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Two poems by Tamiko Dooley
Photo by S. Tsuchiya on Unsplash Susumu The sun beat down on Tokyo intensely: Forty-five in the shade. The matsu tree Stretched out across Susumu’s back garden, Providing relief from the scorching heat. Susumu’s dad had finally convinced Him to have the minor operation: Yarinasai, he’d growled, don’t be a…
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Two poems by Patrick Davidson Roberts
Photo by Javier Balseiro on Unsplash Caiaphas I am content with what I have done in my time, and have little to alter. You fit your mind to the world around and pray that one bears the other. I am not visited at night by ghosts of the men that…
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Two poems by Bernard Pearson
Photo by Simon Godfrey on Unsplash Manor Farm, Gotherington The walls stooped Under the weight of age. Windows frowned From gables Out towards Wicked, old, Cleeve hill. At the front, a cote, Devoid of dove and egg, Stood sentry and I, a child Inside its bell, Hushed by such anatomy,…
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Three poems by Rebecca Farmer
The Dark Self 12, Susan Aldworth, 2017, monoprint, 56 x 76 cms. Image courtesy of the artist and Guy’s Hospital, London. susanaldworth.com At the sleep disorders clinic, Guy’s Hospital after The Dark Self 12 … then a girl with flaxen braids appears in the corridor to record my height…
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Three poems by William Thompson
Photo by Jinen Shah on Unsplash Farm Work Your first car catches heat like a tin roof, white clouds snag on the barbed wire of vapour trails against a background of powder blue. A forklift lurches past. The pig-shed stench is thick with gold under ash canopies and powerlines. ‘Why…
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‘Saree’: a poem by Sambhu R.
Photo by soumya parthasarathy on Unsplash Saree Mother gathers the folds of her old chiffon saree around her shoulders like a little girl playing dress-up. Confided to the short-term memory of the wardrobe with the rust-sprinkled knob, the saree pops out at intervals like a deeply embarrassing slip of…
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‘Lest We Forget’: a poem by John Seymour
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash The below poem won first prize in the SSA (Soldiers’ Arts Academy) International Poetry Competition 2021. Lest We Forget Who now will speak for those lost souls whose ashen faces stare, What breath is heard upon their fate as stirs the saddened air, What news of Daniels, Dorey, Foot,…
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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 found myself in conversation with two very different species of poet: a young whippersnapper straight from the Oxford colleges, and a seasoned editor. The whippersnapper…
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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 bushel of woody twine from the neon green hop burr. I crush pellets in palms to molten spice, warm the oil between my hands, and…
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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 landscaped patio garden; ditto the high ceilings and period features this Victorian conversion apparently boasts; but why is there a cot in my room? A…
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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 from perfectly uneven mud and barely tucked under an arm bruised and translucent, impatience betraying a stone-cold determination amidst the Saturday spectacle of leashed dogs,…
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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 spokespeople to celebrate or vilify, the environment is once again a buzz word. The resurgence in newsworthiness has fed back into poetry and revitalized a…
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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 praise and jargonised code, and there’s no doubt the current trend is towards their use purely as a marketing tool. However, in the past they…
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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 God could see it. Forsaking mercat cross and kirk a masked man cried on the assembled people – a black ripple spilling out over the…
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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 and the sun upstages the dull stars. A new morning beckons from behind the ivory satins to be unwrapped like a present. But I feel…
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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 and each week they were the same. It always struck me as odd, how the subject was called ‘Games’ when there was no fun in…
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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 its binding of ancient and modernist narratives. The layered intertextuality and multiplicity of Ulysses as a symbol of masculine heroism in decline works to express…
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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: the world placed firmly underfoot even as the work revels in strangeness and uncertainty. The first poem, ‘Apples’, strains at the edges of form, and…
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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 blinds, Heat rising in an October cool, The feeling of knowing you are exactly Where you are meant to be. Stumbling, stuttering, Eurydice is before…
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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 window seat seeing many kinds of my country & characters. My father wants us to note down the names of the stations we cross. Platforms…