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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 10d

I'd heard of a rare #squirrel a couple of times on local Facebook groups...and found him today - isn't he beautiful!

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 12d

ah fantastic news! Congratulations - hope there was a little mossy celebratory dance 💚

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 12d

thank you so much!

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 12d

Thank you so much to you both for choosing UFO - and to @hollyannepoet.bsky.social for the spelling keen eye, and your patient emails 💚

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 12d

My little UFO poem has found the perfect home with @atriumpoetry.bsky.social today - thank you so much to @clairewalkerpoetry.bsky.social for her patient checking of how-to-spell-teletubby too!

atriumpoetry.com/2025/09/30/u...

UFO – Em Gray

UFO . . Em Gray is a neurodivergent poet living in Brighton, UK. She has been highly commended by the Forward Prize, shortlisted for the Creative Future Writers’ Award and has won second priz…

atriumpoetry.com

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 16d

I feel there's a poem here :-)

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Reposted by Em Gray

Atrium @atriumpoetry.bsky.social · 18d

Thank you for reading and sharing today's poem -
brassband by @niaandthepoems.bsky.social

Atrium @atriumpoetry.bsky.social · 19d

brassband – Nia Broomhall @niaandthepoems.bsky.social

atriumpoetry.com/2025/09/23/b...

brassband – Nia Broomhall

. . Nia Broomhall’s debut pamphlet Backalong won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize 2023 and she won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Award in 2024. Nia is Poet in Residence at Painshill Park in Surrey a…

atriumpoetry.com

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · 19d

1st October is the start of the annual #pheasant shooting season. I wrote this unpraise poem with these poor birds in mind. If you have a moment, please consider signing this @animalaid.org.uk petition to end the shooting of birds in the UK -

action.animalaid.org.uk/page/135232/...

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Sep 7

'These days, the only poems that really embarrass me are the ones that refuse to wrestle in some way with their own smallness and contingency—to acknowledge that a page of poetry is not the same kind of place as a town hall or a war zone or a protest or a poll site.'

yalereview.org/article/mill...

Maggie Millner: “Is Mary Oliver Embarrassing?”

A reckoning with Mary Oliver’s reputation as an unserious poet explores how her best work has been misunderstood.

yalereview.org

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Aug 25

Such a moving read - how a small, lost dog resonates and captivates...

www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...

How to Save a Dog

For nearly a year, a motley crew scoured New Orleans for a shaggy white mutt named Scrim.

www.newyorker.com

Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Jun 18

Welcome!

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Jun 7

This year's 2 cubs I watch from my window are growing beautifully, and now have their adult coats and eye colours. What a serene looking face this little one has 🧡

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Reposted by Em Gray

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · Jun 7

We celebrate the bull, believed to have escaped from an abattoir, that ran loose in Birmingham, yet almost everyone participates in the cruel and grisly trade in body parts which keeps abattoirs in business.

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Jun 5

obscure and relatable at the same time. May the dreams resolve.

Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · May 20

Fox Villas news 🧡 - there are only two cubs this year, but they are beauties - a boy and a girl with lovely chunky legs to grow into. Here is the bolder of the two.

Photo of a fluffy red fox cub. S/he is almost head on to the camera and standing, looking slightly to the side. S/he now has adult colours, although s/he still has the pale (and intense looking!) eyes of cubs, that will probably darken a bit. S/he stands on grass starred with buttercups.

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · May 19

Wonderful!

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · May 18

Welcome, little one. Here beginneth #chick (gull-let? Gullet?) season.

Photo of a one day old herring gull chick sitting amongst dry moss next to cracked egg shell. Their beak is wide open, their pointed pink tongue protruding. Their feathers are fluffy and beige with dark spots like a pebble/seal pup/the egg they came from.

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · May 1

I so loved your poem and reading, Olga - what an unexpectedly magical and meaningful Facebook group to have discovered!

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Apr 30

Thank you so much, Corinna, I'm really glad you enjoyed them 💚

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Apr 30

Ah, you're welcome! I did some suspicious looking lurking near floral/green places near my flat. Thank you again so much for giving these poems such a lovely home 🧡

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Apr 30

Honoured to have two poems in this beautiful anthology from @sidhepress.bsky.social. All proceeds go to The Sameer Project. The physical book is available from Amazon, and the ebook is just 5.99 Euros, and can be purchased directly from Sidhe Press here: www.sidhe-press.eu/product/to-l...

Photo of anthology 'To Lay Sun Into A Forest', propped on old stone wall and leaning against leaves and small blue flowers.

Cover of To Lay Sun Into A Forest- Poems About Grief by Sídhe Press. On the left there is a quote : The wide-ranging community of poets chart grief across a galaxyof stars, lands, and the oceans, through the shivering leaves oftrees, to the heartbeats of loved ones, their losses are encapsulatedin words that stay with us, long after we close the book.
Teresa Pilgrim, academic, creative practitioner, activist, survivor
On the right, there is a swirl of a painting, red, yellow, orange, you can see the brushstrokes. On it is the title in a handwriting font.

Photo of poem by Em Gray, titled 'all of this is normal', that reads;

to wait at glass for unseasonal butterflies /
strange weather / tameness

to seek counsel from hellebores /
carry a person-faced stone

to continue to omit sage / chilli / juniper
despite a love for them

to adopt a worn shirt as support animal

to darn a requiem of socks

to fear what is melting
but leave the lamp on

to hear from the empty kitchen
devotions of tea

to recur together sleep-limbed
in borrowed coats / on unfamiliar benches

to press call then name yourself stupid

for believing loss a mastless hill /
a loft / a swift / a door

Photo of poem by Em Gray, titled 'Remembrance Day for Lost Species' (after The Christmas Island Pipistrelle), that reads:

You are two paragraphs.

I'm sorry

for the Feral of cat,
the Wolf of freighted snake

and how the microfiction
of your body
is the size of a prune's
dark shrivel, stone heart.

All, now, is elegy.

I seek the lore of you so always everywhere
you'd fly through open doors, missteer into soup

but find your seed bead eyes
flash-lit,

eleven seconds
of the last recording of your voice

looping its morse
as if to be understood.

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Reposted by Em Gray

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · Apr 18

I'm really sorry, but we just need to stop doing this. Your wood-burning hygge leads directly to people's deaths - other people's and perhaps your own.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Map reveals residential wood-burning hotspots in England and Wales

Researchers analyse energy performance certificate data to identify areas with potentially high particle pollution

www.theguardian.com

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Em Gray @em-words.bsky.social · Apr 17

Poem by Em Gray titled 'Due to legal guidelines this will not be a march,
just a still protest' that follows on from the title, and reads:

as in still here,
as in still for the camera,
as in even so and regardless,
as in not moving

backwards
like in that image
of the stages of a species
where the one at the back
is at the back.

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Reposted by Em Gray

Louise Kenward @louisekenward.bsky.social · Apr 7

From last week:

How Can I Make People Care?

#Disability #CIADISH #NEIS
louisekenward.substack.com/p/how-can-i-...

How can I make people care?

Disability benefits are not prizes to be won nor luxuries we can afford to live without.

louisekenward.substack.com

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