Welcome to London Grip, a forum for reviews of books, shows & events – plus quarterly postings of new poetry. Our most recent posts are listed below. Older posts can be explored via the search box and topic list. For more information & guidelines on submitting reviews or poems please visit our Home page.
Contributor Biographies and Editor’s Notes are also included.
A printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Autumn 2024
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors. London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Send up to THREE poems & a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or included in the message body OUR SUBMISSION WINDOWS ARE NOW JANUARY, APRIL, JUNE & OCTOBER * Editor’s notes London Grip is not in the habit of issuing trigger warnings – but the final poem in this issue contains unusually difficult material and we wouldn’t want our readers to be taken by surprise. We thought very hard before choosing to include Graham Buchan’s “The Last Rock”; but in the end we decided it deserves its place among poems about our readiness to look away from humanity’s worst cruelties. The content – based on real events – is undoubtedly shocking; and we could only feel able to publish such horrors within the carefully controlled framework of a poem.
Elsewhere in this edition there are many other poems that are gentler and more optimistic; and we might, of course, have opened with a harsh and brutal poem simply in order to offer some kind of progression towards more tender themes. However it is hard to see how any other poem could have followed “The Last Rock”. Yet by placing this one last we do not mean it to be a final despairing word; instead we invite readers to recognize that, while the story it tells is true, so also are the various kinder-hearted narratives that precede it. This indeed is a paradox of human existence which poetry – at its best – can perhaps help us deal with. If only we will let it engage and work deeply with our imaginations then maybe we can begin to acknowledge our dark shadows and then see how to escape from or pacify them. Encouragingly, similar thoughts appear in the editorial of Modern Poetry in Translation 2 (2024), where Janani Ambikapathy boldly proposes “a thought experiment like no other – a poem, if you allow it, can change your mind.”
*
Shortly before publication of this issue we were shocked to learn of the death of the much-admired poet Ann Drysdale. The many tributes that appeared on social media show how warmly regarded she was and how much she will be missed. She was noted for the wide range of her writing which one reviewer has described as encompassing “both refinement and rough edge” and her collections combine sombre and serious themes with a lively sense of humour. For anyone unfamiliar with her work a readily-available introduction exists in three London Grip reviews
Jennifer Rogers: There is somethingfor Mary
There is something about an empty house
in the early evening with the radio news
Describing disaster in an even, measured tone
That feels like a lighthouse on the edge of a hostile sea,
Making a rock to cling to when
The dark is descending
And the rain.
There is something about a sleeping street,
Dim lit by lamps, that feels like pain poured
Over pavements when walking back alone
To a hall where cats stretch a greeting.
They fix their gaze expectantly on the space where
You once stood.
And will again.
There is something about a room
Where you lie on white linen waiting for
The words that will release you back to life
That feels like fear. But dear, believe this true;
Home waits for you to make it so.
There is something about us that always
Feels like love.
Philomena Johnson: Maybe
You may have been the shadow that emptied the room, the keen
change of temperature that always gave me the edge
over my sisters; it may have been you who helped me down
when I climbed too high in the pine tree.
You were the one who read to me under the covers by torchlight, the one
I played hopscotch with on the driveway, the one taken
from your mother’s breast, the one who taught me how to catch green
plant hoppers, and how to let them go.
You were the scratched initials in the table top. You were the guess
I always got right. You were the darkness of curiosity.
You were the warrior of my lost days. You were the succulence
of pollen rejected by the bees.
It may have been you who recited poems to me, like ringing bells,
on my sad days; you who set fire to the church,
you the one I wrote about in my red striped notebook, you
the one who walked me to school on my first day.
It may have been you who shattered Sister Angelica’s arm in netball,
who rang the church bells when the godwits arrived, who taught
me to read. It may have been me who substituted for you, you who helped
me disappear into silence.
Maybe it was you I heard singing in that fire-damaged church. Maybe
it was you who exhausted what love could have been or maybe
it was me, and yet here we are and it may be if I had known you
I would have loved you.Note: This poem borrows & slightly alters a phrase from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Whitman’s original words: It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.
