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Two poems by Jack Warren
Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash from Five Poems for Mushrooms Collared Earth Star Undeterred by lax mornings of noiseless rain. I renew an infatuation with the wild plum and the amanita, trudging through the forest floor searching for the revelation of a shared frailty. Allow me…
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‘All our past lives’: on Emily Berry’s ‘Unexhausted Time’
Nicola Healey I have long admired the way Emily Berry’s poetry handles complex thought, not just feeling, within carefully considered sentences, her intelligent sensitivity to our interior lives, and her attention to the idiosyncratic, often overlooked, details of living, but Unexhausted Time (Faber, 2022) is my favourite of her collections to date.…
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Three poems by Daniel Bennett
Photo by Krišjānis Kazaks on Unsplash Chris’s Room When Auden bought his first home- a farmhouse in Kirchstetten- he wept tears of happiness for the days of impermanence he was able to relinquish, the simple anticipation of place. And I have never been far from the routine of cheap…
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Two poems by Kate Behrens
Photo by 青 晨 on Unsplash CT Scan When x-rayed in slices, at least an idea of wholeness shrinks into blatant meat: bone, blood, thickenings and masses, shunted back and forth. Once, you smelt how surgical holes in childish skin reduced us to mortal. Fascinating raw depths: but…
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On ‘High Desert’ by André Naffis-Sahely
Richie McCaffery It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a collection of poetry as much as André Naffis-Sahely’s new offering, High Desert (Bloodaxe, 2022). That said, ‘enjoy’ isn’t quite the mot juste, for while there is at times dark humour here, these are unapologetically serious poems about serious subjects. Perhaps it’s…
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On ‘Glut’ by Ramona Herdman
Matthew Stewart It might initially seem snide or negative to suggest that a poet’s work is best represented by their idiosyncratic use of one specific punctuation mark, as if the reviewer were hinting at a tic, the reoccurrence of which has failed to be spotted and excised during the editorial process. However,…
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Two poems by Paul Stephenson
Photo of Tbilisi by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash Climbing Tbilisi Above the brick-domed baths of Abanotubani, rare trees ache with invasion and enemy grab. City spreads, leavened and rising like khachapuri, its rooftops woven, a red and brown kilim. In the butterflied grasses, local teens lay about making out in telescopic…
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‘V.E. Day’: a poem by Sally Festing
V.E. Day in Selwyn Road, Cambridge. Author pictured in back row, third from the left. V.E. Day She holds a finger to her chin. Flowers bind her hair. White tablecloths stretch endless invitation. Flags fly. Plum trees pink the pavements and she’s stumbling into sun, brother a sweep, her sister a…
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On ‘Summer/Break’ by Richie McCaffery
Declan Ryan Richie McCaffery’s third collection, Summer/Break (Shoestring, 2022), is one of quiet peril. Everywhere one looks there is a quest, however forlorn, for salvation, a desperation and sense of shipwreck, belied by – or at least running counter to – the poet’s formal and syntactical control. In apparently calm, usually conversational…
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On ‘Central Air’ by George Bilgere
Neil Elder In America, George Bilgere is widely published and revered, winner of a Pushcart Prize and a regular in many of the best journals. How his work has not managed to cross the Atlantic is a mystery, given the fact that his themes and concerns are universal, his poetry sings with clarity.…
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Three poems by Camille Francois
Photo by Mediocre Studio on Unsplash She puts away childish things Early mornings – I would turn no light on, open no curtain, and force whatever little light the letters held to my eyes. I loved this most – reading against the dark. So really, it should be no…
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Three translations of Osip Mandelstam
Alistair Noon writes: Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) grew up in St. Petersburg and published his first book, Stone, in 1913. One more volume followed before he began encountering publishing difficulties in the Soviet Union. He wrote poetry, prose, and children’s verse, and also translated (chiefly from French), if largely as a necessity rather than…
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‘Not Harlem but Close’: a poem by Idman Omar
Photo by Ben Allan on Unsplash Not Harlem but Close The place that produced me was heavy as the heavens. Its tiger tooth pinched monthly, sinking into us one bill at a time we emptied our pockets and dreams into a concrete bowl and ate the contents. The ceiling peeled,…
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‘Aged’: a poem by Stuart Henson
Aged I’m thinking again of Gallagher’s strat. You can’t get that sweated scrubbed-out look from a custom shop, and you can’t cheat it down like some shabby-chic with a sanding-block. Just the road-house hours—in the clubs with the crowd and the guys with real chops. And drinking too much.…
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‘Silence’: a poem by Jack Houston
Photo by bennoptic on Unsplash Silence A squirrel scampers the wall of the nature reserve In this idyll I’m not sure I fully deserve, Four moorhens, the family of swans, And from a thicket a robin in full song, Two young humans sharing a kiss, And here floating, alone,…
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Two poems by Tim Scott
The Form of an Armoured Car (Belfast, 1977) A Saracen’s squat tonnage shudders through the lines of flat-faced houses. Its heartbeat pulses on their window panes as soldiers scatter into pre-established patterns: defilade, enfilade, duck and cover, run. Boots clatter over cobblestones. An officer shouts. His public school English…
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On ‘Hollow Palaces: An Anthology of Modern Country House Poems’
Rishi Dastidar An odd place to start but bear with. The Fence, a new-ish, waggish magazine (think Private Eye meets Popbitch) shared the following snippet in a recent newsletter, reporting the Keystone Cops-esque plotting of some various lords and ladies to ensure Brexit got done: Obsequiousness reigns: Prins writes to Salisbury…
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‘Landskein’: a poem by Jenny Pagdin
Photo by Dagmara Dombrovska on Unsplash Landskein The hut tilted and in came the tide, gathering jars and books from my shelves – but it was their time. Through the bobbing window there was still that one dark stain between sea and sky, the inky line spreading into the water…
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‘Two Visions’ – a translation from the Estonian of Mathura
Below is an English version of the two-part poem ‘Kaks nägemust’ (‘Two Visions’) by the Estonian poet, Mathura. Winner of the Gustav Suits Poetry Award and other literary prizes in his native country, Mathura’s work has been rendered into a dozen languages and, here, has been translated into English in collaboration with the poet…
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‘Gothic’: a poem by Mark Wynne
‘The Nightmare’ by John Henry Fuseli, oil on canvas, 1781 Gothic Where are you now? At the first flush of dawn everything pitched with exaggeration. An ordinary evening against a dull sky illuminated by lightning… Your letters – ironic, obscene – seduced by a fourth-wave feminist in remission. Ruined…