interested, I produced a short guide on how I select for the Fig Tree (with tips that might be useful when you submit anywhere) and a brief review of each of the poems. I won't be doing that every time! You can find this on my personal poetry blog, Tim Fellows Poetry, also on Substack.
If you've read the guidelines for submission, you will notice that I've included a “no AI” policy. This may seem obvious, but AI is increasingly becoming a shortcut to content creation that not only bypasses true creativity and humanity, but has also utilised the work of thousands of writers who have received no credit or payment. I do understand that basically we build on what we read in our heads when we create, but we have usually paid for the books and are unlikely to have read, and be able to instantly access, everything that we could ever find online. In The Fig Tree, I don't use anti-AI or anti-plagiarism software because,I hope, at least for now, that I could recognise so-called AI slop if I read it. Also, I'd simply be feeding it to another algorithm... Anyway, one of the sites I sometimes submit work too has added another policy. On that site, you review four other poems as part of the deal that lets you post yours. They discovered that contributors were feeding other people's poems into “AI Review” software to generate reviews so they didn't have to. I can't stop people putting poems from The Fig Tree into AI, but please don't. I also noticed when creating the PDF files for the Crooked Spire books that Adobe's AI wants to read your document and “summarise it”. Too lazy to read this? Let AI steal the document and give you a garbage summary of it!
Substack allows AI scraping by default – I've turned it off but it's not 100% effective. If I found a way of publishing that guaranteed to block AI, I might switch.
If you have any thoughts on this, please comment below the article. I'm interested in any valid counter-arguments.
Our imprint Crooked Spire Press continues to grow, having published Matthew Paul's The Last Corinthians we will be following up with Ian Parks' The Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light in October and a Fig Tree Coal Anthology in November, which will include poems from the special issues but also others that have not appeared online.
Once again I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as I did collating it. You are joining over 500 people who are reading the webzine on a regular basis.
Tim Fellows, Editor
Contributors: Fiona Cahill, Oliver Comins, William Coniston, Mike Everley, Lisa Falshaw, Emma Lee, Sarah Raybould, Chris Sewart, Clare Starling, Adam Strickson, Anna Whitehouse and Paul Brough.
The Fig Tree Featured Poet – Adam Strickson
Early February, window view
The sludgy path,
the wizened elder.
Out of the air, light as mizzle,
small birds flit onto its twigs.
They rise and fall all morning,
bounce off the nubs and stubs,
beak for insects, pick
at browning wheels of apple –
a male coal tit, with a streetwise
white stripe that divides its topknot
two rival robins, a dunnock
that dibs in the seedfall
a male chaffinch that seems
more colourful than a chaffinch
should be, the green-backed
beauty of the female, engineer
of nests bound with spiders’ webs.
A goldfinch, weeks too early,
swings his pants, his sway and bob
from one side to the other
a comic pivot of display,
ready whenever she is.
The window glass separates me
from this calming busyness of birds
and I am slow to want to go outdoors,
to let the side-by-side language
of living things come into me.
Adam Strickson
The poor man's overcoat
In the end, sooner or later, and usually later,
he goes under the railway into the woods
that he means to visit more regularly.
What does he find away from the stamped path
beyond the steel fence and the quad bike ruts?
Always moss, and a slight widening of his eyes.
Sometimes shelves of Turkey Tail fungus
and once a tawny owl perched in daylight.
Always the enticement of ground sounds,
each step a polka of possibility.
He may be surprised by a scrap of carpet
or a stackable chair, because this is the secret place
of the last gasp of childhood
before everywhere is enclosed.
Adam Strickson
Being and Breath
I hoick you up to the moor
and leave you in the Nab's hoot and whistle,
stranded among boulders, fretting the mist,
until the wind knifes through to lay the day open.
You dive down, reckless for the free-fall
that blends body and earth, immerses you in a blur
of waist-high reeds and rush. Your headlong feet
flush a mountain hare. It flies across the eyes' sweep
before it fades into upland shift and sway.
This is the bar-bend and fetter-break that takes you
from office chair and constant screen
to the high and deep, making you a peat-astronaut
whose heavy boots defy gravity in the listening glory
where, without bearings, you claim those first steps.
Adam Strickson
Adam Strickson is a community artist, poet and PhD tutor at the University of Leeds. He lives in the hamlet of Wellhouse, near Huddersfield, where he enjoys walking, wildflowers, local history and gardening. Adam’s three books are published by Wrecking Ball, Graft and Valley Press. He has contributed articles to journals on subjects ranging from Japanese cinema to Greek tragedy. Lead artist with 6 million+ Charitable Trust, Adam is currently working with Balbir Singh Dance Company and on projects with refugees from 11 countries. He is something of a specialist in Chinese and Japanese theatre, lanterns and giant puppets.
The Fig Tree Selection – September 2025
This section features up to ten poems, with a maximum of one per poet per issue.
Extra Time
The frantic goalie gestures with his gloves,
hurting from his last heroic dive.
The team sweat, some substituted off.
Close ups show them looking
over their shoulders – the pitch
seems to have grown bigger,
there’s gaps the size of graveyards
in the goal-face grapple. The crowd howl.
