Harley E. Ryley

Scraps #03

Apologise now
In tones familiar
Brush soft skin against legs
Against comforting arms
Escape
While escaping needs only step and step
Scraps #02

In my mind
I stretch toes in your grass
Flex each pad against
Blade and blade and lush green blad

I lift bricks above my head
Throw them
Shoulder tension clenching and
Released
Through air and through expended breath

Through carefully stored glass.
Scraps #01

Since early 2022, I’ve kept a notebook with me everywhere I go to capture words and phrases that came to mind while I was out and about. In this new series, I’m going to share a few of the ‘scraps’ I picked up along the way.

Some have found their way into my poems in various forms, others I haven’t yet found a home for, but they are all little moments of thought in their own right and, I think, worth sharing!

Scrap #01

when you hear her fists pounding
you close your mind
retreat to safety
where the brain-child you’ve nurtured
can’t be scolded
‘Memory’ in Tentacular Magazine

Published in February 2023, Tentacular Magazine Issue 10 explores what happens when you remove the hierarchical parent figure of the editor and allow a literary magazine to be curated by algorithm.

Read the full poem here: Harley J. Ryley — Tentacular (tentacularmag.com)
Guest blog: “I spent a long time thinking my writing wasn’t worth sharing” at The Writer’s Workshop

I started the year with a guest blog for The Writer’s Workshop, reflecting on my early days fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of a slam poetry competition, my charity work with Read Easy Sheffield and my journey to where I am today with my writing. You can read the blog, plus see this picture of me hangin’ out, over on TWW’s blog: I spent a long time thinking my writing wasn’t worth sharing — The Writers Workshop
‘wasteland-me’ in Book of Matches

I am very proud that my poem ‘wasteland-me’ has been published in this beautifully put together literary journal, Issue 6 of Book of Matches.

Cover art by Jennifer M. Griggs.

This was a particularly difficult poem to write, and it existed in a number of iterations before I sent it to find its home with Book of Matches.
Guest Blog: A summer of submissions

2022 was the year of putting my work out in the world. I’m a member of The Writers Workshop, a brilliant writing collective in Sheffield led by the brilliant Beverley Ward, and over the summer along with other members I committed to sending my work out into the world in a way that I never had before.

In the end, I ended up sharing my work to over 50 different places. I’m quite proud of the success I had, and also proud of the way I learnt to handle rejections, because I have had many of those.

Over on The Writer’s Workshop blog, I wrote about what I learnt, and what comes next for submitting my work. You can read my reflections here: 40 Days, 50 Subs, 25 New Poems — The Writers Workshop
‘white light’, ‘stain’ and ‘bloom’ in The Sleeve Magazine

I am delighted to share that I have had 3 poems published in the latest issue of The Sleeve Magazine. This set of poems comes from my work in progress collection ‘fable’, which explores the accumulated ‘things’ we gather and share in our lives and the feelings we assign to them.

poetry: harley j. ryley – The Sleeve Magazine (wordpress.com)
‘Bolehills’ in For the Love of…

This summer, I discovered a brilliant Instagram account ‘For the Love Of’ (@_ftlvo), which is a project dedicated to photography, writing and place, celebrating the places we love. Their digital publication, ‘for the love of’, is a collection of photographs and writing which focus in on the details of the places we go to for comfort and joy, remembrance, freedom and the feelings evoked when we arrive.

I am delighted that my poem, ‘Bolehills’, is featured in this publication. It’s a poem about Bolehills park, which is at the end of the road I live on. It is a space I associate with beginnings (the place I made the offer on the the first house I bought), with peace and of course with stunning views.

To check out my poem, and the other brilliant writing and photographs, visit the digital publication here.
Extract from ‘fable’ in Cut Collective Selection

An extract from my current work-in-progress poetry collection ‘fable’ was selected as part of the Cut Collective New Writer’s Selection 2022. The first section is below and you can read the full extract here.