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Today it's a pleasure to shine the spotlight on the evocative work of Helen Laycock. Helen shares three poems: Watercolour in the Rain, Mindquake, and Going Deep. Thank you, Helen, for sharing your gift of words with the SHINE international poetry community! Going Deep Mindquake  Watercolour in the Rain   Helen Laycock, winner of Black Bough Poetry’s Chapbook contest and shortlistee of The Broken Spine’s Chapbook competition, has nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her collection FRAME has featured as Book of the Month at the East Ridge Review, her spoken word poetry was showcased in September’s edition of iamb, and she has recently been celebrated in a ‘Silver Branch’ feature with Black Bough. Publication includes After…, BBC Upload, Reflex, Ekphrastic Review, Lucent Dreaming, Popshot, Black Bough, The Storms Journal, Broken Spine, Fevers of the Mind, Cabinet of Heed, The Winged Moon, The Caterpillar, The Dirigible Balloon, Flash Flood, Three Drops Press, Visual Verse, Onslaught, Frazzled Lit, Paragraph Planet, CafeLit, Literary Revelations, Blink-Ink, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dark Winter Lit, and Rough Diamond, with imminent publications in the pipeline. She also had a 2025 poetry spotlight at The Starbeck Orion.
SHINE is pleased to put the spotlight on bilingual poet Michael DuBon, with his poems: Mañanas Ambientes, Ambient Semiotics, and Ambient Season. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your words with SHINE international poetry series! Mañanas Ambientes Good morning is an early morning sweat chased by a blueberry spinach protein shake. Buenos días es un deseo de ti para mí sobre el desayuno de huevos con tomate y cebolla. Good morning is the dawn twilight for we the crepuscular ones who steal our moments under the sun and moon simultaneous. Buenos días es el agua, la agua, elagua, laagua, de nosotros juntos, dos cuerpos de agua con una sola alma de agua. Good morning is a Guatemalan coffee with a sweet human tasting of honey, rose, lavender, cacao, cinnamon, guajillo chile. Buenos días es la ventana a tu alma renacida, a tu espíritu de limón-amor. Good morning is the relief from the great weight on my lungs of missing you while we slept, and the sweet chance to miss you while we are together. Buenos días es el inicio de cuando anhelo anhelarte y claro que sí te anhelo y te deseo y te extraño y te adoro y te amo. Good morning is a drive where we chat about cats and Hoagland and Seuss and house of our dragon and feline selves and us and we and us and we and we laugh and laugh and laugh together all the way to work. Buenos días es una comunión y commute con el cielo y los árboles. Good morning is a reprieve from a nightmare of cruel words and tragic goodbyes at CMH. Buenos días es el amor feroz y salvaje sobre la pila limpia sin platos– rosa y sal y yogur, tan rico, tan lindo, tan so us. Good morning is the very best part of my day–I always await para thee, para thee I await, por thine belleza y por thine brillo y por thine brillantez. Buenos días son millones y mil millones y billones de besos y besos y besos, cada beso más delicioso y más delicioso– Bésame por favor, para siempre, mi amor. Por la mañana, siempre, kiss y kiss y kiss, dear one, sweet one, mi mejor, mi última. Buenos días y good morning, querido amigo. Good morning and buenos días, querida amiga. Ambient Semiotics How wild we grew in middle age, like a sweet and thorny blackberry bush bowling fence after fence. Yet all this only in the wake of a state of para-stasis where we felt like cracking icebergs and overripe red dwarf stars over heat we had expended long ago, the interpersonal labor of doing dishes, the fuchsia of our patio bench, the house and property taxes and all the taxes unseen in the course of a day. We emerged from the cocoon of one another, a metamorphosed metaphor for time abandoned without abandon, so high school in each other's whiskered words and scaly arms. Marry, kiss, or kill held the only options, for the centre overwhelmed from friction, from fragmentation, from our atoms splitting at the seams from the gravity of the hour. And so we toss our car keys into some elementary park boxwoods, drunk in the middle of the morning night on Kirkland High Noons, learning to recognize the selves we do not recognize any longer–yo ya no soy yo y tú ya no eres tú–buzzing as neon gas through newly configured shapes of light, something that flashes MCDB, a humming like a podcast about being seen, some synesthesia of what our brains tell our body that love is–a taste, a touch, a sound, a sight, a smell all blended into us together at the same time–all spicy on our lashes like a freshly cut jalapeño, all pungent on our eyes like a wheel of cotija cheese. Something like all these things and things and things, but also some thing entirely different, some thing newly reconfigured, some thing removed from the first and second and 119th things. Ambient Season Oh the summertime is gone, and I wonder when this wuthering longing will leave me; oh, so like the molten ghost of my bonnie love to leave me sweating awake by night, twixt dreams where thou art the christened vision of the one for whom great deeds are done. The leaves sweetly turn and turn and turn again, their rustling and rustling and rustling shifting an echo of pigment change and brain change and change change, and I cling like a purple orchid to her windswept petals, sinking ever over a stone fountain of grey blue cat eyes. Three seasons of unparalleled warmth relived ad infinitum, such mirth and honey mead, such echoes of heartfelt laughter among our stone corridors, such flowers of paradise never lost were we who bloomed and bloomed and bloomed for ‘nother, a conflagration of pollen against the hoary rapture of the world beyond in our beflowered tower by yon cool cosmic waters, and now thee, lassie gone, hast been raptured away and so I must touch the vibration of thine touch in the hollow crunch of prickly pinecones falling to rest upon their pine needle beds. Thou art the purple heather crying in the gales that there will be wild violet mountain thyme and verde que te quiero verde time. I smell thee, mi amor de chocolate y chile perfume, in the prism of an amethyst rose, an unfound key, leading to other worlds than this– Some in which we are together and have always been together and will always be together–cleaving like the green ivy to the purple heather.  