The Fig Tree - Issue 9
with Featured Poet Matt Nicholson
Welcome to the ninth issue of The Fig Tree as we return to our regular issues following the final part of the coal mining special last month.
Our Featured Poet this month is Hull-based poet, writer and performer Matt Nicholson who is about to have his fifth collection, Side-eye, published in August. The poems below are taken from this collection. Matt is also a member of the poetry group The 4 Johns - none of whom are called John.
The first poem after Matt’s, by William Coniston, was chosen around the time when we remember again the events of June 6th, 1944 on the beaches of Normandy. Importantly, it touches on the impact on the soldiers who came back, not just from that battle and that war, but is applicable to all armed conflicts. I was lucky enough to visit Vietnam and see some of the places, artifacts and photographs of that brutal war. As brilliantly told by Bruce Springsteen in Born in the USA, the post-conflict treatment of American soldiers who fought because their country asked them was shameful. We in the UK haven’t covered ourselves in glory either. Sadly, there are people right now who will be candidates for PTSD fighting wars across the world.
On a less depressing topic, the 2024 Fig Tree Anthology, which contains a couple of terrific war poems, is now available to buy at the Crooked Spire Press website. It’s Paypal for now, but please contact us if you want to use bank transfer or cheque. You can also buy Matthew Paul’s new collection The Last Corinthians, which was launched in June. Matthew was the Featured Poet in The Fig Tree back in Issue 4.
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.
Thank you all.
Tim Fellows, Editor
Contributors: Angela Arnold, Lorraine Caputo, William Coniston, Lorraine Kipling, Matt Nicholson, David Harmer, Emma Lee, Chris Sewart, John Short, Jeff Skinner, Richard Wilcocks and Paul Brough.
The Fig Tree Featured Poet – Matt Nicholson
Afternoons – I walk beside you
We meet at the limit of the copse,
in this unforgiving land where stress
dumps softened men and makes
them choose new and slow distractions
to insulate their shrunken days.
You have brought your tall black dog
who carries your love in harness,
and I wear boots that still creak,
making us talk of unoiled machines.
The afternoon is ruptured by Airforce jets
while they bank and trespass overhead,
leaving the sky to heal in gentle thunders.
We cross over into the influence of trees.
We judder as the sun’s breath is lost,
as we become comfortably darker.
Matt Nicholson
Visitor (how religions start)
He arrived at peak summer
in a fur-lined wet-suit
and candy-pink bikini briefs.
He had in his possession
an empty suitcase on wheels
and breath that stank like
organic deli rolls, two weeks
too long in the bread-bin.
He sat on the knitted rug
in the outhouse looking in
and every time the ads broke
our favourite show, we’d wave
asking questions behind hands
like, how long is he staying?
Do you think we should feed him?
Is it wrong to hose him down
in the yard in front of neighbours?
But it took the youngest of us
with pink peaches for cheeks
not burdened by the thoughts
of a watching world, to ask
the question no-one else dared.
Matt Nicholson
Didactic
What kind of clouds are those?
they asked, together, from the back,
a finger appearing between the seats,
pointing out of the driver’s window.
They look like Cumulonimbus, he said,
you see the way they climb into the sky?
In the car park, long minutes after,
he had taught them to count the seconds
between the lightning and the thunder,
flash and catastrophe, love and argument.
By the time the rain had eased to a pour,
it was too late for their swimming lesson.
Matt Nicholson
Matt Nicholson is a passionate poet from East Yorkshire. He publishes his fifth collection, Side-eye, on Yaffle Press, this summer. He has been widely published in magazines/journals, and now, as featured poet, in The Fig Tree. Matt’s work is dark and visceral, but also sensitive and heart-wrenchingly honest, leading Helen Mort to describe it “capable of breaking your heart and mending it again”. For information, books, bookings, mentoring, visit www.mattpoet.com
The Fig Tree Selection – July 2025
This section features up to ten poems, with a maximum of one per poet per issue.
More Tea?
I’m alright, thank you, he says,
from his straight-back armchair,
looks down at the half-full cup
he holds in his lap with bony hands,
the pale and brown-spotted skin
so loose it’s like the wrong size
was issued when he joined up.
He remembers the QM Stores
at Catterick, the smell
of serge battledress and canvas,
how the Sergeant Major recited
a clipped description of each item
handed over to be signed for,
a complete outfit from boots up.
How they all grinned and joked
and swapped to get the right size.
