Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

New work

  • Two poems by Anthony Joseph

    Two poems by Anthony Joseph

      For the latest event in the Wild Court Reading Series, King’s College London lecturer and T.S. Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph will be reading from his forthcoming Precious and […]

  • Lie down and be counted: on Geoff Hattersley’s ‘Instead of an Alibi’

    Lie down and be counted: on Geoff Hattersley’s ‘Instead of an Alibi’

    Dane Holt I discovered Geoff Hattersley in 2019, after reading Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poem ‘Some Waynes’ in an issue of Poetry magazine: ‘a cavalcade of Waynes fucking each other up in […]

  • A poem by Maëlle Leggiadro

    A poem by Maëlle Leggiadro

    He Could Leave You Tomorrow He buys me roses; I forget to put them in water,once again too caught-upin my tangled and scattered thoughts.They’re beautiful but– a little too pinkas […]

  • Blake’s Poetic Insight into Splitting of the Ego in ‘The Four Zoas’

    Blake’s Poetic Insight into Splitting of the Ego in ‘The Four Zoas’

    From a plate in Blake’s ‘Milton: A Poem’, depicting the relationship of the Four Zoas Dr Emily Bilman The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the precocious development of […]

  • Two poems by Oliver Comins

    Two poems by Oliver Comins

    Early Doors They always said the larks were here in spirit,having disappeared while meadows were transformedto streets and drains when this became a gardened suburb. Heading for their allotment, my […]

  • Three poems by Suzannah V. Evans

    Three poems by Suzannah V. Evans

    Image © Sophie Davidson Never More, Sailor after Walter de la Mare and Tristan Corbière So this mariner, whether a sailor,captain, indeed whoever he may be,is dead below the wind-riddenbrine-infused […]

  • What being human entails: on ‘Say It With Me’ by Vanessa Lampert

    What being human entails: on ‘Say It With Me’ by Vanessa Lampert

    Christopher Horton In Say It With Me (Seren, 2023), Vanessa Lampert’s poems, at first, immerse themselves in familial, domestic subject matter before revealing darker themes underlying everyday routine. By way […]

  • ‘Rite of Passage’: a poem by D.R. James

    ‘Rite of Passage’: a poem by D.R. James

    Rite of Passage In Bali, it’s the filing of the caninesto limit boys’ wild adolescence.Among Cameroon’s Baka Pygmiesit’s the Spirit of the Forest killing boys to be reborn as men. […]

  • Beauty before Age: on Seán Street, Michael Vince, & Tony Connor

    Beauty before Age: on Seán Street, Michael Vince, & Tony Connor

    Kevin Gardner The books reviewed here come from three well established and accomplished poets, whose first collections appeared, respectively, in 1976, 1978, and 1962. Unsurprisingly, all three opt for traditional […]

  • ‘Julian’: a poem by Sally Festing

    ‘Julian’: a poem by Sally Festing

    Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay Julian, there’s a lost language between us.                             I can’t walk through it but like a cloud it stays in my mind,circling round the differences […]

  • Two poems by Patrick Davidson Roberts

    Two poems by Patrick Davidson Roberts

    Lilburne’s Prayer Oh god; guide of hand and tongue through pamphlet, pillory and prisonwho walked with me from Kineton, washed me in blood all the way to Marston,who spoke within […]

  • Two poems by Tess Jolly

    Two poems by Tess Jolly

    Through an Office Window I am not at work hearing a service user saythe tremors were bad this morning, he’s been told it could be years or weeksbut he’s got no intention […]

  • Measured economy: ‘Whatever You Do, Just Don’t’ by Matthew Stewart

    Measured economy: ‘Whatever You Do, Just Don’t’ by Matthew Stewart

    Matthew Paul Admirers of Matthew Stewart’s first collection, The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017), will undoubtedly remember how its intense, tightly compressed poems navigated the overlaps and tensions between memories […]

  • Two poems by Dina Kafiris

    Two poems by Dina Kafiris

    Alitheia The Greek truth –is it not every man’s truth,that the written word of the poetin its finality, will be,as we will come to know it,our only trusted ally? … […]

  • A Romantic two centuries late: ‘The Ghost Net’ by Alan Jenkins

    A Romantic two centuries late: ‘The Ghost Net’ by Alan Jenkins

    Richie McCaffery The Ghost Net is Alan Jenkins’s eighth book-length collection and the first full collection from New Walk Editions, marking a very auspicious new venture for the press which […]

