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Three poems by Daniel Bennett
Red Check Shacket I’d heard the stories: the timeon Cromer beach, some oozinghallucinated morning, whereamongst the bladder wrackand shreds of net, he founda jetsam blister pack of pillsand snorted every […]
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Causes in time: on ‘Thom Gunn – A Cool Queer Life’ by Michael Nott
Andre Bagoo Michael Nott’s Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life (Faber, 2024) begins with the seed of an idea. Over the course of its 720 pages, that seed builds into […]
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‘Every Particle Attracts Another’: a poem by Jenny Powell
Every Particle Attracts Another Dear (if I may) young Sperm Whale I recently received a letter beginning with‘Dear’. Four letters transforming a letter,travelling beyond a formal beginning to years of […]
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‘Fútbol Sala’: a poem by Matthew Stewart
Fútbol Sala ¡A un solo toque! ¡Más rápido!¡Acho, Maciu! ¡Más rápido, coño! They’re taking it in turns to yell at meevery time a neat pass avoids my bootand cannons off […]
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‘Yakov in Space’: a poem by Isabelle Thompson
Yakov in Space Stalin sent his eldest son from his first marriage to fight on the front lines during World War Two. Yakov was captured by the Germans. Despite three […]
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U. A. Fanthorpe: The Watcher
To mark the publication of a new edition of the late U. A. Fanthorpe, Not My Best Side: Selected Poems (Baylor University Press), its editor John Greening shares his thoughts […]
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Two poems by Jennifer Lee Tsai
Vivien Leigh’s negligee A caliginous enchantress from the start.Beguiling vision. A flash. Flutter of soot eyelashes,eyes that looked violet, gray, blue, tan and nearly every other colour in the […]
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‘Tree in the Rain’: a poem by Julian Stannard
Tree in the Rain Go in peace,go with joy into the soft rainwhich never ends.Rain without end.Go in peaceunder the rainthe Liffey Arms, O’Rourke’s,the horses.Sundays without end.Rain without end. Some […]
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Two poems by Anna Chorlton
Beg Your Neighbour She pushes back her sleeves,cuts a piece of bread,dreads the cold, lonely day ahead. Could she pluck up courageto ask her neighbour for milk?He won’t look at […]
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Four poems from ‘Greencombe’ by Ella Duffy
Below is an extract from Greencombe by Ella Duffy, recently published by Hazel Press. Greencombe consists of twenty-nine interlinked poems which walk the paths through the titular woodland garden in […]
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A poem by Naima Rashid
My aunts had names like sugar and spice Maybe they started in a doll’s house,where the world was rainbows and unicorns.Their lives changed colours,but their names stayed the same. Pinky […]
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Wit and wordplay: ‘After You Were, I Am’ by Camille Ralphs
Kevin Gardner Divided into three discrete units, Camille Ralph’s After You Were, I Am (Faber, 2024) transports the reader into a warped revisioning of the seventeenth century. The first section […]
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‘Night Hunt’: a poem by Jane Draycott
Night Hunt i.m. Michael Jones Like hunters entering the wood we have cometo the duty-free halls, the perfumes of small flowers –jasmine, Joy – first steps on our journey to […]
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A poem by Sarah Howe
For the third event in the Wild Court Reading Series, we are delighted to welcome award-winning poet and editor Sarah Howe. Sarah will be reading and in conversation with poet […]
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‘July 15th, 2022’: a poem by DS Maolalai
July 15th, 2022 I’m wearing a wedding ring. youput it on. and I did for you –think of squeezing it overthe knuckle. and there is a feeling –a hard one […]
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‘You must live through hell’: On Survivor’s Notebook by Dan O’Brien
Nicola Healey Survivor’s Notebook (Acre, 2023) interrogates the aftermath of Dan O’Brien’s recovery from cancer. A memoiristic sequence of prose poems, it forms a companion to Our Cancers (Acre, 2021; […]
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‘Tide and Tidings at the Equinox’: a poem by Prue Chamberlayne
Tide and Tidings at the Equinox Concrete curve is lashed in swirls of spray from gun-metal grey —a liturgy for loss for one snatched off mysteriously,a […]
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‘On the Hudson’: a poem by Matthew DeLuca
Artwork by the poet On the Hudson In times like these I turn from the world that cannot be the world, because it does not know meas the […]
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Paths chosen and unchosen: on ‘Downland’ by Anna Dillon and Jonathan Davidson
David Clarke For those of us who have been following Jonathan Davidson’s work in recent years, each new book has brought with it the prospect of another (often unexpected) push […]
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‘Piking’: a poem by William Thompson
Piking i. The wind plays a low notethrough the one bar gate onto the bridleway.I tick the code into the lock. It clicks open. Once our car has passed, the […]
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2024 winner: Rochelle Ruo Xuan Lee
Rochelle Ruo Xuan Lee musings from the other end of homesickness —when i get to see my parents again; the whole timei will cheat my way to normal as if […]
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2024 runner up: Madeleine George
Madeleine George Blackbird, Singing This is the chronic night-warand Iam waiting for the morning. The earth shudderedas she spun,sloughing off so many sheetsof ice likethe sheet that caught on your […]
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2024 runner up: Fintan Calpin
Fintan Calpin We gave you a theory of systems
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Breviloquent power: ‘House on the A34’ by Philip Hancock
Richie McCaffery House on the A34, Philip Hancock’s second collection with CB editions, is a book of breviloquent but powerful poems, carefully constructed with a craftsman-like attention to detail about […]
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‘Seaweed Herbarium’: a poem by Melissa Tuckman
Image: michael clarke stuff on Flickr Seaweed Herbarium Mermaid hairisn’t rare, but it’s worthpreserving for its hue: dark greenat the root of every lock,brighter near the ends, which splitinto finer […]
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‘In Memory of Robert Burns’: a poem by Aaron Aquilina
In Memory of Robert Burns I The ghosts of all past members of the Dumfries and Galloway Town Council gather for a resource management meeting in perpetuity. In […]
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‘Five Breaths’: a poem by Eleanor Rees
Five Breaths were needed to extinguish the flameand now a red wick leans into the melt, diving into a quarried lakehigh in the mountains to find mouthfulsof salt in the […]
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A Scholar of the Everyday: on ‘Collecting the Data’ by Mat Riches
Christopher Horton Collecting the Data (Red Squirrel Press, 2023) is a pamphlet that decrypts everyday experiences, observing in them both the complex and the sublime as an integral part of […]
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Two poems by Matthew Paul
Photo by Thomas Verbruggen on Unsplash A Short History of Greenhouses In the end, my father’s greenhouse was shipwreckedBy ivy, which spiralled round bamboo canes, stuckLike octopus suckers glued to […]
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A poem by Rory Waterman
Below is a poem from Rory Waterman’s fourth collection, Come Here to This Gate, published by Carcanet on 25th April. Until that date, the Carcanet website is offering a 25% […]