Peter Lilly: Poems

I am very proud to announce that my poem 'Home' has been published In the June 2020 Issue of Beyond Words Literary Magazine .  Beyond Words is an international online journal of contemporary creative writing, photography and art. The edition is jammed full of beautiful art and photography, and deeply inspiring creative writing.  Click here to purchase access to a digital copy. To order print copies click here and scroll to the bottom of the home page. My poem 'Home' is inspired by both my experiences working with the homeless and recently moving homes. I try to explore the nuances of the meanings of the word home, which is more than a physical place (a house, flat, tent etc.) but, at the same time, is very importantly such a physical place. We can romantically say to our partner 'you're my home!' with a certain poetic truth, but it is an insufficient concept of home. We need a place in which we are home. I can't be my wife's home if we ...

It’s not only in the colours and outlines of  the soft rounded hills and calabrese trees, and every possible variant of the colour green, under a grey sky. It’s also in the patterns of rust drawing maps on corrugated roofs of trackside farm buildings. It’s in the wells of deep hoof prints in black sodden earth surrounding a trough of water. It’s in the living fence-posts of moss-damp wood, and beacons of fresh-yellow timber where it has been recently mended. It’s in the crown-of-thorns birds-nest visible through naked limbs of a winter oak. It’s in the irregular circles of tiny yellow lichen on the unique fragments of our planet which make up ancient stone walls. It’s in the fragile chandeliers, of frosted spiders-webs that decorate an evergreen hedge. When I return,  I find my home in the details of Britain.  This poem was written in the autumn/winter of 2016, whilst I was visiting the UK.  Since moving to France, it feels like I...

Gentle chill mingles with February sun to warm my bones, and prick my skin with cold.  Lake calm sleep breath waves expose the broken shells that make up the earth,  and keep the land believing in winter.  When I lived in the U.K. the first sunny day of spring would burn itself onto my memory with relief from the cold, joy in the warmth, and anticipation for the summer to come. Most years I would write a poem on that day about my excitement (such as ' I have missed the sun ' written in April 2011).  Now I live in Montpellier in the south of France, that feeling comes a little earlier in the year. This year it was towards the end of February, when we were at the beach near Sète for the day. It was warm but the (relative) cold of winter was still clinging to the air. The feeling given by the weather matched  the relief and thankfulness we feel at finally moving into our flat here in Montpellier.