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‘The Poet As Witness’: CD Wright & The Art of Curating the Past
Paul Stephenson How do we look at a difficult past? Carolyn Forché has put forward the notion of ‘poetry of witness’ for a category of poems that ‘bear […]
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‘Notes from Sarajevo’: a poem by Scott Elder
Notes From Sarajevo …a bullet in flight bears no sound The city’s empty but for wind varying shades of darkness a woman kneeling under a […]
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Three poems by Jennifer Lee Tsai
Another Language When I speak in Cantonese, I’m almost a different person. Louder, brighter. The seven tones, ascending, descending like musical notes. My grandparents, leaving the […]
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Two new poems by John Greening
The following poems appear in John Greening’s new collection, The Silence, published by Carcanet in June 2019. from The Silence Sibelius lived with his […]
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Making the Cut: John Greening on editing poems
John Greening I often quote Basil Bunting’s advice to young poets, that you should ‘cut out every word you dare’. Bunting certainly practised what he preached in his […]
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Two poems by Matthew Stewart
Shortheath Road In a suburb of my former home town on the way to a relegation clash, I stop to get a pasty for half-time at […]
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‘Highbury Park’: a poem by Liz Berry
Highbury Park In the woods at night men are fucking amongst the gorgeous piñatas of the rhododendrons, the avenue of cool limes. By day I walk […]
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‘The Capture of the Five Boroughs’ by Paul McLoughlin
Below is an extract from Paul McLoughlin’s Breaking Ground: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems in Old English and in Translation, recently published by Paekakariki Press, London. The Old English version […]
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Private Morgan: World War Two & Edwin Morgan’s ‘The New Divan’
© Jessie Ann Matthew, National Galleries Scotland Richie McCaffery While many of Edwin Morgan’s (1920-2010) Scottish near contemporaries in poetry, such as Hamish Henderson and Sorley MacLean, wrote […]
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The Anatomy of Movement: On Georg Trakl’s Poetry
Georg Trakl at Venice lido, 1913 Will Stone I In this essay I have attempted to illuminate what for want of a better phrase one might […]
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From a sequence by Karl O’Hanlon
from In Our Outrageous Masks of Dog-Skin Prologue: St Joseph’s Seminary, Belfast—“the Wing” What did I learn up there? What do I now know? – Padraic […]
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A Bonnard Trilogy: poems by Ellen Cranitch
Pierre Bonnard, Self-portrait, c.1889, oil on canvas ‘Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory’, the first major exhibition of Bonnard’s work in the UK for 20 years, opens at the […]
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Two new poems by Niall Campbell
© Racheal Da Silva Burton Packhorse Bring on the bit and curb, the saddle, the saddlebag; broad animal, steady it goes for its own name being […]
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A poem by Helen Calcutt
Death in the form of a child When you came alive, I leant in, a red flower to your whisper. What you said, was dark. Darkness, […]
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Two poems by Rachel Bower
© Jan Bella Cannula after Matthew Siegel The sea is not as white as I expected. A lifeguard tapes gauze on my baby’s hand, secures the […]
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Four poems by Richie McCaffery
© Gerry Cambridge Inversnaid (for Chris Powici, & i.m. Helen Lamb) The time I visited him before this he still had a partner and I […]
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‘A Dream of Cornwall’: a poem by Matthew Francis
Gurnard’s Head, west of Zennor Monday 19th November is the late poet WS Graham’s 100th birthday. Below is a poem by Matthew Francis from The Caught Habits of Language, […]
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‘St Ives Allure’: WS Graham among the artists
Monday 19th November is the late poet WS Graham’s 100th birthday. Below are extracts from David Whittaker’s new book St Ives Allure, a generously-illustrated story of the painters, sculptors […]
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Writing Birth: on the poetry of motherhood
Rachel Bower In her 1995 work Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (Carcanet), Eavan Boland described a powerful dilemma at the […]
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Three sonnets by Kate Bingham
Three Sonnets From brown on brown, a tall fawn eating blackberries. Look how it hasn’t seen me yet – head in the bushes full of flies, […]