Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash         Flat   The new floors, kitchen and bathroom, I can just about cope with. I’m fine with the built-in bookshelves and […]

    Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash          Rec Rugby, 195 Years Later*   — for Maggie   Current version of the original — (plump ovoid freshly plucked […]

    Photo by David Brooks on Unsplash          Peniel Heugh   Hounded from the burghs at killing time the Covenanters hid their faith up here, where nobody but […]

Photo by Cecile Hournau on Unsplash         Aubade   Waking at five, I stare at the shimmering diaphanous curtains as the window square lightens from black to white […]

       Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash            Games   Each week it was the same – the PE teacher would pick his captains for the football game […]

    Photo by Parichay Sen on Unsplash            Window Seat of a Train in the Past   We travel on the train now. I have grabbed the […]

    Photo by Alessandro Bogliari on Unsplash            Another XI   A cricket tea on a boundary edge in old heat. Trains and cars passed, skirting the […]

  The below poem is taken from Jennifer Edgecombe’s debut pamphlet The Grief of the Sea, published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2020. It also appears in Carcanet’s New […]

    Photo by Anton Murygin on Unsplash            Foxes   In the backstreets the foxes are synchronised swimmers- unaware they are in the same pool, unaware they […]

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash           Captain’s Pond   I didn’t expect to find myself beside you, swatting flies and leaves to watch fishermen watching you […]

    Photo by Khara Woods on Unsplash            Catechism   In the vestibule, Mum dips her hand in holy water, blesses each of her wayward flock with […]

    Photo by Eva Wilcock on Unsplash            Ancestors   Their voices – those we barely remember, those we never knew – urge us to bear witness. […]

    Photo by Shifaaz Shamoon on Unsplash            Lapis lazuli   On a Sardinian beach, the ambulant vendor shifts through white vesicles from lapis lazuli waves straight […]

  An interview with Ian, in which he discusses themes explored in the following poems, is up concurrently on Wild Court here.         Jarrow March   Instead of […]

  The following is an extract from Book of Days, a long poem recounting a journey along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. This extract describes […]

Left: Aldershot striker Mike Ring (16 goals in 76 appearances) with a diving header Right: Midfielder Ian McDonald, flanked by Bill Shankly, signing for Liverpool before his Shots days (340 […]

Photo by Dovi on Unsplash         The Southern Belle   In 1812, when the building was first built, they infused the wallpaper with beetroot juice, to achieve the […]

    Photo by Jack Douglass on Unsplash            Somerset County Cold Case Photo, 1980   Shot from its stoop, this garden shed brims March, a ripe compendium […]

        Anosmia   ‘The natural world is not kind.’ – ‘How viruses shape the world’, The Economist (22nd August 2020)   I live to smell the flowers. I’d […]