Beth Brooke
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bethbpoet.bsky.social
Beth Brooke
@bethbpoet.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1K following 1.5K posts
Poet, Quaker, retired teacher, socialist, runner (just) , proud Omi . She/her
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bethbpoet.bsky.social
Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · Sep 1
Now available from Dempsey & Windle www.dempseyandwindle.com/bethbrooke.h...
The cover of my new book. The black and white photo shows my father learning to parachute jump during World War 2
bethbpoet.bsky.social
When your annual chest infection turns up two months early 😬
November 30, 2025 at 9:49 AM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
Love this one
merrildsmith.bsky.social Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 1d
Good morning! With Thanksgiving and houseguests, I wasn't going to participate in #PoemsAbout #NoFuture this week, but I felt the urge to write--so a quick one from me. I'll be back to read when I can. Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Darkest Nightmare, Brightest Dream The possible impossibility of no future, the universe’s flawed design, a bug in its brilliant breath, a break, a slow bleed-- or a flashbang— the syncopated rhythm of stars collapsed jazz-hands flutter and fall time folded, an accordion waiting to play every song and none here, not here a hummingbird, an azure sky, green vines, orange lichen, a soft-pink lotus flower opens, a laugh.
November 30, 2025 at 8:39 AM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Water shortages could derail UK’s net zero plans, study finds
Tensions grow after research in England finds there may not be enough water for planned carbon capture and hydrogen projects
www.theguardian.com
November 30, 2025 at 7:55 AM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/bethbroo...
Contemplating The Road Into The Dark
November is not for the faint hearted; February is much the same, the always winter but never Christmas kind of months.
open.substack.com
November 29, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
Suspensions are ricocheting around the legal immigration system in the last 48 hours. The broader picture so far has built out Trump's travel ban (the impact of which has been drowned out by other news).

Tl;dr: Miller and his team are working to block entire nationalities from getting legal status.
November 29, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
philippabowe.bsky.social
This week's #PoemsAbout prompt #NoFuture took me straight into something that is a sad reality, here in France, I have been closely connected to. Thank you for the ongoing inspiration @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Happy weekend poets! 💜
Black text on a white background, the words of a poem: Bounded Future They flock here, the boys, and sometimes girls but mostly boys, here to the land of liberté, fraternité, égalité, where the streets are paved with education, with jobs, with fat consumer goods, whose language they speak, were taught at school, colonising legacy. They leave their villages, towns, cities, these children of West Africa, they flee the places where their horizons have shrunk to nothing, they walk north trying to keep their shoes together with string, they cross the desert on the back of pick-ups trying not to look at the corpses littering the route, they cross the Mediterranean trying to choke down their terror because they never learned to swim. The ones who get here are children in the eyes of the law, but the eyes of the system are indifferent, wanting to dislodge them like grit from the Sahara. When the system is forced to finally open the gate it guards so closely, Cerberus system, it tells them, this is your future, bounded here and no further. Some of them are grateful, some are relieved, exhausted, and some are angry. But they all know there is no going back.
November 28, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #matters
Matters We rarely get it right… too much: and a wave of overwhelm crashes down upon our heads, not enough: we become a pulse of metronomic shoulder-shrugs to pretty much everything said.
November 29, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
ottoenglish.bsky.social
Takes a few seconds and this is definitely needed so please do your bit.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...
Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy
We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...
petition.parliament.uk
November 28, 2025 at 11:07 PM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
Worth a read
November 29, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
adambienkov.bsky.social
“She is doing things that I think are letting this country down".

Labour peer Alf Dubs, who arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport, tells @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social that he is deeply disappointed in Shabana Mahmood and Keir Starmer's betrayal of child refugees

bylinetimes.com/2025/11/28/a...
Alf Dubs Accuses Shabana Mahmood of 'Letting the Country Down' With Plans to Outdo Reform on Asylum
The veteran Labour peer and lifelong campaigner for child refugees, Alf Dubs, tells Byline Times that the Home Secretary's plans are "bitterly disappointing coming from a Labour Government"
bylinetimes.com
November 28, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
thepoetryarchive.bsky.social
Did you know? Once lost, a poet’s voice can’t be replaced. Help us save more voices.

poetryarchive.org/support/
November 28, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
samfr.bsky.social
It's such a bizarre framing. Labour MPs think taking 450k kids out of poverty is putting the country first! That's why they wanted it to happen! It's not because they personally benefit.
robertsaunders.bsky.social Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 3d
Headline on The World at One just now:

"Sir Keir Starmer has denied putting the Labour Party before the country by ending the two-child benefit cap".

