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Two poems by Nicola Healey
Six Months Away (After Robert Lowell) Discharged as ‘homeless’, then to a room that felt wilfully hostile (lurid curtains and bristling carpet squares), I was permanently provisional. The whole city became a hospital, a seeping infiltration. Outside was fleetingly better than a condemning four-walled stare. My fat fire door would…
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Three poems by Ammar Aziz
My father believes in Triclavianism Inner parts of a grinder, Dead batteries, bulbs, Steel tub of a washer, A few metal strings, A toaster without the bread rack, And several little springs Lie in the backyard, While he tries to find What we never thought existed In our daily things. Back…
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‘Last’: a poem by Ali Lewis
Last In the religion of my dad one story is that a temple lamp lasts not forever but just a little longer than could reasonably be asked I watch him cover his head with his hand try to dredge up the words from his school-prize siddur I feel the irony of…
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‘madonna’: a poem by Charlie Baylis
madonna there’s no art in america, it’s all sugar & war. – sophie robinson i wake up dreaming i’ve made it here in new york i’ve made it everywhere dreaming of myself as a cheerleader the tassels of my glittering pom-poms are unblemished lines of philosophy the blue sky shines…
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Two poems by Naush Sabah
The Burial And when the pestilence passed through the second time We stood stunned in the wreckage of our lives. I picked Up a shattered picture frame embellished in opal, Since that’s what survivors hold as a symbol of what’s gone. Yet, we’d already lost those sepia days, vignettes of joy.…
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Two poems by Scott Elder
The Elegance of a Simple Soul Utterly out of place a sloth in a dark café movements too slow to be noticed a glass of port slips from her grip the pristine explosion at her feet in her hair in the lamplight everywhere inlaid an instant dissolves and in the next…
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Two poems by Mat Riches
Ash He found out I smoked the day I went off to university, and disapproved, of course, but nothing he could do or say. Although, he did, often. He’d have hated seeing us sitting around the fireplace using a bowl as an ashtray, blowing smoke up the chimney, drinking his best…
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Two poems by Arundhathi Subramaniam
When Landscape Becomes Woman I was eight when I looked through a keyhole and saw my mother in the drawing room in her hibiscus silk sari, her fingers slender around a glass of iced cola and I grew suddenly shy for never having seen her before. I knew her well, of…
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‘The Terrific-Strange’: some student poets of 1965
Mark Valentine In 1958 a group of tutors and students at the University of North Staffordshire, Keele, published a booklet anthology entitled Universities’ Poetry One. It was a selection from submissions sent from undergraduates across the country. There were already several Oxford- and Cambridge-based poetry journals, some long-standing, but this was one…
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Three poems by Eric Ngalle Charles
Picture Credit: Paul Musso Hay Festival 2019 If Heaven is Her Father’s Land, Her Father Can Keep It Let the rains come in June not August. Yes, She wants to go where Evasrikuke sings, where she can grow Mbasri side by side, where Ezruli sucks nectar with bees as companions…
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‘Outside the Turf Club, Piccadilly’: a poem by L Kiew
Outside the Turf Club, Piccadilly There’s too much moustache wax and pastel corduroy, an excess of vetivers, Trumper’s Extract of Lime, scads of green Spanish leather, flush panelling and Old Boys clinking club glasses, dropping cigar ash, enjoying genteel dereliction and discussions of pelf, mud-fresh potatoes and that day’s running at…
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‘In Between’: a poem by Alan Zhukovski
In Between A rebellious leaf tries his best to remain on the branch. He trembles from pain and air. He’s not a material but a product of life slowly gnawing small bits of the sky. He’s only a pawn in a project intended to conquer the air above. Yet he started…
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Two poems by Ranjit Hoskote
Picture credit: Jurgen Brocan Ranjit Hoskote’s The Atlas of Lost Beliefs was published by Arc in April and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2020. Letters from Ugarit Fire saved these words cut into clay corded sounds of desert and surf gouged into flesh Father look the enemy’s…
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Two poems by Emily Bilman
Inscape Treading the wild moors for miles A solitary figure gathered leeches That would soak sick bodies, purge Their blood, cleanse, and cure them. Like the leech-gatherer who refused To relinquish his quest and assert His self-reliance, I walked relentlessly Upon endless sand dunes to reach the sea. Water, abundant with…
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Two poems by Will Stone after Georg Trakl
De Profundis There is a pine forest on which an acid rain falls. There is a tree of limbs that stands lonely here. There is a nuclear wind that haunts abandoned new homes – How criminal this century. Past the darkening suburb the dazed runaway still begs from a sleeping bag.…
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‘Root’: a poem by Suna Afshan
Root At the bottom of the garden In the heart of a blackberry bush Are limbs that do not bleed marrow. Feather bone, iron blood, mind of aether Eyes hold a malignant question The tongue too new to pluck: What was that darkness from which I came? ‘You, apple of the mud…
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‘A parent’s age’: on the poetry of Rory Waterman
Matthew Stewart ‘Belonging’ and ‘estrangement’ are key terms when getting to grips with Rory Waterman’s poetry. They played an explicitly pivotal role in his early years, but his work has implicitly carried on worrying away at their connotations, interpretations and ramifications ever since. On the one hand, Waterman’s poems have been gaining…
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Two poems by Niall Campbell
Passing a Lake and Noticing There Were Swimmers The lake-swimmers push out again. Clothes wrapped in plastic on the bank. Is this what freedom is? The night-swim. The moon its own lake. The legs kicking past the waterweed and primrose. Our dream of privateness. I think of them and think of…
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‘The Birdman’: a poem by Christine Roseeta Walker
The Birdman He knew he wasn’t like the parakeets in the guinep tree or the egrets in the mangrove or like the bridge where the river dirtied the sea, at breakwater. He knew how to stay on the ground. His rum cup in one hand, the other pressed over his lips,…
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On Claudian’s ‘The Old Man of Verona’
Photo by Henrique Ferreira André Naffis-Sahely Situated halfway between Venice and Milan, recently the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, the city of Verona has had its fair share of detractors over the years, perhaps none quite as blighting as Byron, who spent some time within its walls shortly after quitting England for…