Michael DuBon is a first-generation US citizen of Guatemalan descent and a first-generation college graduate. His poetry has appeared in The Meadow, Rising Phoenix Review, and The Museum of Americana, and others, and his creative nonfiction has appeared in The Plentitudes, Heartwood, and Under the Gum Tree. He holds an MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California and an MIS from Southern Utah University, and he is currently Tenure Track English Faculty in the English Department at Everett Community College. He also volunteers as a board member at large for WTAW Press. He is working on publishing his memoir: The DuBonicles and his poetry book Ayersterday y el Arte de Free Dissociation. At his most natural, he is laughing and smiling like no one is watching—because he’s usually by himself anyway.
Poetry lovers, thanks for stopping by SHINE to read the latest in a series of phenomenal writers from around the world! Today, we're shining the spotlight on Northern Ireland poet, Ewen Glass. Ewen brings us his prose poem, "I Finished All the Podcasts," and a short but poignant poem, "Making Up Stories." Thank you, Ewen, for sharing your words with SHINE! I Finished All the PodcastsTrue Crime exhausted truth and crime; I was exhausted by two people discussing something like it’s the first time they’ve encountered it; the edgelord comedian fell off the edge (the earth is flat after all); with no people left to interview, hosts turned to pets, albeit articulate ones; Couch to 10k ran out of legs; the history shows reached now; and I did the dishes alone. Walking the dogs became an everyday tragedy. I finished all the podcasts and all I’ve been left with is me. And I’m awful. Making Up Stories It’s a rare kind of joy making up stories for your kid, building a world every night, peopling it with characters, and resolutions, just as your kid develops their own world. In our stories, people are flawed but kind, lessons are learned, there is justice. These stories aren't for the kids.  Ewen Glass is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise, and a body of self-doubt. His poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland, and One Art. Ewen is on BSKY/X/IG @ewenglass
Welcome back, SHINE poetry fans! Today, I'm pleased to re-introduce the talented John Grey, who brings us: Tadpole Man, Swollen Finger, and Silent Moments at the Wake. Thank you, John, for once again sharing your work with SHINE! Tadpole Man As a child, I had my peculiarities, scooped spawn from creek beds, tadpoles that swirled in cloudy mason jars – my boyhood repository. I watched legs sprout like secrets, eyes bulge out of tiny heads. And just as wonder met form, I unscrewed the lid, plopped them back into the brown muck from which they came. Later I’d sit by water’s edge, pondering whether they recalled the one-eyed god with the gaze of glass. Did those denizens of the sludge wonder at the newcomers in their midst? How they reacted to threat automatically as if they had been schooled in it? Maybe my proteges re-entered the reeds oddly fluent in something vaguely human. Such was my imagination then, my regret now. Swollen Finger Something red is oozing from my swollen finger. It may not be blood. Being alone in the house like this provides plenty of opportunity for self-disgust. It all the result of possessing a body. A guy may have class but it has none. When I was young, it was only partly mine. According to parental instruction, I could touch my nose but not my penis. The finger in the ear was verboten. So was the picking of a scab, the squeezing of a pimple. Today I stuck a needle in that bulging digit. For some reason, it made me think of a rupture in the crust of the planet raining pus all over the countryside. Looking around me at the wretched landscape, I find the bodies of my loved ones charred by fire, smothered in ash. There’s gore everywhere. Crows dive in for a feast of charcoaled flesh. They nibble away for as long as they can stand the steam. I want to apologize but the hiss of the ground is too loud. It’s no pleasure being in your own body. There’s tasks it must perform that are repellent in even impolite company. Even the heart, mythologized, romanticized down the years, is a gruesome chunk of bloody flesh. And this is not the only volcano. There’s others that could erupt at any moment. I kneel down on that bed of steamy silica in an attempt to comfort an old friend. I see my mother’s face in the gray clouds. She admonishes me with a fiery glare. The volcano is spitting out more flaming rock and it’s rolling my way. Those who live by magma must die in its searing unguent. Silent Moments at the WakeThe long silence at the end of life is greeted by many moments of respectful quiet, as we come together, pause our own lives, to participate in death. A hush rises between mourners, accompanied by handshakes and hugs. Then we break apart like bread on waters, slow and muted, alone even if we leave with people, tongues silent, as if they were the dead man’s.  John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident, recently published in Shift, River & South, and Flights. Grey's latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, White Wall Review, and Trampoline.
