Poetry

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.

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

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...

Peter Bland, the New Zealand writer and actor, has written extensively over his long career, and has been lauded with many accolades, among them...

Ben Aleshire makes his living as a travelling poet, writing poems on his typewriter for whatever his readers can spare as a donation, a...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

    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...

-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,...

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...

        let me persist but not divide        let me sit quietly with        the tiniest    ...

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

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...

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...

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...

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

(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...

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...

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...

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...