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‘Waverley, 4.05.’ – a poem by John Fuller
The below poem is taken from John Fuller’s new, semi-autobiographical collection of poetry, Asleep & Awake, recently published by Chatto & Windus. Waverley, 4.05. At Waverley, at Waverley, Although I didn’t show it, I knew a certain thing that Needed knowing, At Waverley. A resolve in the heart Deeper than…
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Lunch with Frederick Seidel at Cafe Lux
Miguel Cullen He replied to my email saying: “I would prefer to meet you in Buenos Aires,” where I was then staying. “A distant second, New York.” I responded: “It wouldn’t be as comfortable to meet in Buenos Aires!”, almost warning him of the heady, summery, accelerated, keyed-up Buenos Aires I was…
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On ‘Heredity/ASTYNOME’ by Naush Sabah
Daniel Bennett If poetry ever had ‘must have’ purchases, then Naush Sabah’s debut release from Broken Sleep Books proved to be one of these over the summer. The pamphlet, the chapbook, the little magazine: these are as essential a part of the medium of poetry as the poems themselves. Heredity/ASTYNOME is a…
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Two poems by Yuan Changming
I vs 我: Another Bilinguacultural Poem The first person singular pronoun, or this very Writing subject in English is I , an only-letter Word, standing straight like a pole, always Capitalized, but in Chinese, it is written with Lucky seven strokes as 我 , with at least 108 Variations, all of…
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Three poems by Patricia McCarthy
Below are three poems from Patricia McCarthy’s new chapbook-length sequence Whose hand would you like to hold…, published by Agenda Editions, written during lockdown. Patricia has written about the sequence for The High Window here. from Whose hand would you like to hold… IV Holy week, our childhood voices…
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‘Purple Pintle’ – a poem by Rory Waterman
Purple Pintle About and by Dr Bob Pintle Associate Professor in Professional Creativity, Peterborough University and for Dr Andrew Taylor, who did not inspire it His end-of-term Zoom seminars were fine. Students logged on, saw that he was there but no-one else was, then logged out again: their logos would appear…
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Two poems by Fiona Larkin
Recognition It’s time to welcome the magnolia, her pink flushed cups, petals tight on black twigs, her cold courage, a clench of fuck yous aimed at winter. No one picks her. Twisted off, she’d taste astringent as chicory, puckering the mouth, resisting all the way. You can’t drink from her acid…
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Conceptualising the ‘good death’: Mechanisms of memory & mourning in Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Samuel Laurence, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones oil on canvas, circa 1840 © National Portrait Gallery, London Lily Searstone Tennyson’s elegiac phenomenon of In Memoriam situates itself in nineteenth century literature as one of the first and most profound introspections of the ‘deepest needs and perplexities of humanity’[i].…
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Translations of Theodorakis by Gail Holst-Warhaft
The below translations are taken from The House with the Scorpions: Selected Poems and Song-Lyrics of Mikis Theodorakis (Fomite, 2020), translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft. The book presents Theodorakis’s poems and lyrics in Greek and English. In Greece Mikis Theodorakis is a national icon. He is the country’s most famous composer, and a figure…
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‘The Smallest Distillery in Scotland’ – a poem by Ben Verinder
The Smallest Distillery in Scotland Donaghy found me behind the whisky stills and suffered my story: faith, boiled down to a mash of schoolboy memory – the creaking pew, shot of hymn, blood trickles down the gaunt white lolling face, that feeling someone famous just left the room. Highland monks, he…
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On ‘Tiger Girl’ by Pascale Petit
King’s College London’s popular ‘Poetry And..’ series, chaired by Professor of Poetry Ruth Padel, returns on 30th November at 5pm with ‘Poetry And… The Wild in a Time of Coronavirus’, an online event with prize-winning poet Pascale Petit and award-winning wildlife film-maker Shekar Dattatri. More details, including how to book your free ticket, can…
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‘New Delhi, Beyond the AQI’, a poem by Anannya Uberoi
New Delhi, Beyond the AQI The king’s lane, papayawhip-paved. Smog on the lemonade children. By November, everything underwater. Crop-burn and tobacco clouds on evening sounds: fast-car honk, tin snips on sheets, railroad tracks. Old canard that the city drowns in its own black cloud. Not even the Ganges-sister, in her tar-pits…
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On the poetry of Douglas Crase
Declan Ryan “A shipwreck becomes a way of seeing things”, Douglas Crase writes in ‘Saggaponnack’, and a sense of the dredging up of what’s been lost occurs throughout his own, ‘recovered’, work. Crase’s first collection, The Revisionist, was published in 1981, and greeted with the sort of notices Emerson once termed a…
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‘Encounter’, a version of Baudelaire, by Stuart Henson
Encounter Traffic was howling in my ears and eyes that moment when we passed—she in her slim black dress, a gloved hand tugging up the hem— and for one instant all things clarified. Those slo-mo seconds in a film when fate throws two together and the soundtrack dims and he looks…
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Two poems by Natalie Linh Bolderston
Thất Tịch Seventh Month, Saigon, 1975 They share a dish of beans like small blood clots, believing they will one day wake to a tea ceremony, mâm quả, a blessing written on the wall. She rides home on the front of his bicycle as their city reddens. She threads seven…
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On ‘Dressing for the Afterlife’ by Maria Taylor
Matthew Stewart In her second full collection, Dressing for the Afterlife (Nine Arches, 2020), Maria Taylor makes a huge step forward from her already impressive first book, Melanchrini (Nine Arches, 2012). This progress is signposted by coherence and cohesion. Whether dealing with gender, nationality or family, the solidity of Taylor’s method provides…
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Two poems by Nick Makoha
Codex 3 We were thirty. Another day was ending as a mosquito landed at the edge of my hand. You ordered two beers, to pour ourselves into, at the airport bar. Each sip a minute of absence as a bird trapped in the atrium flew in the direction of our gate. Flight…
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Three poems by Daniel Bennett
Figures in a Landscape Remember when the country offered a pathway to freedom? The creek lanes and brooks and railway arches, spaces we filled with imagination and talk. Often talk. Abroad along the edges of wheat fields and rural car parks, any escape from our essentially loving households, where indulgence stuck…
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‘For a Coming Extinction’: a poem by Pascale Petit
Image credit: © Brian Fraser King’s College London’s popular ‘Poetry And..’ series, chaired by Professor of Poetry Ruth Padel, returns on 30th November at 5pm with ‘Poetry And… The Wild in a Time of Coronavirus’, an online event with prize-winning poet Pascale Petit and award-winning wildlife film-maker Shekar Dattatri. More details, including how to…
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New poems by John Greening
To mark the publication day of his Vapour Trails: Reviews and Essays on Poetry (Shoestring Press), Wild Court is featuring four new poems by John Greening. The first three are from an extended sequence about the historic county of Huntingdonshire, where he lives. Vapour Trails is a survey of modern poetry, gathering reviews…