Early Doors They always said the larks were here in spirit,having disappeared while meadows were transformedto streets and drains when this became a gardened suburb. Heading for their allotment, my […]

Image © Sophie Davidson Never More, Sailor after Walter de la Mare and Tristan Corbière So this mariner, whether a sailor,captain, indeed whoever he may be,is dead below the wind-riddenbrine-infused […]

Rite of Passage In Bali, it’s the filing of the caninesto limit boys’ wild adolescence.Among Cameroon’s Baka Pygmiesit’s the Spirit of the Forest killing boys to be reborn as men. […]

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay Julian, there’s a lost language between us.                             I can’t walk through it but like a cloud it stays in my mind,circling round the differences […]

Lilburne’s Prayer Oh god; guide of hand and tongue through pamphlet, pillory and prisonwho walked with me from Kineton, washed me in blood all the way to Marston,who spoke within […]

Through an Office Window I am not at work hearing a service user saythe tremors were bad this morning, he’s been told it could be years or weeksbut he’s got no intention […]

Alitheia The Greek truth –is it not every man’s truth,that the written word of the poetin its finality, will be,as we will come to know it,our only trusted ally? … […]

Spring Offensive A day to go and it will be June.Yet we’re in March-to-April weather still.Will we get there in time?All the forecasts sayit’s going to happen soon. Spilling off […]

We are delighted to have former New Zealand Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh as our featured reader at the inaugural event in the Wild Court Reading Series. The event – […]

The poem below was originally published in The Spectator and appears in Matthew Stewart’s second collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, forthcoming from HappenStance Press in November. A launch for […]

Versions of the poems below appear in Teresa Forrest’s debut pamphlet, The Stories in Between, forthcoming as part of the Five Leaves New Poetry series. The pamphlet will be launched […]

The poem below is from John Greening’s The Interpretation of Owls: Poems 1977-2022, edited by Kevin Gardner (Baylor University Press, 2023). The volume’s UK launch will take place at Hatchards, […]

Veneto Bassano is my birthplace wherethe Dal Ponte family were born and worked on the six paintingsI counted at the Louvre years ago: true sketches of 16th-century folklife,religious works; realistic […]

Image © Gerry Cambridge Scrap Your last words to me were written, not spoken,a paper cut severing us and our shared 14 yearsbecause you felt it was for the good […]

Siena 1978 ‘the red-haired girl from Palaeography’ The photograph was taken when the sun broke throughAnd shone on the copper red of her hairAs we sat in the Piazza del […]

The Ghost of Emily Hale Replies to T. S. Eliot ‘I see myself as a blood-sucker’– T. S. Eliot, in a letter to Emily Hale (2 August 1934) Our posthumous […]

What the Arborist Saw A cat, among the finches, the sparrows and the wrens.A cat, stuck, in the highest fork of a sycamorethe afternoon he scooped her in one fluidmovement […]

Ghost and Chrome I wanted a life like a burning comet, and got an engine fireon the Nullaboor Plain. I was riding at the heart of Australia,the red dirt towns […]

Maria        Dear old man, why do you sit alonereflecting on a war fought long ago on the young girlwho spent with you those last few daysleaving you with the promise […]

Arctic The first time you tasted chemotherapy,there were no side effects apart from an Arcticchill turning your lips blue like the wiryhospital blanket you wrapped yourself in. You shivered the […]