Poetry

Michael HenryJoan Howson's Cottage This is Black Rock Sands that ............my parents walked to from their honeymoon hideaway. Those are the footprints they left ............on the sand. That is the...

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

My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him [...]

When we stole the eggs from the barn that June  you said we held life in our hands. Untrue I said as I carried a near...

"Clarify your intent," — Lama Chopra, ourmeditation teacher, rang the bell for us tosit — "the Reaper was once an old friend."My...

(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...

for SECH Clare would have called these five red kitescircling above dead or stag’s-headed oakslike iambs broken from a line of English pastoralby a name that signifies a deed...

Woman “It’s easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.” ~ Wislawa Szymborska, “Portrait of a Woman” (1976)She is intimately attached To night and day. Only...

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

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

RepleteEnough of beauty - I have devoured small boats curtseying at anchor, green palace-dotted hills swarming the spice-scented shore of Asia Minor.I couldn’t chew another mouthful of waves,...

RefugeesI know a thing or two about refugees –As a child I heard father say, “We were sleeping in the place we thought was our country, till the siren rang...

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 scientific language used by doctors to describe cancer—the uncontrollable growth of a single cell—is often mystifying and alienating. Can the experience of cancer...

On the wicker chair I wait for the duvet’s rise: you’re just a mound, breath, as I worry over why, again, you’ve overslept. Could it be early...

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...

  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...

The recently-launched Rough Trade Books imprint has been releasing pamphlets at a prolific rate since the summer of last year, bringing us highly collectable...

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...

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...

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...

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...

SnowboundCarriages lit and still between the drifts ... With each flake it took on a new form, the city they seemed exiled from --- almost a sad,...

Today it’s snowing, snowing In Istanbul, Stamboul, Constantinople, New Rome, Byzantium. The city has mislaid its Jews And most of its Greeks. The bones of its Armenians Are long scattered. Somewhere far...