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…

        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.…

        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…

  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  …

    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…

 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…

© 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…

        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,…

© 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…

© 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,…

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.  …

        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…

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…

        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.…

      Twa Pixels   As I was walking all alane / I heard twa corbies makin a mane …               — from the medieval ballad ‘Twa Corbies,’ in Scots dialect   As I was gazing at the TV screen, I heard two glinting pixels gossip and scheme in whispers, apart from the venomous debate…

  This summer saw the release of Adam Warne’s debut pamphlet, Suffolk Bang, published by Gatehouse Press. Warne’s fractured, ‘spooked songs’ draw on folklore and an ethnographic study of his native Suffolk. Below are two new poems.           Nettle   chronic perennial, similar to spinach though borne on a serrated margin, cast…

  Below are three poems from Sarah Law’s new pamphlet My Converted Father, recently published by Broken Sleep Books.         Hobbies   I’ve had my enthusiasms, admits my converted father. Your mother was never very encouraging. I know, I say. It was fishing for a while. You had rods, lines, and tins of…

        Bologna   A terracotta forest of distorted towers: medieval Manhattan where Dante wandered. Madonnas nestled at the corner of each via: mounds of sacred hearts, altars of salted tears. The manganese facades of palaces and porticoes with faded frescoes. The embalming smell of a leather-bound book and the one diffused via a…

                                                                                     Photo credit: Adrian Pope         You & me & the incredibly distant island universes   1.   The man behind the glass removes his gloves. The man without his gloves, glittered in salt, flips up his goggle glasses, and he looks like a woodsman training as a legal clerk, tucked tightly in…