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In Defence of Inspiration
Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash Sarah Fletcher I want to start with an anecdote: I was at the pub after a poetry reading in London. I […]
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‘Bitter Hops’: a poem by Lucy Holme
Oasthouse cowls, Sissinghurst, Kent Bitter Hops I am the end of a Kent summer, the careful cutting of the bine. I return to pluck a […]
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‘Flat’: a poem by Tim Relf
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Flat The new floors, kitchen and bathroom, I can just about cope with. I’m fine with the built-in bookshelves and […]
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Two poems by D. R. James
Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash Rec Rugby, 195 Years Later* — for Maggie Current version of the original — (plump ovoid freshly plucked […]
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On ‘Rite of Passage’ by Dom Bury & ‘What Fire’ by Alice Miller
Charlie Baylis Environmental poetry has made a comeback, with terror-infused natural disaster coverage and polarising climate protests riding high in the news agenda, coupled with young, idealistic […]
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‘Marginalised and Pigeonholed’: a re-evaluation of Evangeline Paterson
Matthew Stewart urges the re-evaluation of Evangeline Paterson as a major poet of her generation Blurbs tend to get a justified bashing these days for their breathless […]
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Two poems by Stewart Sanderson
Photo by David Brooks on Unsplash Peniel Heugh Hounded from the burghs at killing time the Covenanters hid their faith up here, where nobody but […]
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‘Aubade’: a poem by Rituparna Sahoo
Photo by Cecile Hournau on Unsplash Aubade Waking at five, I stare at the shimmering diaphanous curtains as the window square lightens from black to white […]
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Two poems by Richie McCaffery
Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash Games Each week it was the same – the PE teacher would pick his captains for the football game […]
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The voyage to ‘eternal silence’: Male heroism and the evasion of death in Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’
Ulixes mosaic at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. 2nd century AD. Lily Searstone Tennyson’s nuanced reworking of Homeric epic in his Ulysses (1842) is monumental in […]
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On ‘Bloom’ by Sarah Westcott
Daniel Bennett The poems in this luminous book, Bloom (Pavilion Press, 2021) are tight, fragmented things, varying in shape and typesetting, in a style both abstract and committed: […]
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Two poems by Caroline Banerjee
Photo by Matt Brown on Unsplash Orpheus’s Awakening That moment Orpheus looked back, He knew what he had lost: Lemon light drifting Through French […]
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‘Window Seat of a Train in the Past’: a poem by Debasis Tripathy
Photo by Parichay Sen on Unsplash Window Seat of a Train in the Past We travel on the train now. I have grabbed the […]
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Two poems by Oliver Comins
Photo by Alessandro Bogliari on Unsplash Another XI A cricket tea on a boundary edge in old heat. Trains and cars passed, skirting the […]
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‘The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster’: a poem by Jennifer Edgecombe
The below poem is taken from Jennifer Edgecombe’s debut pamphlet The Grief of the Sea, published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2020. It also appears in Carcanet’s New […]
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Two poems by Bersu Doldur
Gypsy moth Taurus Mountains, the fiery air of Mesopotamia; she waits for it to caress her. It doesn’t. The English cousin. But she’s not entirely. Nor Kurdish, […]
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An excerpt from ‘Wendy Cope’ by Rory Waterman: on her ‘Saint Hilda of Whitby’
Rory Waterman writes: This is a slightly edited short excerpt from my recent book Wendy Cope (Liverpool University Press, 2021), reprinted here with thanks to the publisher. In 2018, […]
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On ‘Corrigenda for Costafine Town’ by Jake Morris-Campbell
Richie McCaffery The first edition of Alasdair Gray’s debut collection of short stories (Unlikely Stories, Mostly) carries with it a little snippet of paper saying ‘Erratum: This […]
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Two poems by Stephanie Powell
Photo by Anton Murygin on Unsplash Foxes In the backstreets the foxes are synchronised swimmers- unaware they are in the same pool, unaware they […]
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Two poems by Mat Riches
Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash Captain’s Pond I didn’t expect to find myself beside you, swatting flies and leaves to watch fishermen watching you […]