Église Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Surely Isaac must have held some kind of grudge?Perhaps that’s why he does not meet the weary gazeHis greying father shoots across the vaulted nave,Where the plaster peels, cracks, and fades. I would not judgeAnother’s taste in god, in spite of such demands –I was not there in Haran. Nor am I at…

At the Coffee Shop Their hands on the small round glass tableTwo stiff-backed snakes on frosted grass –Yearning to relearn the cursive of slack and slither.How they measure the nothing of sighs, the everything of shadowsPetrified by pocket-sized silences. One hand is ringed with gold,skin softened by lotions and keys to a housethat locks safely…

The Heat and the Names In memory of the Bayham Abbey rioters, who, in 1525, protested against its closure Augustine Percyvall bites his lipand in the dark a star is born or dies.At Bayham the old geometries persistand the ghosts wander in the sunshine. John Large, John Mower, John Ramkyn, Alexander Love,they did not know…

Cuboid for Láďa In a dark little cube that passes for an office,cluttered with the dismantled hardware of surveillance,four large screens on the wall display in sequencelive snippets of tired people waiting for a tramor a blue car slotting into its patchwork segment. More pressingly arranged around your dimly glowing face,a row of computer monitors…

A Pilot Came Knocking A pilot came knocking on our doorone summer, holding a photographof our house that he took from his plane.The house was a custom-built colonialwith a painted red garage, the rest all green.From the sky you could stillmake out our playground,the yellow slide, the blue canopy,my mother’s car parked outsideat the bottom…

Four Number Cloggers Versus Me, Their Dog We were alone in the basement. He was grip-filling noggin, me up a laddercable tying festoons; when his admission camebeneath the roar of burners, the radio chog.I listened, bookended by caveatsand with Paxolin for a prop, he confidedthat he had lost count of all the attemptsto end it…

Parecoxib after Levinas Mum’s face, almost completely other now.High cheekbones she would have loved,pale skin she would have rouged.Our loved ones: my godparents holding hands,my dad – become her husband once again. Her lip twitches. Then, her shoulders roil.And now a groan. I would and will do all of this again:David’s dreaded, gentle ‘Hello Catherine’,his…

‘Start seeing everything as God but keep it a secret’ – Hafez No-one else is willing to nursemy tea-light spirituality – not you at leastand I am easily overpowered – lost and tongue-tied during harsh arguments.I want to hide my flame from you,cupping in budded hands a secret hope you won’t be able to blow…

Hand in Hand When we approached the pelican crossing,your hand unexpectedly grabbed at minefor the first time in over forty years,your palm shocking me with its snug smoothness as if it had never been away.How long remains till I reachagain for David’s hand?Will it be there? Only Child A dozen family funerals in,I’m starting to…

Taotie’s Mouth Everyone is searching,yet forgets their own guilt.We gorge ourselves on desire,yet fear we will fall into its endless cycle. In the distant East,饕餮 (Taotie) is a monster of darkness—nothing but an infinite mouth,no fur, no solid body, only hunger.It devours everything within its reach,crawling through the invisible web of sin. It rises from…

Midway […] griefwolfed my heart and all that had stitched me into this lifecame undone that day. – Susan Musgrave, ‘The Broken Hieroglyphs of the Stars’ I am returning to a book I startedwhen you were still alive.Midway through, a numb foghangs over what’s left.The first half seems innocent now,absorbed through another’s eyes.It will need…

Sir Duke (i.m. Stevie Boucher) I. The first time I met you, you welcomed melike a hearth without guard or grate.You handed me a plate – but first, whiskey glass.We spoke of Chelski, Butch; beforetalk turned to your daughter – your one, only.How I’d suffer worse fate, if I hurt her. Three-quarters cut on Take…

  From The Garden of Eternal Poets i.m. Fleur Adcock 1934-2024 Woke up with a sore head. Much drinking on Po Toi Island. After the Exhibition of Lingering FragranceI picked up the message in Kowloon.Fleur’s been diagnosed with brain cancer. Spent the morning gazing at objects from the Forbidden City.I wept for the woman in…

