We Wait for Poets by Manash Bhattacharjee
prophets have retired
so do not wait for yours to come to you
~ Ashraf Fayadh (translated by Mona Kareem)
In our country, a prince,
Dara Shikoh, had...
Poetry | A Letter from Brooklyn by Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
A Letter from Brooklyn
An old lady writes me in a spidery style,
Each character trembling, and I see a veined hand
Pellucid as paper, travelling...
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...
Two Hundred Twenty a Kilo by Nabarun Bhattacharya, translated by Manash...
(Homage to Karl Marx)
Nabarun Bhattacharya
(23 June 1948 – 31 July 2014)
On the floor of a slaughterhouse
A butcher’s leg slips in the blood
Crows go raucous...
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
Evening Light
Evening Light
Brave bat in a bowler hat
Blood shot eyes question
What time does this light
Depart?
The light descends elsewhere
Its shadow rising here
The bat changes into an...
Five Years Ago by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Fady Joudah
I was waiting at the platform
For a train to Calcutta
In...
Difficult Cup by Isabel Galleymore
after Wu Hao’s Duke Cups
The china cup is frilled at the rim
like tired lace and all over it
ceramic tentacles extend
to whisper if you drink...
For Calcutta by Manash Bhattacharjee
As I leave for Calcutta
I think the city
Always that other city
Its river Ganga
Always my other river
Howrah Bridge
What a colonial cradle
A Raj suspended
Kipling's imperial joy
Hoogly...
Poetry | You are my Winter by Claire Wong
The following piece is published as part of our TLM Young Writers series, a dedicated section of The London Magazine's website which showcases the...
Poetry | A Winter Morning by Dmitry Blizniuk
Dmitry Blizniuk (trans. Sergey Gerasimov)
A Winter Morning
a winter morning
is like a crumpled cigarette
the tobacco is spilled out
the sidewalk is strewn
with sand the color...
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...
They Would Have All That by Mary Jean Chan
To sing the evening home, the lover prepares
a pot of lentil stew – her phone lighting up to
the news of love’s imminent arrival, imagining
her lover’s...
Review | Leminscate by Chris Viner
Leminscate, Chris Viner, Unsolicited Press, 2017, pp. 72
The 6th isn’t busy.
Six days since the attack
And inside the Monoprix
The aisles of life still reel...
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...
The London Magazine Podcast | Episode 4 | A Discovery of...
We were recently contacted by Reverend Christian Mitchell of the church of Heathfield in rural Sussex, who had made a remarkable discovery. In one...
Poetry | A Series of Ekphrastic Poems on Eileen Agar’s Marine...
Suzannah V. Evans is a poet, editor, and critic. The following series of poems was inspired by a visit to the exhibition Virginia Woolf:...
Counting by Ralf Webb
April doesn't rain.
We have spent days watching
the truant magpies comb
our cat-eyed neighbour’s lawn
for bottle caps and burnt-out tin foil.
The cloying sun has not coaxed...
Poetry | On the Way Back by Alfredo Vanín Romero (trans....
Alfredo Vanín Romero (trans. Robin Myers)
On the Way Back
We traced the path in our bodies. It seemed to lead nowhere, but the hope endures...
The Teacher by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Upal Deb
He wasn’t a blackboard
Framing flightless birds
Not a classroom figure
Offering the curriculum
To rows of bored faces
He sat on his bed facing
The window Van...
Poetry | The Proof by Rosamund Taylor
The following piece was published in our February/March 2021 issue of the magazine.
Rosamund Taylor
The Proof
Tasting her still, I'd walk home
in smog, frost, past burnt-out...
Poetry | Letter to Bez by Chris McCabe
Bez, post-Victorian Boz, Viz incarnate / and Viceroy of the sinew, what is the name / for light that detracts from the stars? / Urban pollutants de-lux distant galaxies / as we walk after / parties through school fields, / via car parks, past vacant vats & waste lots [...]
The Grandfather by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Steven O’ Brien
Grandfather Heaney dug deep
Into his country’s soil
Another man unlike him left home
To burrow through an alien forest
In search of enemies
The alien...