  • Three poems by Andrew McNeillie

    Three poems by Andrew McNeillie

    Spring Offensive A day to go and it will be June.Yet we’re in March-to-April weather still.Will we get there in time?All the forecasts sayit’s going to happen soon. Spilling off […]

  • Two poems by Selina Tusitala Marsh

    Two poems by Selina Tusitala Marsh

    We are delighted to have former New Zealand Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh as our featured reader at the inaugural event in the Wild Court Reading Series. The event – […]

  • ‘Aveley Lane’: a poem by Matthew Stewart

    ‘Aveley Lane’: a poem by Matthew Stewart

    The poem below was originally published in The Spectator and appears in Matthew Stewart’s second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, forthcoming from HappenStance Press in November. A launch for […]

  • Three poems by Teresa Forrest

    Three poems by Teresa Forrest

    Versions of the poems below appear in Teresa Forrest’s debut pamphlet, The Stories in Between, forthcoming as part of the Five Leaves New Poetry series. The pamphlet will be launched […]

  • Memorable mastery: on ‘My Hollywood’ by Boris Dralyuk

    Memorable mastery: on ‘My Hollywood’ by Boris Dralyuk

    Tom Branfoot Anachronism is a stylistic quality that governs translator and poet Boris Dralyuk’s debut collection My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022). In both form and subject […]

  • ‘Fairey’: a poem by John Greening

    ‘Fairey’: a poem by John Greening

    The poem below is from John Greening’s The Interpretation of Owls: Poems 1977-2022, edited by Kevin Gardner (Baylor University Press, 2023). The volume’s UK launch will take place at Hatchards, […]

  • Kingdoms of Earth and Sea: on Rishi Dastidar, Jane Draycott, and Ruth Padel

    Kingdoms of Earth and Sea: on Rishi Dastidar, Jane Draycott, and Ruth Padel

    Kevin Gardner Three new and seemingly distinct collections by Rishi Dastidar, Jane Draycott, and Ruth Padel join their voices in opposing the kind of exceptionalism that deludes nations and their […]

  • Two poems by Chiara Salomoni

    Two poems by Chiara Salomoni

    Veneto Bassano is my birthplace wherethe Dal Ponte family were born and worked on the six paintingsI counted at the Louvre years ago: true sketches of 16th-century folklife,religious works; realistic […]

  • A Shilling Book from Praed Street: on Daniel George

    A Shilling Book from Praed Street: on Daniel George

    Mark Valentine Daniel George (1890-1967) was the author of To-morrow Will Be Different (1932), a book-length narrative poem about a day in his life, getting up, bathing and shaving, going […]

  • Two poems by Richie McCaffery

    Two poems by Richie McCaffery

    Image © Gerry Cambridge Scrap Your last words to me were written, not spoken,a paper cut severing us and our shared 14 yearsbecause you felt it was for the good […]

  • ‘Siena 1978’: a poem by Bernard O’Donoghue

    ‘Siena 1978’: a poem by Bernard O’Donoghue

    Siena 1978 ‘the red-haired girl from Palaeography’ The photograph was taken when the sun broke throughAnd shone on the copper red of her hairAs we sat in the Piazza del […]

  • Toughness & tenderness: on ‘Crisis Actor’ by Declan Ryan

    Toughness & tenderness: on ‘Crisis Actor’ by Declan Ryan

    John Fuller How can we be prepared for all the difficult life-choices we may have to make? It’s a commonplace that there can be no rehearsal for life, since life […]

  • ‘The Ghost of Emily Hale Replies to T. S. Eliot’: a poem by Nicola Healey

    ‘The Ghost of Emily Hale Replies to T. S. Eliot’: a poem by Nicola Healey

    The Ghost of Emily Hale Replies to T. S. Eliot ‘I see myself as a blood-sucker’– T. S. Eliot, in a letter to Emily Hale (2 August 1934) Our posthumous […]

  • Wisdom joined with simplicity: on Andrew Motion’s New & Selected

    Wisdom joined with simplicity: on Andrew Motion’s New & Selected

    Patrick Davidson Roberts It’s been twenty-five years since Andrew Motion’s first Selected Poems was published by Faber & Faber and for him personally, and for the world, a lot has […]

  • ‘What the Arborist Saw’: a poem by Audrey Molloy

    ‘What the Arborist Saw’: a poem by Audrey Molloy

    What the Arborist Saw A cat, among the finches, the sparrows and the wrens.A cat, stuck, in the highest fork of a sycamorethe afternoon he scooped her in one fluidmovement […]