My aunts had names like sugar and spice Maybe they started in a doll’s house,where the world was rainbows and unicorns.Their lives changed colours,but their names stayed the same. Pinky […]

Night Hunt i.m. Michael Jones Like hunters entering the wood we have cometo the duty-free halls, the perfumes of small flowers –jasmine, Joy – first steps on our journey to […]

For the third event in the Wild Court Reading Series, we are delighted to welcome award-winning poet and editor Sarah Howe. Sarah will be reading and in conversation with poet […]

July 15th, 2022 I’m wearing a wedding ring. youput it on. and I did for you –think of squeezing it overthe knuckle. and there is a feeling –a hard one […]

Tide and Tidings at the Equinox Concrete curve is lashed in swirls of spray      from gun-metal grey —a liturgy for loss for one snatched off      mysteriously,a […]

 Artwork by the poet On the Hudson In times like these I turn from the world      that cannot be the world, because it does not know meas the […]

Piking i. The wind plays a low notethrough the one bar gate onto the bridleway.I tick the code into the lock. It clicks open. Once our car has passed, the […]

Image: michael clarke stuff on Flickr Seaweed Herbarium Mermaid hairisn’t rare, but it’s worthpreserving for its hue: dark greenat the root of every lock,brighter near the ends, which splitinto finer […]

  In Memory of Robert Burns   I The ghosts of all past members of the Dumfries and Galloway Town Council gather for a resource management meeting in perpetuity. In […]

Five Breaths were needed to extinguish the flameand now a red wick leans into the melt, diving into a quarried lakehigh in the mountains to find mouthfulsof salt in the […]

Photo by Thomas Verbruggen on Unsplash A Short History of Greenhouses In the end, my father’s greenhouse was shipwreckedBy ivy, which spiralled round bamboo canes, stuckLike octopus suckers glued to […]

Below is a poem from Rory Waterman’s fourth collection, Come Here to This Gate, published by Carcanet on 25th April. Until that date, the Carcanet website is offering a 25% […]

Below is a poem from Nicola Healey’s debut pamphlet, A Newer Wilderness, published by Dare-Gale Press this month. Summer/Winter This brazen blue day is a dangerous scene.My mind clashes like […]

Below is a poem from the Selected Poems of the late Paul McLoughlin (1947-2021), recently published by Shoestring Press and edited with an introduction by John Forth. Mother in Murreigh […]

Eternal Life Slowly the leaves grow yellow and fall,and I hear leaders of corporate empiresfully confident of achieving eternal lifefor select customers in their lifetime.But in the Aveyron in the […]

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds I. Comes the silver Aston-Martinand the vague apprehensionthat some terror is on the wing.Don’t they ever stop migrating,these bottle-blondes […]

Mat Riches recently published his debut collection, Collecting the Data, with Red Squirrel Press. Below are two new poems. Sticks The time to cut a stickis when you see it […]

  For the latest event in the Wild Court Reading Series, King’s College London lecturer and T.S. Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph will be reading from his forthcoming Precious and […]

He Could Leave You Tomorrow He buys me roses; I forget to put them in water,once again too caught-upin my tangled and scattered thoughts.They’re beautiful but– a little too pinkas […]

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 […]