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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…
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‘And the award for best actress goes to’: a poem by Polly McCormack
And the award for best actress goes to The days bleed into each other like a radiator. I have trained myself to not think of you, it is my special talent. I sing with Molly in the kitchen and pretend I have always been fatherless. Waking up in someone…
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Two poems by Ben McGuire
Gone Everywhere The news was Luke – through my fingers. Out of my fists. Beyond me then, but there in every room. He’d caught the ball and thrown it back a bird. We saw it prismed out, heirs to each other’s confounded love. Knocked in, shock’s bruise budded in the chest, tangled the stomach, bore…
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Two poems by Kenneth Pobo
Crimsons Bobolinko packs his basket with fried chicken, croutons, lime-aid, cherry pie and a Big Boy tomato, finds a private spot by the river, where oaks and maples have a quiet leaf chat. It’s delicious to sit alone, but with trees you’re never fully alone. Dusk crimsons the fading…
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‘Rife with schools of shadow’: on the poetry of James Peake
Lily Searstone Through fragmented visions and memories, James Peake’s second collection, The Star in the Branches (Two Rivers, 2022), seamlessly distils the past, the starkness of contemporary life, and premonitions of the future, to create an introspective – yet also transportive – portrayal of the fractured times we find ourselves living…
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Three poems by Nicola Healey
Photo by Alicia Healey Veteran Beech ‘I see a picture that thy fate displays / And learn a lesson from thy destiny’ – John Clare, ‘To a Fallen Elm’ We call it ‘the tree field’, where my sister and I walk her dog. Surrounded by nothing stands a…
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‘Work of Forgetting’: a poem by Rowland Bagnall
Image by Shruti Khanna from Pixabay Work of Forgetting I travel by a stagecoach often down adventurous avenues, wool -gathering a landscape through which stagecoaches arrive and go. This is what I see today: – a wide-eyed traveller; the ground turning to mud streaked with the furrows of a…
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On ‘The Storm in the Piano’ by Christopher James
Neil Elder Christopher James – winner of the 2008 National Poetry Competition and author of several volumes of poetry – remains “criminally underrated”, as Martin Malone once put it. James’ new pamphlet, The Storm in the Piano (Maytree Press, 2022), confirms his ability to combine the fantastical with poignancy so that even…
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‘In Every House Nobody Sleeps’: a poem by Tom Branfoot
Image by Pech Frantisek from Pixabay In Every House Nobody Sleeps nocturnal out here in wild escape the gauzy texture of extreme heat Walthamstow and Leyton beyond arguments sheltered by hedgerows swallowing benches we know it’s light pollution smouldering the East London fresco but think this stifling…
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New poems by Nick Makoha
Hollywood Africans The only thing that was certain was that it was June and we had spilt a pepperoni pizza between us. An ultraviolet light set the room: Basquiat channel surfing looking for cartoons, while Icarus prodded a canvas to see if the image fitted precisely in the frame. He was…
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‘Him’: a poem by Maeve McKenna
Image by chin1031 from Pixabay Him Our wonderful man with metal hands, his huge heart physical inside us. Our tiny steps in his shoes. Our cleaning his reading glasses, filing his petrol nails, perched on his shoulders combing his silver hair. Our trips to the beach in his resprayed…
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On ‘Fear of Forks’ by Hilary Menos
Matthew Stewart One of the main reasons for exerting restraint in poetry is to play with what is held back, left unsaid. The portrayal of linguistic and existential order implicitly hints at the disorder lurking just beneath the surface of our sentences and our lives. Read in this context, the unshowy method…
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‘Speak Wealth’: a poem by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash Michael writes: Both the title and tone of this poem are inspired by Michèle Lalonde’s famous 1974 macaronic poem ‘Speak White’ which expresses Francophone anger at English-language arrogance and dominance in Quebec Province. I first heard the poem performed by French-Canadian dramatist Robert LePage in the…
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‘Cabbages’: a poem by Christopher Horton
The poem below appears in Christopher Horton’s pamphlet, Perfect Timing, published by tall-lighthouse and available to purchase here. ‘Cabbages’ ruminates on the speaker’s grandfather and a series of wartime memories. Cabbages As often retold, my grandfather stood on a battered frigate two days after D-Day. Food was scarce…
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On ‘Book of Days’ by Phoebe Power
Rob A. Mackenzie Book of Days (Carcanet, 2022) is Phoebe Power’s account of making the ‘Camino’, a pilgrimage from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a distance of around 780km. But that’s not quite accurate. The Camino is the narrative around which the rest of…
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‘Blue Mountain’: a poem by Sarala Estruch
Photo by Yves Alarie on Unsplash Blue Mountain We had passed halfway point. Every muscle in my body was singing, brimming with lactic acid. We’d been arguing, arguing as we climbed, about the best way to climb a mountain, though I’d never climbed a mountain before and you’d…
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Two poems by Oliver Comins
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash An Away Match One long and wide hall filled with dancers limbering and jostling at each of three crowded bars, while a band in suits got ready on an unlit stage, lean among the sequined drapes and shadows. A padded door on the…