How, after six months, with rations,
a bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifle
and seventy-five rounds,
they jumped into thigh-deep sea,
heading for a cratered beach
in wind and a rain of bullets.
How that night he wept for his mates,
because he was alright.
William Coniston
Allium cepa
When I was young I grew an onion—
I was so proud, I peeled it where I stood,
let the paper-white skin drop to the earth,
and bit, full-mouthed, through the fleshy scales
as if it were an apple, and still sweet—
though not as sweet as an apple, yet
it was so fresh, and the sharp tang felt like
life.
Lorraine Kipling
Passions
In faraway times when sex and student politics ruled
you stood apart in our bedsit world with a partner
promised life-long love instead of passing passion
while sounding off at us as a radical republican.
She shared the love and domestic democracy but other
ardours were personal – philately and anything Anglo-Saxon.
Your album was a fish spangled with thousands of scales
and your Masters had a unit on Æthelflæd Lady of Mercia.
Useless when you tried to teach in a school you thought
was a nest of wasps which caused despair though I recall
you believed pragmatism was “a form of bourgeois cowardice”.
Shame you both fled without telling. Lost touch for decades.
After you phoned still grieving her death from cancer we met
at your home barn with a view of Shropshire and Mercian
hillsides to share stories and view stamp collections
showing butterflies flowers and countless national leaders.
You said dealing could go on when a heart got weak
and that sculptors were as good as doctors to keep a man
healthy so concrete was poured into moulds to create
a full-size statue of Æthelflæd for enthroning on a mound.
In faraway times she stood apart as ruler amongst wrangling
royal men her ruthless heart hailed as brave and strong
when blood flowed in rivers and now you are at peace
she remains a warrior receiving the homage of meadow grass.
Richard Wilcocks
family
like the roar of a train now stuck
on passing passing passing
one big hand under the sky with its
two dozen stiff fingers whisking
whisking the air so expertly
these close-clustered wooden musicians
caught hard at work together
moaning fortissimo
tromboning into everyone's sleep
such a groaning of multiple warnings
amid swallop and strumble
and none able to grip
fend off
protect
but father shouts louder than that
and mother wrings yet another cloth
to mop up nothing
but angry air
and the scratchy feel
of everyone's
thoroughly chafed bark
Angela Arnold
What We Did On Our Holidays
Onstage, faces in shadow,
Sandy ghost-lit. I wonder which song
she’s singing? The group’s loose,
a boho focus, lost in playing. Hanging out
at the Caroline Record and Music Bar
this sleeve’s my door to another world:
I imagine them on the road,
between gigs, travelling through the night
in the van. It’s spring, ‘69.
I’m sixteen, anything can happen.
Jeff Skinner
Now the Morn is Several Hours Old
As damp fog lifts
the cathedral bells toll
in a hurried flurry
People rush on, rush off trolleys
rush into, out of cafés
A man walks backwards
past a church
Jugglers await the change of light
to toss their clubs
before the gnarled trafficLorraine Caputo
Arrival of Concrete
The old woman pottered
in a coal-dark house
with an inscrutable history
from before our time;
she’d shout at kids
who messed in the meadow.
Buttercups and poppies
scattered colour
across that wild expanse
where dock leaves
apparently cured nettle stings
and the travellers said
the field contained
cures for most ailments.
Trespassing, we played games
in the cornfield opposite
all mad with summer
but in time, the woman died
and her crumbling house
became a car park
while in the cornfield
five hundred new houses.
John Short
Facing the future
It’s an August morning and I’m nearly nine
with Grandad Ben in his dusty Vauxhall
leaving Upper Welland for Marlbank Road.
Just over there, a new petrol-station,
bright concrete blocks, shiny asphalt
the pumps standing in line like soldiers.
White globes declare a blue logo
we slow for a moment, Ben examines
the unreadable sign, F-I-N-A.
Feener or Finer? Than what I wonder?
He twists his neck, an old scar shines
above the collar of yesterday’s shirt
and a gardening jacket still scented
with summer bonfires. It’s only petrol he laughs,
revving the engine, we continue
past the churchyard where only last year
I found him lying next to Bess His Wife.
He arrived in 1963; four years later
she joined him. They’re not easily found.
It’s a place of rest, of birdsong and quiet,
the road pushed some distance away.
David Harmer
Marking Time in an Insurance Broker’s Post Room – March, 1978
Under a vibrating desk
boxes of accident claim forms
fight my clunky shoes for space.