Can we please go back to reporting the actual news, not someone's partisan take on it?
November 27, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
plutopress.bsky.social
“An important and impassioned corrective to what Home persuasively calls an ‘attempt to sanitise modern postural practice’”

Fascist Yoga by @stewarthome.bsky.social reviewed in @thetls.bsky.social:
www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
November 27, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
rburrows.bsky.social
So honoured to be part of this wonderful project! 🤩
I couldn’t wait to receive my anonymous poem to respond to, which in turn became part of the chain of poems which forms this anthology. Congratulations and thank you Gill Connors. 😊
#poetry #womenpoets
November 26, 2025 at 7:33 PM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
I’m struggling to write anything halfway decent at the moment but I did a workshop with @annasaund.bsky.social last night. This is a first draft.
We Visit Our Sister In Her Care Home She does not know our names, has lost her memory for the family face - our cheekbones, our thick and wiry hair. She welcomes our embraces though, returns the hugs. She has become a bird, small, light; her past solidity has gone. Her smile is broad now, heartfelt; the bitterness that used to tighten up the lines around her mouth has become sweet . She has forgotten the story of her life but become the essence of herself; each moment is an opportunity for pleasure, each pleasure is a song.
November 26, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
polphilpod.bsky.social
the budget was a mess, but this is all downstream of brexit - it's cost us:

❌️ 2-3 times the tax shortfall reeves is trying to cover

❌️ 6-8% of gdp

❌️ £3,700 per person

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Brexit costing UK up to £90bn in lost tax revenue , new analysis shows
Exclusive: Britons also up to £3,700 worse off, leading to calls for the Labour government to improve relations with the EU
www.independent.co.uk
November 26, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
edwinhayward.com
If you want to read the Budget, the Spectator uploaded the copy that was accidentally leaked...

It reminds us that the OBR believe that Brexit reduced UK trade by 15%.

www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/u...
November 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
richardcorbett.bsky.social
New analysis by the politically neutral House of Commons library says that Brexit:

- cost the average Briton between £2,700 and £3,700

- lost the Treasury up to £90bn a year tax revenue.

Rachel Reeves budget options could have been very different!

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Brexit costing UK up to £90bn in lost tax revenue , new analysis shows
Exclusive: Britons also up to £3,700 worse off, leading to calls for the Labour government to improve relations with the EU
www.independent.co.uk
November 26, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Thank you so much @jenwithwords.bsky.social! A beautiful message and photo! I'm so grateful and happy that you've been enjoying IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS (@icefloepress.bsk.social).

Much warmth for the season ahead and thank you for supporting our collaboration 💙

@rfredekenter.bsky.social
jenwithwords.bsky.social Jenny Wong @jenwithwords.bsky.social · 5d
✨Today’s Bookmail!✨

A bold and striking collaboration of words by @vikkicwrites.bsky.social and images by @rfredekenter.bsky.social (both amazing artists that I very much admire) published by @icefloepress.bsky.social

This book is a wordy visual treat (also, a great holiday gift idea)!
The book ‘In the Blueprint of Her Iris’ with poems by Vikki C. and art by Robert Frede Kenner sits amidst pine tree boughs and lights. Two small Christmas tree balls, on red, one gold, hang next to it.
November 25, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
saulstaniforth.bsky.social
"More winter rain has flooded makeshift tents housing displaced families in Gaza as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid into the strip"
November 26, 2025 at 5:53 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
mikegalsworthy.bsky.social
November 26, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
nanbrady123.bsky.social
Beautiful haiku. Congrats, Annette.
annettemakino.bsky.social Annette Makino @annettemakino.bsky.social · 9d
otter dusk
what’s left of the light
slips downstream

Grateful to have this haiku in the latest issue of Acorn, thanks to editor @susanantolin.bsky.social
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#haiku #micropoetry #poetry
November 20, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
A starter pack of #Poets seeking a publisher for their collections. @bethbpoet.bsky.social @pdevonald.bsky.social @benedictan.bsky.social @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social and many more. Please follow and repost if you can #poetsonbluesky #poetrycommunity
November 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Beth Brooke
helenlaycock.bsky.social
I’m over the moon to have a second Pushcart nomination, this time from Dami and Rhona @eatthestorms.com

It’s been the most wonderful poetic experience being involved in so many aspects of this wonderful #poetry journal. ❤️
eatthestorms.com Damien B Donnelly @eatthestorms.com · 6d
The Storms issue V
Pushcart Prize nominees

@helenlaycock.bsky.social
@seanmcnicholl.bsky.social
💙💙🎉🎉
November 24, 2025 at 5:43 PM
bethbpoet.bsky.social
Gloriously good poem
shadesofgreen.bsky.social A Thousand Shades of Green (on hiatus for a while) @shadesofgreen.bsky.social · 7d
For this week's Sunday poem, I want to share the opening piece from my newest collection, Smatterings of Cerulean, published by @darkwinterlitmag.bsky.social The 50 poems in this collection are each accompanied by a sensational photograph from @kenwhytock.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 8:48 AM