Today SHINE welcomes back American poet Michael Igoe with his poignant poem, "Mortality." Thank you, Michael, for bringing your work to the SHINE international poetry community, once again! Mortality  Michael Igoe, city boy, neurodiverse, Chicago now Boston. Numerous works appear in journals and anthologies (available at amazon.com, lulu.com, barnesandnoble.com). National Library of Poetry Editor's Choice 1997. Best of the Net nomination 2023. poetry-in-motion.org
Today, SHINE welcomes Pushcart-nominated poet, Sam Szanto with her beautiful poems "Bea's Mother's Hands," "Leaving / Going," and "Dropping Stones" (a glosa). Thank you, Sam, for sharing your words with SHINE international poetry series! Bea's Mother's Hands Leaving / Going  Poet's note: the phrases ‘the mouth of a shark’ and ‘the bullet of a gun’ refer to Warsan Shire’s poem ‘Home’. Dropping Stones (a glosa)   Sam Szanto is a Pushcart prize-nominated, award-winning writer living in Durham (UK). Her poetry pamphlet This Was Your Mother was published by Dreich Press in 2024; Splashing Pink (a Poetry Book Society Choice) by Hedgehog Press and her short-story collection If No One Speaks by Alien Buddha Press. She has won the Wirral Festival Poetry Prize, the Charroux Poetry Prize, the First Writer Poetry Prize, the Shooter Flash Prize and the Mum Life Stories Prize. She has poems in journals including South Carolina Review, Rialto, The North, Dust Poetry and The Storms. She has an MA in Writing Poetry with distinction from Newcastle University and is working on a practice-led PhD about absence and attachment in parenthood poetry.
Welcome back, poetry fans! Today SHINE is closing out its October mini book series, with Ryan Di Francesco's new chapbook Skeleton Mine Disaster (Bottlecap Press). You can read my review of Di Francesco's expressive work, below. And simply click on the cover art to purchase your copy. Thank you, Ryan, for sharing your book news with the SHINE international poetry community! In his new book Skeleton Mine Disaster – published this year by Bottlecap Press – Ryan Di Francesco presents readers with honesty and clarity, addressing the angst of real life issues including depression and the battle for sobriety, but also offering hints to finding joy in simplicity. I especially like this stanza from "Over Easy": Now, the most enjoyable part of living is dipping toast in warm yellow yolk and having that first sip of coffee sober in your forties staring at her across the table Di Francesco mostly writes in free verse and dabbles in a bit of stream of consciousness for poems like “Bloodless Petal.” I particularly enjoyed, "Love Ate Rimbaud and All the Wild Horses" and am partial to "The Heart of the Onion" published by yours truly and forthcoming in the December Issue of SHINE Quarterly. Be sure to add Skeleton Mine Disaster to your winter reading list. Congratulations, Ryan, and Bottlecap Press, on the publish of this knockdown collection! -SAMANTHA TERRELL, EIC SHINE international poetry series  Ryan Di Francesco is a Canadian writer and teacher. He began as a freelance journalist, with work featured in The Toronto Star and outlets across North America, before turning his focus to poetry and fiction. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an emerging literary and arts press, and the author of two chapbooks — The Paper Hound (Alien Buddha Press) and Skeleton Mine Disaster (Bottlecap Press). His poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including ELJ Editions, Shoegaze Literary, The Pit Periodical, Ink in Thirds, Bicoastal Review, SQUID Magazine, Shine Quarterly, among others. He also co-wrote the indie film "Streets of Wonderland," which won multiple festival awards.