Here, on the edge of the sofa, under
the fairy lights I put up to make things
more cheerful, I recall that
if it wasn’t for the clinical execution
of my surgeon, the whistle would have blown
for me, but we are still playing –
there are still seven minutes to go
and anything could happen.
Clare Starling
Lines To My Father
Nailless fingers, the penance of the poor.
Childhood Ricketts and lack of nutrition.
It was a miracle that you survived.
Teenage probation. Stealing a turnip
from the owner's garden. God's allotment.
Devilment must run in the family.
Then the fall.
Earth's movement.
Deep underground.
Gravity's dark sound. Butties dug you out.
Remember, you penned lines about the squeeze.
The war and radar were your ticket out.
Sleek Catalinas searching for tin fish
across the swell. One later found Bismarck.
Then India, with Box Brownie in hand.
History and tradition. Black and white.
Faded pictures. Sepia memories.
Yet, years later, when you were old and frail,
the x-ray still revealed a darkened spot
on your lung. Coal has a long memory.
Then came the small strokes, with each one taking
a part away. Only the shell remained.
Death came as a relief
and as a friend.
Mike Everley
Winding Wheels
At every entrance to a village,
at every site of a former colliery
carnival-coloured wheels rise up
from coal seams. Half sunk,
segmented, frilled by grass,
lit with colour-changing LED lights,
like some fairground ride,
this monument to a destroyed industry,
way of life, community.
Next to busy roads, on roundabouts,
they crouch, where traffic divides,
splinters, winding back to the past,
miners lifted and dropped in a cage,
faces blackened, whites of eyes gleaming
in lamplight, clothes made of coal dust,
the underground in every crease and fold.
23,000 tons a week at Frickley,
job for life, grandfathers, fathers, sons,
“Unity is strength”, “Coal not dole”,
“Support the miners”, out for 8 weeks
at most. No-one predicted a year,
back-to-backs huddled under
pit-heads, shadowed by slag heaps.
Lisa Falshaw
Perseids
We lie on our backs, the grass still warm.
Darkness slides down into the valley,
muffles its sound, yielding to owls.
Air forgets today’s heat, previews
tomorrow’s early freshness and we are
exposed to the southern horizon with light
shouting from the sky, and no competing moon.
The galaxy’s luminous edge pierces our world,
bright pinpoints, billions of unvisited suns.
A silent flash arcs across, as a grain of grit,
remnant of a rock the size of a skyscraper,
burns to nothing in seconds, the universe unconcerned.
William Coniston
Dazzle
We plan our departure to catch the sunrise,
leaving the others to sleep while we go east
to stand on the cliff at Bay in lumbering air.
Driving across moorland in the small hours
a trace of moonlight seeps between clouds
before leery darkness shutters the outside in.
By the time we’ve parked at the top of a hill
there’s enough grey dawn to show the path
we’ll take, bushes below and waves beyond.
Out in the open, we lean on a fence and wait.
Even as we wonder if we should have come
the Sun is actually there, unfastening the sky.
The moment when bleak gives way to bright
is as good as we’d hoped and better, perhaps,
than we deserve—day beginning with dazzle.
Later, we eat warm bread from a Whitby baker,
share a bag of fresh strawberries and that flask
of filtered water you bring on every journey.
We linger beside the East Pier Light to watch
two laden trawlers return to port, welcomed
by gulls and the whiff of kipper woodsmoke.
Heading back, we choose the high road again.
Sunshine pursues us, makes the heather glow
and releases scent of purple, musk and peat.
In a crowded street, you decline my suggestion
of coffee and drop me not far from the station.
At this stage, it seems our chance has passed.
But when you say you need to get the morning
done and rest before lunch, I hear the warmth
in your voice and feel your eyes examine me.
Oliver Comins
They Built a Studio Where Once Were Orange Groves
‘It’s all right. It's a mining town in lotus land.’
(Wylie White’s opinion of Hollywood in 'The Last Tycoon' by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
In my trailer I give my agent hell,
then let him paw me on the purple chaise.
Aware of the spittle on his moustache,
aware of my rosary above the basin
set swinging by our motion.
On the set the crew sweat a vast diorama
of Chicago into position; electricians toss dice
against a prop valise; a deft continuity girl
checks her clipboard for green or red
apples in the fruit bowl.
All this gaudy mash of light and frenzy,
shadow and purpose, so that my image
can burn and flicker in thousands of cinemas.
And, like rising floodwaters, nickels and dimes
will seep under doors, spill into profit
and percentage – endure in two sets of meticulous ledgers.
Then one crystal morning,
on a dim and troubled set,
Wardrobe-Larry shares a white line
that floats my disenchantment. And as I drive
to the Brown Derby, I thrill at the starry stop-lights
on Mulholland, let my synapses flare and bones soften.
Now through a crack in my trailer door
I watch myself frantic with laughter, and detect the
soft scent of bruised orange blossom
fearful in the air.
Chris Sewart
Mowing his Lung
TV subtitle: “He was my neighbour. I used to wave to him when he was mowing his lung.”
