Music of the Republic   You were with him in his final hours… Carolyn Forché, ‘Last Bridge’   Plato put a spell …

        Ablutions   I sat with her body until morning. The blueblack cold mimicked her blueblack skin. I chafed her feet with lemon-scented …

    Dear Sydney Graham   ‘Under your blue hat.’ – W. S. Graham, ‘Dear Bryan Wynter’   I   My feet wear odd socks …

        A March Nest   A tilt of the light and I wake with a twig in my mouth, building between the shoots …

        I. Avondale House   I wanted to bring you to a place of meaning, meaning, I wanted to bring you somewhere that …

Photo by Gary Butterfield   The below poems are taken from Clare’s new collection The Mulberry Tree, forthcoming from Shoestring Press later this year.   …

Photo by Marten Bjork         Premier Inn   You, who have been sought in all the lonely places, (should my mouth be berries …

        Enviousness   You’ve fought this for so long but comes the time you understand you are second rate no more that brightness …

        Pigeons   ‘Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a …

        Noah and the catkins   I was sickening for psychosis, more than sickening and you were less than two, just starting to …