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rotherwrites.bsky.social
Glenn Barker
@rotherwrites.bsky.social
900 followers 860 following 1.8K posts
[My words] "are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only" [I could interest them], Sylvia Plath
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rotherwrites.bsky.social
Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 2d
Not able to find your fellow poets' posts? Here is one way to set up tabs to follow favourite hashtags and poetry communities:

1/ swipe right until you have the 'Following' tab on the left at the top.
Reposted by Glenn Barker
rhonagreene.bsky.social
Congrats to our 6 @pushcartprize.bsky.social nominees:
Chris Jones
@helenlaycock.bsky.social
Maire T Robinson
Jo Morrigan Black
@smcnicholl.bsky.social
@lenaozge.bsky.social
& huge cheers to all our stars @eatthestorms.com V
What a fab journey, myself & Dami couldn't be more proud of you all ⚡️🥳⚡️
eatthestorms.com Damien B Donnelly @eatthestorms.com · 1d
And our 2025 Pushcart Prize nominations are…
November 24, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
eatthestorms.com
The Storms issue V
Pushcart Prize nominees

@helenlaycock.bsky.social
@seanmcnicholl.bsky.social
💙💙🎉🎉
November 24, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
zoomburst.substack.com
I just read through the #PoemsAbout #dogtag posts from the weekend. some great stuff. I didn't contribute this week. Been busy preparing poetry for the Leeds Song Festival. I've been teamed up with a composer for a performance next April. We were asked to tag it on our social media so heres a tag.
Home - Leeds Song
Filling the city with song since 2004
www.leedssong.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
throwawayreg.bsky.social
Evening Sunday
a bit late for #PoemsAbout #dogtag
And thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poems #poetry
have a great week everyone everywhere 🚶🏼‍♂️‍➡️
November 23, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
thebrokenspine.co.uk
Last week was fire. This week? Ashes. #PoemsAbout #NoFuture starts Friday. Write ruin, hopelessness, rage. The end of days or just Tuesday. Don’t post early—fade into the feed. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. Sign up for Saturday prompts: shorturl.at/0Xm7A
A burning treeline glows against a pitch-black night sky, flames and smoke rising in the background. Leafless trees stand silhouetted in front of the blaze. Top left: The Broken Spine logo. Top right: "@thebrokenspine.co.uk". Bottom right text: "Read Repost Reply #POEMSABOUT #NOFUTURE".
November 23, 2025 at 5:39 PM
rotherwrites.bsky.social
Not able to find your fellow poets' posts? Here is one way to set up tabs to follow favourite hashtags and poetry communities:

1/ swipe right until you have the 'Following' tab on the left at the top.
November 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
I offer this for #poemsabout #dogtags @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #StayCreative #PoetsSupportPoets
Ukrainian Dog Tags     No one wore them We all knew who they were Boys at play in vineyards And wheatfields Almost grown Into fine men Ploughed under On battlefields Watered with tears - Bloodied homeland Invasion Reaps only what it sows karen pierce gonzalez
November 21, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
stacebot.bsky.social
This week's #PoemsAbout #DogTags got me thinking about what should the world know about you in an emergency?

Thank you to the host
@alanparrywriter.co.uk and
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
and to all of the other writers.

#poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets
Dog Tag On hold with the repair shop I draw concentric circles on a lavender piece of junk mail. I write my own name so many times it starts to feel vulgar— unspeakable. There’s a flyer telling me to be all I can be-- dog tags dangling. The small weight of a name you can’t put down. To pass the time, I make a list of the three things the world would need to know to save me. But nothing comes. Only my own breathing down the dumb phone and the blank page waiting.
November 22, 2025 at 1:50 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
For #poemsabout #Dogtags @alanparrywriter.co.uk @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social
Dogtags Since the autocracy got in promising more freedom, less immigrants, reduce crime figures we wear Electronic Dogtags. Those who refused were deported. Natives, close friends, the sick and elderly. Surveillance tags used to buy goods and services prices tailored to your job, and where you live. Injected Just above your fifth vertebrae, so removal will break your spine. Links to ai in your phone and Appliances in the home, who decide when you eat, exercise, have sex, your social life. For your own safety, and those of others.
November 21, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
paulwritespoems.bsky.social
Back for Session 2 in January.

Who’s in?

