The Fig Tree - Issue 13
with Featured Poet Bob Beagrie
Welcome to issue thirteen of The Fig Tree.
I’m not superstitious so, unlike hotel rooms and aeroplane seat rows, we haven’t skipped from twelve to fourteen.
This issue’s Featured Poet is Bob Beagrie, who appeared three times in the Fig Tree in 2024. When he submitted again I decided it was time to offer a Featured Poet slot. He is a prolific writer, his latest collection Hand of Glory, prose poetry about the bizarre relic in Whitby, being a perfect example. Bob’s poems about the Spanish Civil War, in the collection Romanceros, is a much revisited favourite of mine.
This issue opens with Tracy Dawson’s Towton, and it was in this month that that battle took place, in the driving Yorkshire snow. It contains our first poem submitted from Australia and ends with our first submission by an Indian poet, Nisha Raviprasad.
Last month we published the first of two special issues following our submission call for poetry by women. It has smashed our viewing record, with over 1500 views as I write this. The second part will be out next month with 23 more fabulous poems, including a new Featured Poet, then a printed anthology will follow in the summer with 20 additional poems. Many thanks again to Stephanie Bowgett and Susan Darlington for leading on the selection and editing process.
Also in April we will be launching The Fig Tree 2025 Anthology, a printed edition containing poems published by us last year. The event, on the 11th in Doncaster, already promises to match last year’s, with over 20 fantastic poets joining us to read their work.
However, this won’t be our first event of the year. This month we will be hosting Coal Anthology readings in Garforth, near Leeds, and Ashington in Northumberland. Other venues are in the pipeline – if you want to host us at a venue or poetry group near you, send us an email.
All information about these readings, and others by Ian Parks and Matthew Paul, are on the Crooked Spire Press website.
Thanks to Paul Brough for his stunning custom image for this issue.
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: Bob Beagrie, John Curry, Tracy Dawson, Janet Dean, Marilyn Francis, Victoria Gatehouse, Allan Lake, Marie Papier, Nisha Raviprasad, Seán Street, Allan Wilkinson and Paul Brough.
The Fig Tree Featured Poet – Bob Beagrie
Hen Ogled
We linger, still, in a mythical land
treading the footsteps of saints
where surf-smoothed pebbles
sing a different set of shanties,
where bleak, mist-swaddled moors
replay white-washed pantomimes
for an audience of hares, curlew,
of silent rings of standing stones,
and our high streets are whittled
into charming, hand-crafted souvenirs
held, dissolving like humbugs,
in the hollow of our cheeks.
Bob Beagrie
Untethering
(For Stew)
What he loves is to paddle his kayak away from the shore,
for the land-sounds to fall away, becoming incomprehensible
and of little consequence, for the waters to buoy his weight
and to break and fold and drip with each paddle’s tight dip,
for the shifting light to sparkle in a path of refracted panes
across the window of the lake, for the rhythm of the body’s
muscle memory to plough the vessel forward as an engine:
eyes, arms, shoulders, waist, thighs, feet working in unison,
for the unknown depths beneath him to yawn like a whale.
He loves the smell of water out there, the smell of the air,
the feather floating as if with intent, the circle of the trees
like lashes around an eyeball staring at clouds that broil
and burst to pour stored raindrops, that plummet to pound
the lake into a drum whose vibrations press through skin
into his bones, dissolving thoughts carried from the strand,
there in the iris he can scream and laugh like a madman.
Bob Beagrie
Figueres
The red wall sprouts
small loaves like shingles,
laid by the golden goose
an array of giant eggs
adorn the tower’s roof,
carousel horses stampede
across ornate evening
balconies
hauling thunder and lightning
down from the mountains
to the corpse drying room.
Cows in clown colours
dance flamenco
around and around
the plane trees on The Rambla.
As the hour rings a church bell,
it’s hot enough to drain
a glass of snake venom,
strip down to fig leaves,
go searching the narrow cuts
for El Diablo’s antidote:
the indigo rose black tomato.
Bob Beagrie
Bob Beagrie (PhD) is a poet, writer and performer. He lives in Middlesbrough and has published fifteen collections of poetry, most recently: The Hand of Glory: a biography’(Yaffle 2025), Romanceros (Drunk Muse Press 2024), Kō (Black Light Engine Room Press’ 2023), Eftwyrd (Smokestack Books 2023), The Last Almanac (Yaffle Press 2023). When We Wake We Think We’re Whalers from Eden (Stairwell Books 2021). His poetry has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian, Tamil, Gaelic and Karelian. He is a founding member of the experimental music and spoken word collective Project Lono and works as a writer, performer, creative producer and workshop facilitator.
The Fig Tree Selection – January 2026
This section features up to ten poems, with a maximum of one per poet per issue.
Towton
Sweetcorn rows shoulder to shoulder,
its stems are bloodied ankles
risen from the Bloody Acres.
Tassels are quivers of arrows,
poleaxes pricked over the press
and leaves are the billhook blades.
