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‘Football in the marshes’: a poem by Nikos Keim
Football in the marshes Bright green from the black earthAs the teams in their primary coloursMove like tides across the luscious turfCries sharpen on the cold airAnd I pass, wishing each of them wellHoping the striker nods, judicious as Solomon,The midfielders organise and dissectAnd run themselves raggedThe goalies plug the open maw of the netLike…
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‘The Little One’: a poem by Idman Omar
The Little One is a madam, is more parrotthan fluffy bunny, more myselfclotted. Is the drink of the sky, thevisitor of my life. Wakes my metal heart withgaping cries and trancelike silence. Allair on my hips but she loves me darkto the bone. She stays close forlong, wet kisses warming me as I write this.Small…
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Two poems by Anthony White
The Ungodly Hour of the Morning …comes later now than then.When my mother hissed from the top of the stairs“I told you to be home by tenI’ve been worried sick”, I didn’t think I cared.Was ten a godly hour and midnight not?I never asked. I was red rag to a bull enoughWithout probing that inflammatory…
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‘Worshipping at the Shrine of Artemis’: a poem by Saul Levene
Worshipping at the Shrine of Artemis, the Hunter You kneel in the underbrush clutching a knife in one hand, antler in the other, sawing, blistering away in the frosted throat of winter, mould-green algae leaping up the trees. God is felt in warm things, the altar of his sparkling eye cool as…
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‘The Retired Agronomist….’: a poem by Rebecca Goss
The poem below is taken from Rebecca Goss’ fourth collection, Latch, recently published by Carcanet. There will be an online launch for the book on the evening of Wednesday 7th June, hosted by Caroline Bird. The Retired Agronomist Drives a Tractor in the Summer Because He Likes the Oily Smell of the Machine And how…
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‘Delivery Boy’: a poem by Ali Ashhar
Delivery Boy The rain has started bucketing down. As the delivery boy tries to find shelter his cellphone starts buzzing constantly; he picks it up with a heavy heart. Subsequently, a flashback evokes within as the raindrops touch him: the departure of his father way before time. He contemplates: how could he be…
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‘Ted Bar’: a poem by Tim Cumming
Ted Bar On the down escalator at Tottenham Court Road after Stick in the Wheel’s gig at the 100 Club, I’m reckoning the last time I took those steps was back in the Eighties for Sonny Fortune, walking up from the Spanish Bar with Dave. I’m still riding the buzz of the gig as I…
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The confessional as poetry’s play within a play: on Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
Matthew Stewart Deeply personal collections, packed with poems that narrate break-ups and emotional turmoil, tend to encourage the reader to narrow the distance between the poet and the lyrical ‘I’ to nothing, especially in light of the recent trend for viewing poetry as self-expression and self-discovery. And at first glance, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s first collection, Sing…
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‘Zandvoort Fishergirl’: a poem by Helen Evans
‘The Zandvoort Fishergirl’ by Elizabeth Adela Forbes, 1884. Penlee Gallery Zandvoort Fishergirl after the painting by Elizabeth Adela Forbes Left hand on her hip, her right hand balancing an earthenware platter against her blue apron, she stares at us, unsmiling. Her face is precise: jaw set, hair scraped back; there are touches of light down…
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Two poems by Daragh Byrne
Back to Life The pub was closed for Christ’s yearly dying. Good Friday — regulars filed in, prisoners who felt they were better off inside, claimed aptitudes for carpentry or wiring given the lie as the hours ticked on. All morning, hammers banging — lads nailing floorboards or knocking walls; spectres of dust rising…
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Four poems by Dan O’Brien
Image © Cambridge Jones Below are four prose poems by Dan O’Brien from his new collection, Survivor’s Notebook, which chronicles the family life of two cancer survivors. The collection is forthcoming from Acre Books this September and can be pre-ordered here.
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‘Murky Waters’: a poem by Stephen Grace
Image by Broadreach from Pixabay Murky Waters On a field by a lake in Manitoba a woman presses her hand to the wind. She is learning to read a rivermap etched into the bark of an old birch tree while her husband raises a farmhouse and two barns from his handful of meagre…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2023 joint winner: Bianca Denise Layog
Bianca Denise Layog Colour Study I live next to a lake for four years. In this way I am unlike my mother. Even now, my dreams are foreign and lake-filled. I’ve always thought of the places that come back to us as strange. The trees. A green-tiled grocery store. The snow, and the…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2023 joint winner: Laura Dent
Laura Dent My forest bed where green comes in swathes and leaves sway with calm susurrus at home among the gaps that I walk through trees extending like monoliths their heavy presence bearing no weight and me no threat when I feel breathless this wooded chamber breathes for me air flushed with…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2023 joint winner: Thomas Storey
Thomas Storey Muggy She hailed a taxi like throwing a coin like casting a spell like floating over and above the damp street like expelling some irretrievable thing She gave you twenty years of looking back but the moment dissolves and the future stifles recollection until you can no longer resort to forgetting…
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2023 runner up: Amalia Costa
Amalia Costa
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Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize 2023 runner up: Alberta N’guessan
Alberta N’guessan
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On ‘Toys / Tricks / Traps’ by Christopher Reid
Mark Wynne Whilst Christopher Reid has often disguised deeply autobiographical work behind sophisticated role play – the fictional female translator of an Eastern European poet in the extraordinary Katerina Brac (Faber, 1985) or the gently buffoonish widower Professor Winterthorn in Nonsense (Faber, 2012) – the protagonist of his new collection, Toys / Tricks / Traps…
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‘A Quidam’: a poem by Steven Toussaint
A Quidam I’d been casualised again, High ChurchAssignations likely the cause. No free lunches.Only fans. I let them watch me researchLatinity in poetry today. My hunch was Quantity callously tugged us, like beads toldOr bowels, unravelled in the Grand GuignolAs we passed nights racked on Théophile Gautier’s fourfold:Verse, onyx, marble, email. But deep work is…
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‘Yes’: a poem by Christine Roseeta Walker
Yes In our uniforms, blue dress and white blouse, we climbed the school wall under the poinciana tree, until we could see inside the station grounds. I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. I had imagined we were going to tease the prisoners again whose long sorrowful faces stared out from behind their steel…