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
Review | Letters To A First Love From The Future by...
Andy Armitage's pamphlet is among a number of new releases from the poetry press Half-Moon Books, which is based in Otley, West Yorkshire, where...
Archive | Poetry | Peter Bland
Peter Bland, the New Zealand writer and actor, has written extensively over his long career, and has been lauded with many accolades, among them...
Interview | Ben Aleshire
Ben Aleshire makes his living as a travelling poet, writing poems on his typewriter for whatever his readers can spare as a donation, a...
Archive | Poetry | Rin Ishigaki
Known in Japan as the 'bank clerk poet', with her work frequently featuring in the bank newsletter where she was employed, Ishigaki's poetry stretches...
Playing Safe | Hugo Williams
I liked not liking you much.
I liked playing safe. Not being bowled over by you
was part of the thrill.
At the King’s Palace Hotel
you couldn’t...
Poetry | Synopsis and The Wedding Frame by Hugo Williams
Synopsis
People are taking sedatives in boats
Going to America.
Their names drift back to me—
Hollowed out, unpronounceable.
I walk through the crowds in the arcades
And on the...
Poetry | Poem by Kyriakos Frangoulis
The moon is a sealed coffin
A boast
The moon of poets
The moon of dogs
The moon of ovaries
The moon of astronauts
The invisible moon
Knived
Sick
Yellow
Waning
Moon-wreath of everyday
Moon of...
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...
Poetry | The Sleepers by Sylvia Plath
No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French...
Poetry | Atlantic Palimpsest by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
-for Heaney and the Peace Bridge
Grey and greying sky
reflected in choppy body,
as our matching heron
performs his balancing act for all to see.
The Donegal hills,...
Poetry | The Goldfinches of Rome by Peter Anderson
Carduelis carduelis (Fringilla carduelis. Linn. 1758)
Dawn on the Palatine:
planets bow out, stars pick their way
through rat-traps and incident tape.
The morning after the party...
Poetry | Waking Under the Walnut Street Bridge by Mara Adamitz...
let me persist but not divide let me sit
quietly with the tiniest ...
Poetry | On His Deafness by Damian Grant
'No-one has ever written a poem “On His Deafness”';
(David Lodge, Deaf Sentence).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -...
Poetry | Under the Loquat by Peter Anderson
He had that majority under the loquat,
rain falling like a god in gold, the breakthrough
sun, and the spin on things, tar growing a fur.
Loitered...
Poetry | The Line by Fiona Sampson
White trunks divide the dark
beside the line
and in the dusk trees pause
since if they do not move they cannot
see themselves
or know this moment has...
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...
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...
The First Time They Lowered The Flags by Peter Ainsworth
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...