Tickets 🎟️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-book-b...
November 21, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
bethosmond.bsky.social
Thankyou so much to the wonderful editors @dustpoetry.bsky.social for selecting my poem on antenatal counselling and prematurity for the very moving Dear World Issue www.dustpoetry.co.uk/post/the-tin...
#poetsonbluesky
#poemsabout
The Tiny Nappy by Elizabeth Osmond
The Tiny Nappy I find it helps to show, so I takeone of the tiny nappies with me.Smaller than the smallest panty liner-you cannot find them in Tescos.I hand them around at lecturesa palm-width slip of...
www.dustpoetry.co.uk
November 22, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
deemclachlan.bsky.social
Time for another #FridayPoem. Still struggling with the #poemsabout prompt this week so instead here’s the fresh start of a snowy day in a #haikuset
#haiku #poetry #poems #poets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #alttext #HaikuAltText #PoemAltText
Whiteout a haiku set by Dawn Mclachlan In the silent night Snow came down like memories and cleansed the landscape Smoothed to sugar-white Harshness sweetened to the eye Winter confection From the far forest Rooks rise in conversation Punctuating sky Now the dead trees In the disguise of winter Cannot be discerned In the pink of dawn An unexplored day stretches As if newly born
November 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
merrildsmith.bsky.social
Good morning! For #PoemsAbout #DogTags Another tough one! Thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #Poetry
Poem: Weighted Silence The air is heavy with silence, the quiet is a roar of denial– there is no war, no marching bands no cheering crowds no reports of fallen soldiers, (tagged and tattooed in advance) no one cries, no one is seen crying, all support, we’re in full support, this operation’s to protect and save— do not say otherwise, wiser to say nothing at all. The air is heavy with silence. That silence is heavy with fear.
November 21, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
paulwritespoems.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #DogTags here is ‘Memorial Service’

Will catch up later @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Memorial Service He’s bought medals from eBay. Bought the uniform from Army Surplus. War stories stolen from Hollywood and Pinewood. Burton, Savalas, Caine. At the Cenotaph, He swaps salutes with the wounded, scarred, nervous, whose eyes he can’t hold, but tales he’ll recycle. His legs bolt a rapid one-two retreat at confrontation. In the safety of his home he reloads, more medals— delivered in 4 working days.
November 21, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
🙏 @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #DogTags

#newpoem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#WarTrauma #FamilyTrauma #ancestry #WBYeats #20Century #snafu #fubar #aviation #prosepoem #vegemite #RoaldDahl
Collateral Relative ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 “No Parachutes!”, Decree the Brass Hats, mindful that pilots all too readily bail out of those Newfangled pyre-caskets, ash-framed and taut with doped linen fabric. In frostbite, sun-scorched high heavens, he sits astride a Dolphin - Mired and bloodied from dogfights with pods of Fokkers above Flanders. Lateral ancestor, collateral relative – Great War Flying Ace with DFC before twenty – his hometown rag credits him with eight kills. Life prospects capped at days, weeks, minutes - He swoons at settling down with Gladys in a cottage near the Solent. Son – Second War Flying Ace with DFC before twenty - Like Robert Gregory, meeting his fate aged thirty-seven, Somewhere among the clouds above Lincolnshire, forty years hence. Navigator on Canberra jet bomber bound for Malta, his Arm broken on exit fails to pull the ripcord. Back in 1919, with Croix de Guerre pinned to his chest by King Albert, Lateral ancestor maladapts to the loss of friends and comrades who Fireball out of the sky before they can even enter combat. Mystery of skull fractured at 1923 mess party. Drunken brawl? Chair, bottle, paperweight smashed over his head? Monumental concussion, contusion tipping him, not into creativity like Roald Dahl, but into Intelligence; into unmapped deserts west of Basra; into three years with the Bedouin; into Searing heat and sandstorms; into flies, revolting food and foul water; Into OBE, Wing Commander and Air Commodore; into Chief Intelligence Officer; into Monumental fuckup in Far East Command. Now Brass Hat, he Transfers his nephew, my grandfather, from Eastcote to the Dutch East Indies. Freshly-minted mathematician, aviation nut, clever young chap, my Grandfather becomes NCO tasked with constructing radar stations on Java. Vital equipment gets relocated to the Middle East. They improvise with aircraft crates and tapped Civilian telephone networks - … They warn the Brass Hats, who wave all this “newfangled nonsense” aside. As the island is overrun, they give an hour’s notice of the enemy’s approach – all To no avail. Uncle Brass Hat Delivers his nephew - collateral relative - into Japanese captivity: Mosquitos, meagre food, foul water, monsoon rains; Beriberi, cots on beaches or in runway ditches awash with dysentery shit; Forced labour, beatings, killings. Seven months of fortnightly malaria bouts Mark him out as a “goner”, but my grandfather pulls through. Crammed onto two wooden diesel coasters, they are strafed, pounded by Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am! Liberator bombers in the Macassar Strait. Terrified captors give them leave to scrawl POW across bridge and hatches in Paint composed of tapioca flour and water. Liberation. Original cohort whittled away, cut down to a mere fraction. Vegemite habits acquired while Recuperating in Perth Fail to stay the Brimming tides - Fury, Resentment, Mistrust, Optical neuropathy, Arterial stenosis - that Claim him before he turns eighty. I catch him at it once or twice: Curses muttered to himself in Japanese while he Deadheads the roses. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 *DFC, Distinguished Flying Cross
November 21, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
bundtkake.bsky.social
#poemsabout #dogtags #poetry

