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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…
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On ‘The Sleep Road’ by Stewart Sanderson
Matthew Stewart In his first full collection, The Sleep Road (Tapsalterie, 2022), Stewart Sanderson addresses several issues that are currently popular among many poets of his generation: the relationship between the human and natural worlds, the role that history plays in understanding the present, and an examination of national identity. Nevertheless,…
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‘Church Crawling’: a poem by John Greening
Fotheringhay © Kevin Gardner Church Crawling for Kevin Gardner Leighton Bromswold Yes, locked, of course. And once we find the key it’s comically huge, and hard to turn, but when it does, George Herbert’s century comes tumbling, sliding, singing at my phone from beams and dust and tracery and…
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‘Ballad of the Outer Life’: from the German of Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Below is a translation by James Owens of the poem ‘Ballade des äußeren Lebens’ by the Austrian poet, novelist and essayist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). Stefan Zweig wrote of Hofmannsthal: “In world literature, except for Keats and Rimbaud, I know no other youthful example of a similar impeccability in the mastering of language, no…
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Two poems by Hamish Whyte
Photo by Michael Mahood on Unsplash From the Sea-window The tide’s going out. The heron stalks the rock pools. A dunlin picks its way through the seaweed. A black poodle paddles in the shallows. The ladies who swim wade ashore and take off their wetsuits and pink floats. The heron…
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‘Window in the Rock’ – a poem by Lucy Dixcart
Andrea Sonda on Unsplash Window in the Rock When you glimpse it you’re crammed into a floating bathtub with a teenage boy at the tiller, hurtling towards likely death. At the moment you think if I live, Mum can never know, you look back and spot the rogue pixel…
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A statement for the importance of poems in a life: on Jonathan Davidson’s ‘A Commonplace’
Daniel Bennett A sense of place abounds in Jonathan Davidson’s A Commonplace (Smith-Doorstep, 2020), and while that might seem natural from the title, the ‘place’ here derives from a translation of the Latin term ‘locus communis’ or ‘a general or common topic’. Commonplace books were collections of sayings, proverbs or quotations on…
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‘Zaban i urdu’ – a poem by Amaan Hyder
Harry Grout on Unsplash Zaban i urdu Zaban i urdu, meaning language of the camp. In Urdu, here is idher or yahan. There is udher or wahan. We drive through a town. My father says, We lived here when we first came to England. Temporary lodging. A street of houses…
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Two poems by Matthew Paul
Frans Ruiter on Unsplash Brian Clough in the Rijksmuseum I had four beautiful days in Amsterdam. The weather was gorgeous, the sights were just absolutely gorgeous. Everything about the place is magic. – The Frost Interview, 1974 As he stood eye to eye with Rembrandt’s 1628 self-portrait, did newly-sacked…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize 2022 – winner
Gabriela Sambuccetti MA in Modern Languages, Literature and Culture, Arts & Humanities A Migrant in a Piece of Paper A migrant could be someone who bought a plane ticket to London, and talked with customer service and customs at the airport, and filled a pile of papers, and got into…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize 2022 – joint runners-up
Jit Mun MSc Early Intervention in Psychosis, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience New Year Moon The luminous New Year moon Ascends in empty moorlands instead of the red and gold splendour of Banquet halls eight hours forward or in the ice-white lights of my grandparents’ home, their table…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize 2022 – specially commended
Heilien Diedericks PhD Global Health and Social Medicine, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine Moving the family Through the passenger window, the mountain burns. The Mantis God lives in those flames; her white karos the break between heat and death. Once, She rode the mountain’s back as it…
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Three pamphlets reviewed by Richie McCaffery
Richie McCaffery It is apt that John Greening recently edited the Carcanet selection of Iain Crichton Smith’s poems. There’s an anecdote that does the rounds in Scottish literary circles, probably apocryphal, which goes: Norman MacCaig was walking down the street in Edinburgh and he sees a friend, so he stops them and…
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‘In the Mountains of the Monédières, by the Green Waters of the Vienne’ – a poem by Hilary Davies
© Hilary Davies In the Mountains of the Monédières, by the Green Waters of the Vienne In the mountains of the Monédières I sat by the brook and waited for you. The young goats came to see And the pipits dipped all along the watercourses. On a sudden I thought:…