Poetry | Full Fathom Five by Sylvia Plath
Old man, you surface seldom. / Then you come in with the tide's coming / When seas wash cold, foam- / Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung, / A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves / Crest and trough. Miles long [...]
Archive | Philip Larkin | Two Poems: To The Sea, Annus...
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was a prolific poet and writer of essays, criticism and reviews during the twentieth century. Described as ‘England’s other Poet Laureate’,...
Poetry | Michael O’Neill | A Tribute
Michael O’Neill (1953-2018) was a very gifted poet and a brilliant literary critic, who was Professor of English at the University of Durham, where...
Review | Xeixa: Fourteen Catalan Poets
Xeixa: Fourteen Catalan Poets
Tupelo Press, 2018, edited by Marlon L. Fick and Francisca Esteve
The news in recent months has been splashed with images of...
The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2018 – Winners Announced!
A huge thanks to everyone who entered this year's poetry prize! We had so many high quality entries this year which resulted in a...
Poetry | A Letter from Brooklyn by Derek Walcott
An old lady writes me in a spidery style,
Each character trembling, and I see a veined hand
Pellucid as paper, travelling on a skein
Of such...
Pigeons by Kate Bingham
I
It’s just the same old air a person breathes,
roughly the same respiratory system,
steady compared with ours, the same idea
of hindrance (flesh the breath must...
Competence by Anna Kahn
There is nothing in this room
for those who have not learned to
sing without thinking, who don’t know
where the music fits in their bodies, how
to...
Interview | Raymond Antrobus
Raymond Antrobus is a poet, educator, curator, editor and investigator of missing sounds, who is a founding member of Chill Pill as well as the Keats...
Shining Shoes by Nausheen Eusuf
Weekends, growing up, I'd watch my father
as he sat on a low stool in the veranda
surrounded by half a dozen pairs of shoes,
their laces...
Bright Celestial Objects by Rebecca Goss
After Alison Watt, ‘Venus’ (2015)
Their backs against the grass,
she felt a pull, as if the leaves
on the trees were lodestones,
the hairs on her skin...
Through it by Ila Colley
This is not throwing plates, how
you ask me. Too late for that.
This is a whisper dissection. This
is a beggar’s hand in my mouth.
This is...
2016 by James Stradner
The clouds have swum down from the sky and rolled onto their backs
in the streets, begging for someone to rub their fluffy bellies
A day...
Poet in Delhi by Manash Bhattacharjee
Can you rinse away this city that lasts
like blood on the bitten tongue?
~ Agha Shahid Ali
Delhi,
where parrots lift
the weight of tombs,
poets offer daggers
to deepen...
We Are The Cenotaphs by Aaron Fagan
Over a cup of Marco Polo
And a bowl of bird's nest soup,
Listening to the world as a whole
Through the particular, I laugh
Into the telephone...
Spotlight II: Dostoyevsky Wannabe
The London Magazine has long been a champion of emerging writers and independent publishers, stretching back to the 1950s and 60s, when young writers...
I Don’t Live in a Mountainous Country by Talin Tahajian
We look up, & beyond the maple trees & the brick
steeples with weathervane roosters, clouds billow
as sleeping monsters. Not the sort of billowing
that clouds...
That Boy by Robert Nazarene
He was patient as a dead bird.
He perched on the ledge of bottom
and rocked. He was the missed flight.
He was silence calmed down.
He loved...
Interview | Momtaza Mehri — Young People’s Laureate for London
Yesterday we spoke to artist and poet Momtaza Mehri, who has recently been announced as Young People’s Laureate for London, who will take over from poet and musician Caleb Femi in the role which was launched by Spread The Word Last Year.
Archive | Poetry | The Wiper by Louis MacNeice
First published in the May 1960 issue of The London Magazine (Volume 7, No. 5).
Through purblind night the wiper
Reaps a swathe of water
Acrostic by Sudeep Sen
(R.I.P. Derek Walcott: January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017)
Deep seas of yesteryears wash new froth on your home shores.
Egrets, sea gulls, circle the...
Madness by Patrick Cash
There’s a stream by the Avon ward
Where I stand to watch the water flow
And unwind the whirlpools of my mind
When it’s dark I let...
Two Poems by Sean Borodale
Response to Finding a Fossil at Writhlington Coal Batches:
A Fossil (a Fern) on Writhlington Batches Re-Take (Pt.II)
Time not as we know it
but another time...
Poetry | The Air Has Cleared by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
The air has cleared today,
Over the city, and in my head,
I see the trees breathe
The invisible greenness of air,
I feel the taste of sunlight
On...