Michael W. Thomas: All gathered in
There was a girl.
We used to exchange small words
in comforting weather.
She was what you might breathe
if you caught your jacket on a stile
and, swaying a moment, realized
the first of summer was at you.
She walked all gathered into herself
like someone in a pirouette coat
easing clear of swishy doors.
When she looked out of the classroom window,
her smile was the first ship that ever set sail
for a land that caught the sextant napping.
It wasn’t love. We were too young
for those enticing griefs. It was simple friendliness
such as you might trade with a stranger
on a train through a night that a birthday of stars
keeps from black, or someone next to you in a bar
who says, oh yes, I’ve been there
and spins a butterfly bond for two.
I don’t know where she is now.
At some point the ageless fog
shrouded her height and size
and bore her away. I like to think
that she ended up with a hand
on the gate of a house in a mountain lane,
another day folded neat and slow,
treating the very last of colour –
a dusk-prinked runnel, an extravagant leaf –
to that same soft wave-riding smile.
Rosemary Norman: An Undivided Heart“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them;
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel 11:19
Our hearts are of flesh, the fattish man
with a paper carrier bag from a well-known
London outfitter, whose companion
nods while he talks on about investment
speculating once more what confidence is.
And two sisters? lovers? Young women
who shop together and dress in black jeans,
quilted black jackets and cerise crocs
so pleasantly easy to slip your feet into
and out of. Sometimes on the tube
one voice selects itself and for a moment
you overhear perfectly, miss nothing
till there’s break-up from the train.
A Hassid with his first beard. His luggage
won’t settle and his ear-locks fall forward
as he attends to it. O heart and flesh,
disorder is in the commonest of journeys,
you leave, you’re brought elsewhere.
What station is it, one, has a fire exit
of 193 steps that we’re warned not to use
unless necessary? Depth is given in terms
of height, equivalent to “n” storeys
which the two young women would run up
in black socks, their pink shoes in hand.
Freya Bantiff: Reasons Not to Visit the Rijksmuseum with the Wrong Person
Man sleeps in front of “The Night Watch”
Catching the eye of a Greek statue, I know it. Paris
is baby boyish, dummy apple clutched tight
as choice, and I hate him a little – aware that in another
room, I have left the man I brought here finding
himself amongst the flintlock pistols, wheel lock
rifles, matchlock muskets, and anything
that has a touch-light trigger. I have tried
talk. It has passed in bullet-hole full stop, blown up
in the great between-us, and now there are deader
things than autopsy or mummy. There is
a stuffed hand leaking through skin bandages. I don’t
try to touch it. Art holds feeling and this
doesn’t. Even the protective lighting, halo dimmed,
won’t hide it. There is damage occurring in disinterest,
so I distract with the etching of a doctor, made
from lines incised into metal using acid, as if healing
requires hurt. The man I brought is still
looking at weaponry while I walk to the gallery’s
end, where there is a saint’s head on a platter. Salome,
eyes averted. Salome, carrying the weight
of blood loss. Salome, smiling beyond the frame,
unafraid to cause pain, because she danced so nicely,
and the king promised her anything. And the king
asked her, what do you want? What do you
want? and I know the answer. Her hips swing, bellish,
ringing, as I exit the hall, oh so aware of my footsteps.
Jill Sharp: Bucket ListsGolden Shovel after T S Eliot
I’ve been browsing the bookshop shelves, and
I learn there are 100 places I must visit in the
world, essential to see before my journey’s end.
There are things I’d not have thought of
were it not for these helpful tomes: 100 museums all
over the planet; 100 unmissable walks in our
islands alone, and thousands to be exploring
around the globe. These titles insist that I will
not have lived fully, must inevitably be
haunted by regret, unless I manage to
‘make memories’ before I arrive
at my final destination. But I wonder – where
are the books that explain the 100 ways we
can find the time and money to get started
on ticking off these great adventures, and
if we’re busy taking selfies, will we even know
we’re there? As for that contrail, memory, does the
pattern not lose definition, fade from its place
in the blue? We could do with 100 ways for
looking again at what’s familiar, where the
life we take for granted is a wish-list’s first
adventure in whatever remains of our time.
