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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 fragrant harbour of Hong-Kong, the Pearl River of Guang-Zhou for the dream of a better life in the West – what did they make of…
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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 wife, Aino, in Järvenpää, Finland until he was over ninety. But he released virtually no music from their forest home for the last thirty years…
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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 own wonderfully economical work, and even applied it to others, quite fearlessly – to Shakespeare, for instance, whose sonnets he ‘improved’ (as a pastime while…
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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 our corner shop, waiting in a queue alongside freshly elderly people. They’re the latest versions of Mum and Dad: Damart trousers, Dannimacs and stout shoes.…
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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 my son down the secret pathways, smell the salt rime of sex on the wind, a condom glowing with blossomy cum, knotted and flung; I…
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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 of ‘The Capture of the Five Boroughs’ is followed by Paul’s translation. The Capture of the Five Boroughs AD 942 …
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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 immediate, resonant and powerful work about their active experiences in North Africa during World War Two, it was not until 1977, when Carcanet published Morgan’s…
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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 call ‘the anatomy of movement’ in the vision of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914), to try and identify perhaps the most crucial strand leading…
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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 Fiacc In the chapel, eldritch windows by Harry Clarke gathered the lead of dusk. Half-asleep over my breviary I could still…
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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 Tate Modern today. I Four canvases of drowning green, grass so deep, so apple-filled, it overwhelms, lead me to what I think…
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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 whispered in its ear; bring on the blankets, the slumped pack, lovingly; weight on weight, what matters is this whole life being dedicated, haunch and…
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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, from the bud of the spine, so I turned away. I still remember the sound. If I close my eyes, I see your mouth, white,…
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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 pad. It’s okay, it’ll be over soon. The waves splash to my belly. My breasts leak, a turquoise vein swells. A woman once stood to…
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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 had leave to be with mine. He takes me on endless walks in the hills and glens, like a dog being exhausted so it sleeps,…
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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, an anthology published by Donut Press to mark Graham’s centenary. WS Graham: New Selected Poems, edited by Matthew, was published by Faber in September. …
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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 and colourful figures who have lived in, and been inspired by, the Cornish harbour town of St Ives and the wider Land’s End peninsula. Graham…
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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 heart of women’s writing about motherhood. She suggested that ‘the woman poet today is caught in a field of force’, offering an example of 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, hindquarters flexing and flinching as it browses closer, closer, greedy moulting drunk then suddenly up it startles, leaping towards me instead of off through the…
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Three poems by Will Stone
Site of Hitler’s Berghof, Obersalzberg, October 2018 © Will Stone Below are three poems from Will Stone’s most recent collection, The Sleepwalkers (Shearsman). Notes on each poem follow at the end. Reading Reck In Memory of Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen (1884-1945) Genickschuss – a bullet in the neck improvised methods…
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Two poems by Rosanna Licari
Aptenodytes forsteri and the imperial egg Converge as the centre is everything in the deep Antarctic winter. Begin the clockwise shuffle towards the time of birth. Two months of starvation on the drone march of the imperial egg safe on your feet tucked under a fold of skin the brooding pouch.…