Delphi

Lent It can be as simple as this: the sound of someone hooveringmakes you turn around from your desk to look, and thereon your bedroom wall is an impossible sunlit […]

Undertow Eyes wide in the dark, I listen. A thud upon the hull,drumming, like a cold caller stoic at a bolted door.I lift the hatch and go outside. Bright starsdulled […]

These poems were originally published on Wild Court in March 2022. Susumu The sun beat down on Tokyo intensely:Forty-five in the shade. The matsu treeStretched out across Susumu’s back garden,Providing […]

  Visiting Mary I visit the place I imagine her in.I practice walking the tall grassto the stony house,the bit of rock they’ve left, a candleto mark she was there,that […]

  Marginal for Michael Brown And let us not dispraise the quiet manwho on a hundred acres sets back tenfor voles to tunnel in, finches to congregate,for beasts too slender […]

Three Silences Bone dust and cold thick haunting silence restswhere pews and people creak and break the peaceand echo of my prayer, the echo of the priestdark wood pervades. Dark […]

For the fourth event in the Wild Court Reading Series, we are delighted to welcome celebrated US-based poet, translator and literary critic Kimberly Johnson. Kimberly will be reading and in […]

New Year Doors are locked to neighbours nowat midnight on Hogmanay,the ‘first-fit’ a thing of the past:my grandparents’ house heaving with guests,the coal fire crackling, the craicmixing with smoke in […]

  Death Still Walks In ‘In the old days news of it traveled by foot.’— Billy Collins, ‘Death’ Here’s how to miss the deathof a friend whose houseyou glide by […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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   […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

 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 […]