On this Friday, we're shining the spotlight on spoken word artist, Jackson Davies, with three thought-provoking poems: Existence: An Acrostic, If This Is the End, and Logolology. Thank you, Jackson, for sharing your words with SHINE's international poetry community! SHINE will be back next week with one final book review for the month of October, and more new poetry from writers across the globe. Existence: An Acrostic  If This Is the End Logolology   Jackson Davies has been performing spoken word for around ten years, veering from humorous honest observations about his marriage, to rhyming rants about the state of the nation. You can find him on Instagram (@jacksondaviespoet), facebook (https://www.facebook.com/JacksonDaviesPoet/) and YouTube (@JacksonDaviesPoet).
Hello again, poetry lovers! Today SHINE welcomes back Richard LeDue with three new poems: Bach Playing in the Background, Stealing Some Immortality, and my favorite, Words Like These. Thank you, Richard, for once again sharing your work with the SHINE international poetry community! Bach Playing in the Background A selfie staring back at me, like a ghost I don’t believe in, betrays the Bach playing in the background. His keyboard concertos reek of fingertips from a god or a godless universe inspiring someone to create the divine, while I look into my own eyes and accept the light between dead stars gives life to poems like this. Stealing Some Immortality An ancient Greek poet writing three thousand years ago about a beautiful face whose name is lost in a sea of silence that’s easily confused with the most barren desert. It’s enough to make a blank page scream at all the dead writers who stole some immortality, even if only with a few words sneaking pass death to hijack living voices. Words Like These These words are spilled whisky on Saturday nights, when Sundays have nothing to do with god, but are hangovers at 6 AM crying like a newborn. My hands shaking from all the hours painted black and the poems face down in empty glasses.  Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, Another Another, was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2025.
In continuing SHINE's mini book series for the month of October, I'm pleased to feature Held Inside the Folds of Time by Merril D. Smith, which launched this week from JC STUDIO Press. I was honored to write the Foreword for this lovely collection (read it below). In addition to the evocative poetry in the book, Merril's gorgeous photography is a delightful feast for the eyes. To purchase your copy, simply click on the book cover art, or go to your country's Amazon marketplace. Congratulations, Merril! Held Inside the Folds of Time by Merril D. Smith, has so much to offer – unfolding, as it were, before the reader with layers of intimacy and grace. As one might suspect from the title, she addresses memories – both personal, and cultural. In “Sister Songs” and “Winter Birches” the reader is given a glimpse into the rich family life that Merril values. Throughout the book, she speaks to topics of mothering, daughtering, and sistering. And, in poems like “The Toll of the Toil,” and “At the Corner of First and Always,” we glimpse a bit of Americana – both its sadness and its hope. But there is a metaphysical aspect to Merril’s work as well. I particularly enjoyed “Suspended, Surrounded” and “The Power of Gravity and Light.” And, Merril’s lyrical style does not disappoint: Birds sing the harmonies of stars, trees and seas bear primeval secrets, tremulous whispers flow underground and across continents, waves of knowledge break on fallow shores, snippets coast on spindrift (from “How I Learned”). If I have one criticism, it’s that this gorgeous collection ended too soon, as I would happily spend many ‘folds of time’ reading Merril’s rich and evocative words! -SAMANTHA TERRELL, EIC SHINE international poetry series   Merril D. Smith writes from southern New Jersey. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies. Her collection River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Held Inside the Folds of Time (JC STUDIO Press), is available now.
Poetry fans, this Thursday's feature is Scottish poet, Saraphir Camille Legind. I am so pleased to share her two beautiful poems, Ajar and A Burning. Thank you, Saraphir, for sharing your work with SHINE! Ajar A Burning   Saraphir Camille Legind is a poet, singer-songwriter and writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is known for protest songs and wordplay, as well as trying to look at different themes from different angles to find new depths. Her poems range from a quick humorous haiku on the bus to page-long explorations on pain or chauvinism. She is also a performance artist/movement teacher, crochet designer, and keen gardener and feels best about life when she is creating something. @saraphircamille on most platforms – except X.
Welcome back, poetry lovers. Today I'm pleased to shine the spotlight on Chicago-based writer, Noah Berlatsky, who shares his edgy poem, Sphere. I appreciate your candor, Noah, and I especially love, "I can | never podcast. I will never | finish Dhalgren." Thank you for entrusting your words to SHINE international poetry series! SphereWhat’s in a muse? The thing to do is lose the thread of your audio paperback. I can never podcast. I will never finish Dhalgren. It looms over the horizon a hoary sun made of cheese. Please beneath my bowels a foul-tasting burp squirms, and I think I’ve just insulted someone pointlessly. Karma won’t stop fucking with you.  Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago. His full-length collections are Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), Gnarly Thumbs (Anxiety Press, 2025), Meaning Is Embarrassing (Ranger, 2025) and Brevity (Nun Prophet, 2025).
