Poetry

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...

Little hole little well of dark staining the lacquer of my tooth little confessor coming close and coming close why are you pursuing me interrogator of the nerve in its...

The People's Forest — a literary strand to Waltham Forest's programme as the first ever London Borough of Culture this year — has recently...

Laurie Bolger Girl, Hotel Mirror  In a hotel mirror, a woman is snogging her own face. News reporters gather, shout things like: what about other peoples faces? Without looking away she...

The first time they lowered the flags The President bowed his head. The next time they placed flowers To mourn the dead. The time after that they held A...

For Najwan Darwish A lucky three-year-old Is Saher* Abu Namous If Gaza didn’t explode The world would have Known nothing of him Now he is all in reports One among the...

Nicholas Hogg Archway I've seen the dead rise from Archway Station, stunned at the rain on the road, the pigeons and the people. The silent, powered bikes, that...

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’,...

There are times when I remember / all of them fondly enough for them / to be here once more, all around / this house, which is far away from / where they were around, and at this hour, / far away again from my childhood fears. / Now I can just think of them. And / what is thinking except the mind’s / imaginings, the heart speaking to itself / in the darkness of default, fearing alien / ears, the world’s participation in the shame / of being touched in front of others? [...]

Above whitewashed, tabby-haunted Kamari, I wearied of the incessant inversions in Pope’s Homer, and left my self-improvement’s cooling terrace to the night, now drawing in here too, across...

I The Lagan - a muddy silt river - Barrel of roll-tide, ribs of clean branches Poke up water jutting. On the towpath I glean a warm wet...

Simon Armitage Untitled ~ How will                 the dawn arrive?                         ...

Yogesh Patel The cutting room After dementia Psychological Continuity But for the edits.......Gran was trapped in the storylines.......broken & fragmented with grandpa directing the day’s set with props.... in chaos .......&...

Andrew Wynn Owen The Scientist Before the time of skiing on Europa,               Enceladus still a far-flung starry dream, When humankind had...

Ronan Hyacinthe Lisbon Logbook 5 & 9   RUA GUSTAVO DE MATOS DE SEQUEIRA, 27 (Lisbon Logbook 5)    We’ve flowed up and have grown, we’ve sprung from...

i. labrador duck  Sitting at a disrespectful distance— ---------back where they came from—gets defensive when blinking (like only ---------shepherds have a right to). welcoming wreckage to its homeland by ---------sailboat...

Aoife Lyall rainbow Dripping in dragon’s blood, vermillion, rosso corsa, I prise the lids off paint tins full of anxious amber, ginger, saffron. I use whatever I can find—...

Frank Dullaghan All Fools Day & Mischief   All Fools Day It’s an old joke – send a fool on a fruitless errand – a dozen cock eggs, a pound...

'No-one has ever written a poem “On His Deafness”'; (David Lodge, Deaf Sentence). - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

Edward Kamau Brathwaite Rights of Passage   The following piece by Barbadian poet and historian Edward Kamau Brathwaite was first published in the November 1966 issue of...

Jasmine Gray Two Poems   decorative your vulnerability is that you are a joke you know you are a bruised peach you can pinpoint the date and time it all...

Margaret Corvid Singing in the Dark Times The following work is drawn from Singing in the Dark Times, the first full collection of poems by Margaret...

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...

Leave the world alone and close the door, seal this room from everything outside, nothing else exists but these four walls; we have eight hours and five...