For the sixth event in the Wild Court Reading Series, and the first of 2026, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed poet, editor, translator and activist Stephen Watts. Stephen will be reading and in conversation with T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and King’s College London lecturer, Anthony Joseph. The event takes place on KCL’s Strand Campus,…

Against Which The mantel is already awake. Carved oak takes the light first,
an old brown intelligence.
A grain like worn scripture,
every vein a sentence that forgot its verb.Someone’s hand once worried this wood
the way a man fingers a rosary
when he no longer trusts God. The lions there.
Or are they dogs? —
have lost their teeth to decades…

I suggest we go see home. time reaches first,preserves the house—changing it. my old banyan treehe’s elephantine, uncompliant.fleshy overweight branches hurt his back now,they hurt the floor. the guava treepeeps through milky window,her eyes pained from fruitswormy. little basil treehas grown quite talltoo tall, and wide—fading wallsthat drew a house once, on blank sheet of…

‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’ by Édouard Manet, 1882 She has no hat upon her head, no smileupon her face as she leans slightly forward,hands pressed against the slab set up in stylefor orders either proper or untoward. A length of ribbon wrapped around her throatsuspends the gaudy bauble she holds dear,its giver having made…

A Heron in Eastville Park, 2021 As shadowsscour the surface of the parkthe shiver of minnowskeeps him waiting by the municipal lake, austerein tufted grey and white.Swans steerin twos, then clamber, dripping, onto concrete. He livesalone in the reedy darkand never giveshimself away. He waits to make his mark on the world:a single, spreading ripple,a…

Nearly No Memory Myopic eyes with specs’ transparent frames,shy look and wealth of auburn hair,my mother in that teenage photois posed by her dad, both hands behind her head;and I can see him ruffle that hair,patting her head by way of compensation(not being granddad’s favourite)and how I would resent it,mum treated like a child in…

  Below are two poems from Alan Buckley’s collection Still, published by Blue Diode Press in 2025. The collection consists solely of ‘douzaines’, a form invented by the author. Under the two examples included here, Alan writes about the genesis and structure of the form. Stream And in the year my skin wasabandoned, I walked…

Damson Cheese I watched you stir a jam potwhen I came up to oven height.An alchemist’s work stationwould not have held more wonder.Testing to see if it was set, a hot droppedglob was a molten jewel. Your stern warnings not to touchcharged the air with a compulsionto touch, the way a museum sign does. The…

  Below are two poems from Divided Tongues, the new collection from Patrick Davidson Roberts, published this month by Broken Sleep Books. Patrick will be part of Broken Sleep’s forthcoming online launch reading event on 2nd January. Details here. Aphrodite I am comforted by couples composed of people younger than mewho seem to be on…

Sick Day in the still working hours, this place satin its own plasma hustling its rentedland to no one, silence on crunchy roads mostly up to theirelbows in racket and blaring commotion, people and dogs and metal stirring.starved hills, stairway carcases, seized up cars. it pined, held its fire& was itself completely on earth’s shallow…

Below is a poem from Gregory Leadbetter’s new collection The Infernal Garden, recently published by Nine Arches Press. Comet C/2023 A3 The watchers called, all world wide, for whathad not been seen since human firesburned so low they let the nightetch the mind with all its stars. I heard, and wanted that cold touch.I saw…

Monbazillac We know she’s going to die soon,so we’ve started clearing out her house. We spend our evenings sorting throughGranny’s photos: Mum throws all the albums from her trips with her club into the binbecause none of her friends have visited her since she’s been in the nursing home.We find a cardboard folder on which…

If Only I Moved by Instinct Life has been a grand migrationto where you are today!— well-known wisdom I didn’t know! Otherwise,when those raggedy squadronsclamored overhead last evening— three V’s disarrayedlike frayed arrow feathers, their leaders insistent as clownswith braying horns, honkingfor plane geometry— I would have taxied, sprinted,lifted arthriticlyfrom water’s edge (granted more dodo…