Matthew Paul : Picasso in EnglandThe World Peace Congress, November 1950
Welcomed on platform 3 at Sheffield Victoria by the sorriest bunch
of white carnations, Picasso bearhugs Ronksley, railway union official.
The entourage consists only of a wiry translator; Picasso knows no English
beyond basic warm words. After the obligatory photo, Ronksley asks
if he could have the flowers back, for presentation to some other dignitary.
Picasso screws up his face like the Weeping Woman, then belly-laughs.
....
*
....
He tubthumps his speech to the jampacked City Hall, a heartfelt refrain
of ‘Mes camarades’ understood by even the most monoglot delegates.
His duende scintillates. Sweeping his trademark dove upon a giant board,
Picasso repeats the trick later, on paper napkins, between slurps of tepid
brown Windsor soup. He waves away the offer of ‘a tart for the night’.
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘one must remain faithful not just to the cause.’
Jean Bohuslav: mother-in-law
you english where your parents born
where you live what your father do your
mother work where she work you don’t
drink coffee what you drink
gluten what gluten dairy free what kind
of person you bring home phewy these
people make me sick don’t eat this don’t
eat that stupid
lazy people they don’t clean like I do
dusting properly do anything properly my
husband laugh say you a ciganka in my
country you gypsy witch long black hair
where you get that ring I only ever wear
gold never anything else never
Paul Stephenson: Double French
I’d just started A-levels. Hills Road Sixth Form.
Was on my way to Double French. The bell had rung
and it was heaving. There were people going up
and coming down the corridor. And someone said,
Mrs. Thatcher was out. Gone. Not prime minister anymore.
It was like the Queen had died. I got to Double French.
Not in the main building, one of those green terrapins.
And the class started like a regular class. And nobody
said anything about Mrs Thatcher. We didn’t stop.
We did French. The French teacher, forget her surname,
but she was Jan and was tall and always holding her hand
on her hip (She lent me her book on New Wave cinema
and I saw her on the bus once after her husband had died),
she just carried on with whatever we had been doing.
Either the Impressionists or problems in the banlieues
of Paris or the Occupation of France. It was like nobody
around me knew. Maybe they would only find out later,
after Double French. I got home and started my homework
and saw the secretaries through the windows crying
Picasso: Weeping Woman (alternative version)
and watched Mrs. Thatcher leaving Number 10 in tears
and getting into the car, crying through the back seat window.
And I cried too. I suppose I loved her. She was all I knew.
Sue Norton: Miss Rowell and the Parabola
Small, thin, grey hair neat in a bun,
a spinster teacher like so many of ours
because of the war. When she smiled
friendliness crinkled her eyes. She never
laughed at you or called you dunce at maths.
One day she stood next to the blackboard
with a long piece of chalk and tried to throw it
up and across, as close to the surface as she could
to make a parabola. It didn’t leave the faintest
mark of course, but she was clever. This image
of her trying to record a curve has stayed with me
though I’ve never needed to explain a parabola.
I was always frightened of maths, but with her
I scored 80%. When she retired, I was a lost cause.
Sue Norton: The Bird in the Box
Mr Watkins, our physics teacher, asks
if I take a bird
and cage it in an empty box
and the bird flies around
without touching any side of the box
will the box with the flying bird
weigh the same
as the box with no bird inside?
I’m wondering
how the bird (what kind?)
will manage
in its flap and flurry
not to hit any part of the box
I’m hearing
the bird’s squawks
and I’d like to be able to give it
a crumb of comfort
but lesson over says the bell
and our class takes wing
leaving Mr Watkins
his question and the bird, forever
up in the air
Marjorie Sweetko: About to be seduced by a glass bird
Pick of the flock perched on a rickety shelf
behind the junk shop window, she plays it cocky,
fixes me with her amber pin-eye and fires
a loaded bid straight at my avid heart.