Hello again, poetry lovers! Next up in SHINE's mini October book series, is a brand new title by Upstate New York poet, Carol Mikoda. Carol's book Outside of Time launched last week from Kelsay Books. It was an honor to have an early peek at this new collection. Here's my review. You can purchase your copy by clicking on the cover art below. Thank you, Carol, for sharing your news with the SHINE poetry community! In Outside of Time (Kelsay Books), Carol Mikoda proffers nature as metaphor for meaning, and the abstract as explainable by the observable world. She broaches heavy topics such as the concept of time and purposeful existence, in this aptly named collection; and teases at an underlying theme of acceptance (howsoever the reader wishes to interpret it). And Mikoda does not disappoint the reader who expects a bit of her wit and whimsy – with poems such as “Time Travellers” and “When the Time Comes.” For me, the closing line from “In My Midnight Kitchen” sums up the concept of this book beautifully, I fill a bowl with acceptance | of whatever is present now, | and also | now. Mikoda’s new collection strikes the crucial balance between what is pleasant to read, and what is important to read. Don’t miss it! -SAMANTHA TERRELL, EIC SHINE international poetry series   After a long career as an educator, Carol Mikoda now spends much of her time writing poetry. Under the influence of ee cummings, Rumi, Hafiz, Bashō, Millay, Oliver, and others, she writes poems filled with nature and spirit, from her yellow table above Seneca Lake in central New York State. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, most recently Wild Greens, Inkfish, and Blue Heron Review. Her first chapbook, While You Wait, is available from the author; her second, Wind and Water, Leaf and Lake, is available from Finishing Line Press. Her prose poem, “Jesus at the Pub,” was nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. She has strong attachments to clouds, trees, water, and music. Contact her at [email protected] or through The Yellow Table on Substack.
Poetry lovers, it's a pleasure to shine the spotlight on Brooklyn-based Wilfredo Alba. I enjoy his narrative style and imagery. Thank you, Wilfredo, for sharing your work with SHINE! I turn 34 next week, and I guess I’m not a rage gay anymore    trees with no leaves in winter    Tamales     Wilfredo Alba is a first generation American Chicano gay poet living in Brooklyn, NY. He is originally from Houston, TX, and he graduated Cum Laude from Sam Houston State University where he studied English and Poetry. His work explores the American experience through the lens of belonging to many racial, ethnic, and minority groups and none at all as a gay child of immigrants of mixed nationalities. His work can be found in The Acentos Review, and he is a recipient of a fellowship with Brooklyn Poets.
Welcome back, poetry lovers! I'm pleased to share a second installment of this month's mini book series here at SHINE -- today, with Jane Rosenberg LaForge's brand new collection, The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated, out this month from Broadstone Books. I was honored to have an early look at this poignant collection, and I hope you enjoy my review. You can purchase your copy of The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated by clicking on the cover image below my review. Have a pleasant day! The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated (Broadstone Books) by Jane Rosenberg LaForge is a masterful reflection on personal discernment gained through familial distresses. Rosenberg LaForge gives readers a look into her childhood and upbringing, and follows that arc through to her concerns for her own children and our collective future. I especially appreciated Rosenberg LaForge’s skill with opening lines, such as, open the throat to the parenthetical | the toasting of goals | to initiative and hindsight (“The Meaning of Echoes”), or In grade school fire was | A triangle. (“Fireproofing”), and so many more. Some of my favorites in this book are “Family Business,” “Second Life,” and “Run for Your Life.” A terrific collection. -SAMANTHA TERRELL, EIC SHINE international poetry series   Jane Rosenberg LaForge is a poet, fiction writer, and occasional essayist living in New York. Her 2021 novel, Sisterhood of the Infamous (New Meridian Arts Press), was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award in regional fiction (west); and her 2018 novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing), was a finalist in two categories in the Eric Hoffer Awards. She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry; four chapbooks of poetry; and an experimental memoir, An Unsuitable Princess (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). Jane reads poetry submissions for COUNTERCLOCK literary magazine and reviews books for American Book Review. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and fiction, and for the Best of the Net multiple times. She was most recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net for her 2022 poem, "For a Friend Going Deaf.”
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is my honor to provide a home for their words through SHINE Poetry Series.
NOW IN PRINT!
Stars Over the Dordogne
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