I kick at the boxes and feel
a satisfactory movement.
On top is an ancient franking machine,
its visceral click, snap and stamp
is a metronome. My hands synchronised to it,
feeding enveloped insurance policies
through its inky mechanics.
Upon the noticeboard is a
Health and Safety poster, drawing-pinned
within an inch of its life. Its dense text
draws me in: Duties, Employee,
Crown, Corporate. Words that I whisper
to the rhythm of the apparatus.
A white window DL gets jammed,
and at that moment the transistor radio
asserts itself in the corner.
The cellos in Mr. Blue Sky thrum a new beat,
accompanying me as I fix the machinery,
keeping time with my work.
In 1981, I will have a
ticket to see E.L.O. The clique all go
but I don’t, lost in a different rhythm:
of opening hours and last orders
of pints and shorts and lock-ins.
I still have that ticket, pinioned
to the wall in front of me:
Wembley Arena, Saturday 12th December,
its fading block text:
Block D, Row 21, Seat 3,
scarcely legible.
Chris Sewart
When light is reluctant to leave
“You see how light and its residents have lied.” Anne Stevenson
You check your papers. The house is tidy.
You notice the lack of toys and excess of books.
The mother is well-dressed and on trend,
keeps her back ram-rod straight. Watches
as if daring you to catch her out.
The daughter is in clothes you recognise
as fashionable two summers ago.
Her posture is perfect. No make-up, clean.
The large window lets in ample light.
Surfaces are dust-free. “She loves cleaning,”
you noted the mother said. The daughter
did not react. No hint of enthusiasm.
That came later when she was allowed
to talk about books. You see
there is no television. The smear-free
speakers are silent. The radio untuned.
What concerned you was the similarity
of statements from mother and daughter.
Not the same story exactly, but a high
coincidence of details. You remember
how the mother spoke first. You can’t
remember what the daughter’s voice
sounds like. Reading, you guess,
is a solo, quiet activity that doesn’t
demand a mother’s attention.
There’s a bruise on the daughter’s knee
you didn’t see before. It’s fading,
leeching a yellow colour into skin
belonging to a child who’s rarely outdoors.
Her other knee is the pale surface
of the moon, of a child used to shadows.
Now you wonder what will happen
when you and the light leave.
Emma Lee
Contributors
Angela Arnold is a writer, poet, artist, a creative gardener and an environmental campaigner. Her poems have appeared widely in print magazines, anthologies and online, both in the UK and elsewhere. First collection In Between: ‘inner landscapes’ and relationships (Stairwell Books, 2023). She lives in Wales.
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
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 even had a mention in The Guardian. He recently graduated MA (Creative Writing).
David Harmer was born in 1952. He lives in Doncaster and is best known as a children’s writer with publications from Macmillans Children’s Books and Small Donkey Press. His work for the Grown Ups is sometimes published in magazines. He also performs with Ray Globe as The Glummer Twins, often at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Lorraine Caputo is a poet-translator whose works appear internationally in over 500 journals and 24 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023). She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.
Lorraine Kipling is now living again in her hometown of Manchester, where she writes poetry about petrichor and gutter puddles. She is currently working on her first collection. ‘Favourite’ is one of her least-favourite words. She spends a lot of time looking at Very Respectable Verse, and would put the kettle on for Wendy, Pam, and Carol.
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
Chris Sewart lives in Beverley, East Yorkshire. His poetry and short stories have been published in many small press journals and competition anthologies. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Larkin Society Poetry Prize. His solo show, ‘Yarn Bombing and Other Poems’, debuted at the 2025 Stage 4 Beverley Festival. Society of Authors Member profile: Chris Sewart - The Society of Authors
John Short lives in Lydiate, Lancashire after a previous life in southern Europe. Recently published in Black Nore and Littoral Magazine he has produced a book of travel stories and four collections of poetry. The most recent is In Search of a Subject (Cerasus 2023).
Jeff Skinner’s poems have been published in anthologies and in many journals, most recently in Black Nore Review, Paperboats, and Ink, Sweat and Tears. He was commended in the last Sonnet or Not competition. He volunteers at his local food bank and in an Oxfam bookshop, listens to music, watches football, reads, writes.
Richard Wilcocks lives in Leeds and is Secretary of Leeds Peace Poetry. Recent poems have appeared in Dreich magazine, And The Stones Fell Open and Whirlagust IV.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.
Thank you. Exquisite poems.
Some great poems here thanks