Here at Poetry 24 the week didn't start until Tuesday. I am not sure quite what happened there but, generally, it has been that sort of week. Since my new laptop gave up the ghost very early on Monday morning I have been in a state of solemn and desperate mourning. Yes, I know I still have my iPad but it really isn't the same.

For one thing, I have had to rely on Hamish and Michael to keep the poems coming. (Without a laptop the necessary formatting just cannot be done.) For another, the trauma associated with the loss has impacted on my own writing. I have produced one poem and half a short story. It really isn't enough.

Thankfully, our contributors have done rather better. Maeve Heneghan opened on a powerful note with her spare and uncompromising 'Justice and the Beast', a poem which we were pleased to see elicited much comment. Our thanks go to all those who took the time to register their support for justice for women. Regular readers will know that it is a cause close to my heart.

Equally powerful and also much appreciated both by readers and fellow contributors was Philip Johnson's  'eve of holocaust memorial day' with its haunting image of the man 'wearing striped pyjamas'.  In the words of our own  David Subbacchi, it was both 'concise' and 'mysterious'.

Thursday and Friday brought us back to the story with which we started the week and it is clear that there are issues here that resonate for many of our readers. First, Amy Barry communicated to us something of the anguish that must have been felt by Fiona Doyle as, in the wake of her father's trial, she found herself obliged to continue 'Her Life Sentence'. As someone who, in her early teens had taste this kind of 'justice', what I found most powerful about this poem was its commanding physicality, most particularly the poet's representation of an anger too extreme to be expressed: 'Hot blood rages through her veins and 'she wants to thump her fists/ against his chest,/ his face.'

Then, on Friday, Caroline Hurley also had her say reminding us of some of the wider issues: for example, how 'Austerity cuts keep the people lean' and also 'the prisons full'. 'Perversities' also reminds that, even in incarcerated in our prisons, we are far from being 'in it together' as she points a telling finger at the 'fallen fat-cats in their first class cells.'

Saturday, though, struck a different note - and the pun is entirely and unashamedly intended - with Steve Pottinger's  tribute to the courage and generosity of spirit of rock musician Wilko Johnson who has recently received a diagnosis of terminal cancer. 'The day we elected...'  has something to say to us all so I would like to close this week's review by quoting  the WJ's 'simple words': 'I don't wanna be greedy.' Well said, Mr Johnson. It would be a better world if we could all say the same.

Abigail Wyatt

they don't even stop for the two minutes silence
cenotaph day - never mind respect the dead
or the sacrifice

as I walked in to administer meds last night
the man who sat on Ellena's bed wearing striped pyjamas

ashen faced
translucent
simply looked me in the eye and faded away
shrugging his shoulders

© Philip Johnson

Eleanor Margolis on her mixed feelings about Holocaust Memorial Day

Philip's words have appeared in: The Ugly Tree; Poetry Scotland, Emergency Verse, Write Away, Caught In The Net, Red Pencil, Writer's Hood, Transparent Words. He works in elder care.

Here in Cornwall, so far as the weather is concerned, we have had a dismal beginning to 2013. For much of the time a heavy grey mist has engulfed the beauty of our landscape and, in the intervening periods, we have been treated to - yes, you've guessed it - yet more heavy rain. Because of this, like Jessica Traynor in Nollaig Na mBan, I too could wish for 'a day disrobed' that looks beyond 'January's darkness/to search for the horizon's light'. Equally, I could wish for 'a little more promised each day'. On Tuesday, however, far from the promise of light, David Mellor's  It's Breaking News reminded us of the media's appetite for tragedy and of the fact that, all too often, the perpetrators of the most terrible violence are 'rewarded' by a perverse kind of celebrity while 'those who have gone / have no name'. Here at Poetry 24,  we ended the year sadly in the shadow of the Sandy Hook shootings and, with the greatest respect to the poets who wrote so powerfully in response to that tragedy, we hope and pray that this year no such poems will be penned.

On Wednesday, Philip Johnson's Fantuckinfastic Ideas gave us a sharp-tongued and insightful response to the recent proposal  that we should legislate against high levels of fat, sugar and salt, particularly in those products targeted at younger people. Then, on Thursday, our own Hamish Mack gave us Australia Ablaze, a delightfully spare and understated piece that ironically reassures us that we 'can / maintain our / lifestyles' but quietly asserting that we may 'make our children pay'. Then, on Friday, it was me again with 'A Dream of Retirement'. (I make no apologies for having a bit of a rant. There is, in my opinion, not enough of public ranting going on at the moment.)

Moving swiftly on, however, we arrive at Saturday and James Bessant's 'Food for Thought'. This was a piece that posed important questions about prevailing attitudes towards food and about the way in which western society both produces and markets it. Thank you, James, for ending the week on a note that may be uncomfortable for many of us. It is fitting that we should remember that, as we in the west hit our January diets, there are those, far too many, who may starve.

That said, I wish all our readers well. Please, if you will, spread the word. In order to continue this important work, we need your submissions. Remember: Poetry 24, where news is the muse.