Towering above us at six foot four
corn storming our maize view
of the Lancastrian ridge.
At the edge of the field
the short first line has collapsed
under the weight of marching feet.
And here, a trinity of coltsfoot,
a parhelion of petals,
rays of Sun in Splendour.
The hard ground is speared,
arrowed with dusty docks.
Clayed earth always fighting back.
Auburn silks sprout from the heads
of golden kernels still armoured
in their green sheath helmets.
A holly bush guards Dacres Cross,
shields it from the heavy traffic
heading to camp at Leeds Festival.
The lone hawthorn on the hill,
aloof, inaccessible as a king.
A route taken by few.
On the ridge above Cock Beck
crimson splatters the hawthorn
and rose-hipped track.
Today we cross over
the Bridge of Bodies,
Cock Beck flowing clear and free.
Tracy Dawson
Cloughton
I walked to the sea in December,
a long and muddy bridleway
bordered by blackthorns,
each dark cage with its secret of blackbirds,
the fields with their tired winter greens,
suddenly lifted by the curious light
that comes to you sometimes in winter -
slant, like a promise, like the glimmer
that builds in the heart of breakers.
I walked to the sea in December
and realised the grey seals,
bobbing in the lip of the bay
were surfers, slick in their wetsuits -
selkies slipping into newfound skins
to risk the shining edges of waves.
I watched from up on the headland,
felt the sting of their salt-wild joy,
cold slap of it taking my breath.
Victoria Gatehouse
Lunch Break at the Nature Conference
The university caterers have refilled
the feeding stations, and now all plumages
in the hierarchy of academic
pecking orders fluster at the trays, before
hopping each to their own species gathered
at safe-distanced and selected tables, mouths
full of seeds and opinions about
everything, the room loud with raucous
calls from vested nests - Verbosus Scholarium:
provocations, projects awaiting outcomes,
research questions, funding bids competing
for limited air, while the wilting world outside
gets on with extinction, pending a decision.
Seán Street
Love In The Afternoon
The telling will never be done,
how her mother sucked on coal,
how it worked on heartburn.
If you work it back you wonder
about a night in July, the boy asleep,
oblivious. These will be
his last few months ruling the roost.
There’s a threat coming –
sperm carrying the girl genes.
She will bring balance but not for him,
his Mam will stay on his side, but she
will be on Dad’s.
It could have been in the afternoon,
love in the afternoon, Dad on nights
that week, the son at school,
a quarter past two. Mam might have
thought her time at thirty five
was running out. Mam might
have sensed a window in which
one egg might fall in certainty
and there was a chance. Take me,
she said. Take my chance.
Janet Dean
Still Falling
Rain comes hard,
knuckles on slate,
beating the hills into silence,
cutting cold channels
through stone older
than anything I can name.
The land pulls its colours in.
Fields drown to their roots,
hedgerows slump
under their own wet grief.
Sheep huddle —
white rags in the wind.
Home is somewhere back there,
a mark in the mud,
half-swallowed.
A warmth that once rose
like smoke
from a fire someone forgot to tend.
What remains?
The outline of loss,
sharp as flint.
And the rain —
still falling —
grinding itself
into mud and bone.
And me —
another mark on the hillside,
already blurring.
John Curry
Uncool is Cool is Warming
The uncoolest cafe in Melbourne, Australia
(temperature an issue with cool, wet winters)
counter-intuitively, has the finest coffee
so I’m not disappointed that I happened
along, settled, colonised window table
that seats three more people than I have
ever been. Staff : assorted, unintrusive.
Bland personalities like artless walls but
there’s natural light because window and
skylight are positioned perfectly for sun
worship if only indifferent rain would stop.
Bland music is easy to digest bossanova
in Brazilian Portuguese, which I get but
do not comprehend. In this atmosphere,
mind can slither out and again tempt
any naive Eve without drawing petty
deity attention. It’s blank page –
illumined by neon. Benign spy with
no qualms, mission or deadlines
could ask for nothing more.
Allan Lake
Chalk Dream
I looked down at your face today
Your cold lips slightly open
Revealing that once tender smile
The one I first saw as a child
As your eyes peered down upon mine
When you leaned over the pram side
You were always the blue-eyed one
The quiet, sensible one
The one I always looked up to
The one who told me I would die
After eating a stick of chalk
Something you always regretted
I didn’t see your eyes today
They remained closed as you slept
Yet you smiled, or was it a grin?
I wondered just for a moment
What dreams you might be dreaming
Were they of me, swallowing that chalk?
I knew this was our last moment together
And we had to say our goodbyes
One memory after another coming to mind
You took me by the hand to the library
And taught me how to read and write
And I don’t think I ever thanked you
Now your eyes are closed forever
Though they still shine long and bright
Like an evening sky in late summer
As it watches the season change
I placed my mouth close to your ear..
Allan Wilkinson
Matter
He told me
the brain is a box.
A box with an elaborate machinery.