@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

F LAT tin Talisman
Flat tin An inch and a half of slightly Off center Stampedletters HILTXXXXXD N. H. A POS & Numbers X4X -XX-XXXX Identity on a bubblegum machine chain USMC M ROMAN CATHOLIC The smallest Cheapest Record Of Is Or Was Priceless Trauma Stored on flat tin Off center stampedletters and numbers Edges encased in black rubber To silence the noise Loss. Honor. Pride Yellowed tape on a St Christopher medal On the s ame 25 cent chai n As quiet as they can possibly be For how much they say
November 21, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
dnwritespoetry.bsky.social
Happy Friday #BlueSkyPoets! #PoemsAbout #DogTags
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Have a glorious day and weekend! Excited as always to read the amazing artistic work presented here!
November 21, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
philippabowe.bsky.social
Morning poets! Struggled a little with the #PoemsAbout prompt this week, #DogTags. Looking at the history of them I discovered soldiers in the American Civil War pinned paper notes to their backs, so went with that. Happy Friday! 💜
Thanks as ever to @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
Shaded grey box with a poem: all that remains we don’t cry when they leave us women with our smarting wombs and unbroken backs we don’t cry when the silence from the front line is louder than sorrowing words we don’t cry when their bodies return paper notes pinned to backs shaking letters telling us who and where we cry once we bury them flooding their graves clutching our relics tight to our ragged hearts
November 21, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
johnchmura.bsky.social
I don’t usually post #PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk this early, but I’m taking some antihistamines and may sleep through a good portion of the night, or not. Will post a reel for #DogTags in the comments.
DOG TAGS Send them into space, all of the dog tags and toe tags, Trumps’ three Purple Hearts, and the mindset of men who pay dear and trade cheap that the God who abandoned this sorry blue world might see the joylessness of man’s desiring and act as a “signpost up ahead” so benevolent passengers may be forewarned drifting near our debris field on their judicious excursions coming from and returning to, hopefully, better planets smelling of ginger melon balls and mint, where space travel was a glorious culmination, not an escape or an escapade, where they needn’t keep people like me as pets or souvenirs anymore.
November 21, 2025 at 5:45 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
fiftywords.bsky.social
What does it mean to hold onto your name when the world and your mind starts to forget it?This #PoemsAbout #Dogtags looks at memory, identity, and the quiet defiance of holding on. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Dog Tag Not the metal but the certainty that your name once fit your body. You carry it because the world keeps trying to rename you: patient, veteran, burden, relapse. A small plate of fact against the drift. You touch it just to feel the sentence of yourself still whole. And you wonder what a name is worth when the mind walks off without it. A tag, a trace, a held fragment of the man you insist was real. Identity, reduced, only just refusing erasure. Until the day Until
November 21, 2025 at 6:39 AM
rotherwrites.bsky.social
It's Friday, it's not Crackerjack, but it is time for another episode of #PoemsAbout. A difficult theme this week with #DogTags, and a natural leaning towards the military. I have no idea if this one works.
Join in the conversation; post, like, comment and repost. 📬
The Ordinariness of Things It’s the bitter relish of conditioning, eyes to sight, range load the duty program horror-fantasy-reality game safety catch off, initiate offensive. Bin the logic, break out the Shock and Awe toolkit, practice, perfect, engage combat autopilot. Now is everything but nothing without the pieces: soldier, sailor, airman and factory worker. This week: stamping widgets knob, lever, switch, key 997, 998, 999, 1000 shift over, head for home town, household unit, me and you. Next week: stamping military IDs regular, volunteer, conscript 997, 998, 999, 1000 battle rhythm, always on blood group, service number, surname. © Glenn Barker November 2025
November 21, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk
Beyond delighted to have a short story in this non-cosy anthology!

#fiction #shortstory #winterwarmers
thebrokenspine.co.uk The Broken Spine @thebrokenspine.co.uk · 9d
Our festive & wintry short-fiction anthology Soot & Boots lands later this month. Hardback + paperback. Sharp stories for dark nights. More soon. #SootAndBoots
Book cover for “Soot & Boots: An Anthology of Short Festive Fiction.” The illustration shows a pair of tall, black, soot-dusted boots standing on a scuffed wooden floor against a textured blue-grey wall. The title appears in bold white lettering above the boots, and The Broken Spine’s logo sits at the bottom of the cover.
November 18, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
victoriaspires.bsky.social
Morning #promptcombo #poemsabout crews, save the date for another night of quality poetry I'm hosting in Jan. Readers to be revealed soon, but they are all incredible talents who you won't want to miss.

Would love to see some of you there ☺️
November 18, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
bethosmond.bsky.social
It’s #worldprematurityday today so I’m sharing my poem from @hogriverpress.bsky.social #poemsabout #poetsonbluesky
Spaced Out Poem from Hog River Press Journal about mothers in the NICU
November 17, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Reposted by Glenn Barker
thebrokenspine.co.uk
Last week hit hard. This week: #PoemsAbout #DogTags. Name, number, silence, war. Identity reduced to metal and chain. Begins Friday—don’t post early. Tag #PoemsAbout. Use Alt Text. For detailed prompts: shorturl.at/0Xm7A
A close-up of military dog tags hanging on metal ball chains from a dark wooden surface. The focus is on the foreground while the background fades into soft blur. Top left: The Broken Spine logo. Top right: "@thebrokenspine.co.uk". Bottom right text reads: "Read Repost Reply #POEMSABOUT #DOGTAGS".
November 16, 2025 at 2:21 PM