Suburbia, an overcast day,
rain showers a threat not
yet realised. A neighbour
you only notice when he
washes his car or drags
the lawnmower out
because the noise irritates.
This is where nothing
extraordinary happens.
Where a police car’s
appearance is noticeable.
You are perplexed.
It’s not yet real that you
won’t see the neighbour
again. There’s a tug of guilt,
should you have made
an effort to talk to him,
invite him for a beer
to watch the game?
You meant to, one day.
But he’s run out of days.
The policemen nod, leave.
It’s just a routine enquiry.
The death is unexplained
but not yet suspicious.
It will only be when the site
of death is revealed as the garage
where the lawnmower was kept
and the cause carbon monoxide
poisoning, that they will question
your use of the word “lung”.
Emma Lee
Cloisters
With each slow step
layers of my life drift
onto sacred flagstones
and silence sifts my thoughts,
until only the ones that matter remain.
I find myself in a shadowed sanctuary,
where memories peal like ancient bells
and my heart opens wide—
a prayerbook that longs to be read.
Anna Whitehouse
Rough weather of the cuckoo
Rhythmic creatrix with her shoreline mistress
Thirst salt shattered cliffs and cracked skies
Bog myrtle spiced earth with a hint of citrus
Fuchsia hedges spiked with loosestrife
I fling myself out to dance in the sting
Whirling dervish Queen of the Scairbhín
Fiona Cahill
scairbhín or scaraveen is a particular chaotic spring weather pattern in the west coast of Ireland said to be the rough weather of the cuckoo.
Bone Collector
Fascinated, he poked at the raven’s skull;
goggle-eyes, half-skinned cap, beak intact,
feathers adrift like a tribal headdress.
Carcass raised on a stake, inspected it,
stirred up a squall of flightless ghosts.
How they lunged and bickered, he
danced to catch
those bone-swimmers.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
The beak made a snap, prised open,
still on its hinge, cracked back into place
with a lopsided grin.
I smelt rot, shivers of dead-things,
spectators shrivelling at the sight
of the bone-handler as he
wielded his trophy like a pallbearer,
triumphant,
butterfly stroke bold.
Sarah Raybould
Contributors
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
Fiona Cahill is an artist, poet, activist and carer living in South Yorkshire. From a line of Irish single mothers her work explores institutional abuse, politics, grief and the power of the natural world to overcome separation and containment. Fiona was invited to contribute to an ambitious exhibition by The National Museum of Ireland entitled ‘Changing Ireland’ that will open in October 2025.
Oliver Comins returned to The Midlands recently after living in the Thames Valley then West London for many years. His poetry is published quite widely and collected by The Mandeville Press, Anvil Press and Templar Poetry. A second full-collection is currently seeking publication.
William Coniston turned to writing in retirement and shortly before COVID became infected with poetry, from which he has never recovered. He has been published in periodicals and anthologies and recently graduated MA (Creative Writing). His debut collection Bee lines comes out on 20th September with Yaffle.
Mike Everley has had fiction and poetry published in numerous publications including: New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Outposts, Cardiff Poet, Undiscovered Poet, Entheoscope, Poetry News (Poetry Society), Lothlorien Online Poetry Journal, 5-7-5 Haiku Online Journal, The Bamboo Hut, Dark Poets Club, Green Ink Poetry, These Pages Sing, The Seventh Quarry and Acumen. He was a member of both the NUJ and the Society of Authors before retirement. Now he focusses on creative writing as a silver scribbler.
Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com
Lisa Falshaw lives and works in West Yorkshire but dreams constantly of Kefalonia. She has had poems published by Black Bough, Atrium, Dreamcatcher, Dawn Treader, Strix, Fig Tree, Fevers of the Mind, Orbis, Yaffle and Ink Sweat and Tears. Find her on X: @LisaFal Facebook: Lisa Falshaw Instagram: lisafalshawpoet
Sarah Raybould is a poet and GP in the Derbyshire Peak District. She enjoys imagistic and nature writing and uses poetry as a form of reflection within medicine. She has poems published by Public Sector Poetry and wrote and performed a commissioned work for English Touring Opera in 2023.
Chris Sewart lives in Beverley, East Yorkshire. Recent poems have appeared in Fig Tree, Obsessed With Pipework and the Bournemouth Writing Prize 2025 Anthology. He has a short story in Broken Sleep's forthcoming Laurel & Hardy Anthology, Pardon Me, My Ear is Full of Milk. In 2026 he will be Festival Poet at the Stage 4 Beverley Festival - Stage 4 Beverley
Clare Starling started writing poetry when her son was diagnosed with autism in 2020. Her pamphlet Magpie’s Nest won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award 2023. She particularly loves writing about nature, and how neurodiversity can give different perspectives on the world. www.clarestarling.com
Anna Whitehouse is a Birmingham-based writer and university mentor, whose poetry has been published in Black Nore Review and Wildfire Words. In her spare time, she loves exploring the local countryside with her dog and getting stuck in bookshops.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.
Thanks,
Hiram Larew
https://www.hiramlarewpoetry.com/post/new-zealand-radio-interview