Every element has its use its function.
Nothing is left to chance.
You would or is it could
see no further no deeper.
Facts are facts.
When I tried to bring in another dimension
like the space between the elements,
the shape of the space between the parts
suggesting the void had a meaning,
could be a cause a pause for reflexion,
a groan coming from the matter,
he roared at me
called me
a witch.
Marie Papier
Crem No 162512. Disposal Take Away
Morning high tide
Perranporth beach October 16, 2019
07:09
Sun rise
Perranporth beach, October 16, 2019
07:43
We waited till sunrise. Too late for high tide. The tide already turning.
It rained. Dog walkers ran for shelter. The long flat wet stretch of sand was ours. We walked towards the retreating sea and scattered the greasy greyness that was once a person into the waves, but the waves were busy with their own ebb and flow agenda unfazed by disposal and take away.
It’s almost a cliché, ashes that blow back on a rogue breeze.
Declining to be scattered.
The photograph [dated 16/10/2019] I took [timed 07:46:27] does not show
the cremains, remaining on the tideline.
A seventh wave, out of the blue, saved the day.
Unfixed the feathery ash from the damp foreshore.
Took them gently out to sea.
Sun-up.
Two shadows on a glass beach.
Beams of pink daylight slicing through grey cloud.
It’s too late now
but I wonder whether you would have chosen Perranporth.
You never said.
Marilyn Francis
Loneliness
She lived in a tattered house,
old and frail
she spoke to colors
to the colors of the sky,
of the earth,
of the withering leaves and broken boughs.
And when it rained
it turned gray
like the gentle sigh that left
her cracked lips,
like the cold silence that haunted
cattails basking in the winter sun.
She turned into a vacant house
that had only forlorn memories
the memories ran in the air
vibrated in her breath.
She spoke to the empty swing
that creaked in the wind.
She spoke to the empty colors
that filled her heart
to the vacant house
that had grown ears.
And one day
she lay with a bunch of wilted wild flowers
in her hands.
Nisha Raviprasad
Contributors
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
John Curry is a poet from South Yorkshire whose work draws on everyday life, memory, landscape and Northern voices. His poems have appeared in Black Noir Review, 60 Odd Poets and Starbeck Orion. He is currently working toward his first collection.
Tracy Dawson lives in Yorkshire, she is a Read to Write poet and has had poems published in several anthologies.
Janet Dean is a writer from York. Her novel The Peacemaker was published in 2019, and her poetry has been Highly Commended for the Bridport and Manchester Cathedral Prizes, commended in the Poetry Society Stanza Competition and recently published by Acumen, The Alchemy Spoon, Yaffle Press and Obsessed With Pipework.
Marilyn Francis lives and writes poetry in Radstock which, once upon a time, was a mining village in the Somerset Coalfield. She had a collection of poems, Red Silk Slippers, published quite a while ago and, more recently, some other poems published in The North, The Rialto, Poetry Salzburg, Culture Matters, and various other places, both on and offline.
Victoria Gatehouse is a scientist, poet and children’s writer. She lives with her family in West Yorkshire. Victoria’s poems have been broadcast on BBC radio and widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlet The Mechanics of Love (Smith | Doorstop) was selected as a ‘Laureate’s Choice’ by Carol Ann Duffy. Victoria is a three-times winner of The Poetry News Members’ Competition, and was highly commended for the Gingko Prize, 2023. Her first poetry collection, The Hawthorn Bride, is published by Indigo Dreams.
Allan Lake, originally from Canada, has lived in Saskatchewan, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza, Tasmania, Western Australia and Melbourne. His latest chapbook of poems, My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press. Such journals as The Hong Kong Review, The American Writers Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, The Antigonish Review, New Philosopher and Fabians Review have published him.
Marie Papier is a French novelist and poet. Her poems have been published in a number of poetry magazines: The North, Stand, Agenda, The Lighthouse, Orbis, Ink Sweat & Tears and others; online; in anthologies: Smith/doorstop’s The Result is what you see today; Indigo Dreams’ Voices for the Silent; Bristol Stanza’s Calyx; Weather Indoors (on Covid); Walking Words, Poetry Walks in Bristol’s Past and Present; Bonds, Lyra Poetry Festival 2024 & Poets’Walk. She was shortlisted for the Cerasus chapbook competition 2024 for After Picasso there’s only God.
Nisha Raviprasad is a poet and avid reader based in Cochin, Kerala. Her work, often centered on memory, nature, and emotion, has appeared in various literary journals. A quiet observer of life and language, she continues to explore the beauty of the everyday through poetry.
Seán Street’s current collection is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press) Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, and most recently Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong was published by Bloomsbury, (paperback edition in May, 2025.) He lives in Liverpool.
Allan Wilkinson is a musician and collector of classic rock, folk and Jazz recordings. He has worked alongside a number of poets, adding accompaniment to their words. He broadcasts two weekly radio shows and has published one pamphlet of poetry and songs, Breakfast on Bourbon.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.
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