She’d be fleet, a spark from a craftsman’s breath,
a woodland alarm, beating tail-feather morse
faster than heart’s hammer watching her prey
meet death. The tilt of her head, disarming,
announces her gamble: that I’ll place her in my cupped hand,
that its warmth will melt her pose, that we’ll by-pass
nature’s laws and the glassmaker’s art.
Once I felt her tremble, she knows I’d be hers.
Ruth Aylett: Afterwards
Then spring fell silent, leaving only videos.
So the very best bio-mimetic engineers
were located, recruited, funded.
Watched whole sets frame by frame.
The goldsmithed birds of Byzantium
only sang but these had to inhabit the sky.
They crafted jointed skeletons
from light-weight aerospace titanium,
3D-printed feathers from carbon fibre,
used tiny but powerful motors,
the battery technology
perfected for mobile phones.
This high-tech ingenuity
did not impress those remembering before
who made unhelpful negative comments.
Said nu-bird ring-tone song was no match
for the music from double-reeded throats;
noted jerkiness in the wing beats;
complained about the short fly-times
and the long periods
when they sat on power lines recharging;
pointed out ‘swifts’ had multiple collisions,
that nu-starling murmurations were small,
spread much too thin and lethargic.
Scientists shrugged. We told you
they said. But you would not accept
any drastic changes to your lives.
All you can have now is this.
Seán Street: The Kingsway RumbleIona Brown records The Lark Ascending, Kingsway Hall, London, 1972
Inside a resonance, somewhere beyond and above,
a silver presence. You can hear degrees of distance
ignited by her strings. So the lark ascends, but there’s
the rumour of distant thunder playing in counterpoint.
Listen. Turn the speakers up. There it is, under her hand,
beginning one minute fifteen seconds in, what they called
‘The Kingsway Rumble’. Why did they not stop, tell the maestro
‘let’s go for another take’, hold her bow, mid-flight?
Beneath the perfect acoustic, a branch of the Piccadilly
had work to do, places to go, and the tape machine heard
larks over Holborn and iron in the dark –
light at the tunnel’s end – heard and held it all.
Was the engineer too rapt by the climbing song
to notice the burrowing below? Whatever, no regrets
that in the event it’s all been saved in ‘70s analogue,
this chance duet of sky and stygian music. No regrets.
Imagine it’s 1720, a room in Weimar,
imagine Bach’s D minor Partita – the Chaconne –
imagine a sound man there: what would we give
for a carriage on the cobbles in the street outside?
Music is always about its passing moment;
everything that has ever happened,
happened in a place, happening in sound,
ringing through a room inside its time.
Frozen sound before they closed the branch line down,
before they demolished Kingsway Hall, before she died,
leaving these two lost spaces suspended, with her hand
coaxing a bird up out of darkness into clear blue air.
Note:for many years, London’s Kingsway Hall was used as a recording location, in spite of its notorious susceptibility to the sound of Underground trains. Sound engineers named it ‘The Kingsway Rumble.’
.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad: Interlude
You used to love listening to your radiogram as you painted
now the pathways are no longer there
it’s difficult for the music to reach
art magazines with too much colour you find blinding
but you enjoy our daily pastime of creating collages
from newspaper photographs pictures of the sea at Shingle Street
sheepdogs working a flock kittens toying with a ball of wool
a murmuration of starlings rising above distant trees
I talk you through each choice I’ve made I don’t know if you really hear me
but I believe you enjoy the calm of my voice
once you pencilled in the shape of a bush on the page
and I thought you’d found your calling again
but that was the only drawing you made you watch a lot of television
not really taking it in falling asleep most of the time
the remote is difficult to understand
today we listen to your granddaughter singing in the broadcast of a concert*
her voice soaring a free spirit on the wing.
*Clean Bandit and friends with the BBC Philharmonic 10 September 2014
Noel King: Curtains
The blue set you bought at Dan Fitzgerald & Sons in the hot July of 1976
before the American visitors visit, has hung in your spare room since.
The curtain on the left exposed to early-in-the-day sun, has faded
almost to white. The right one retains its rich deep blue.
The curtains reflected the two sides of your brain.
With you gone, we take the curtains down:
one good enough for a charity shop,
the other to mop floors perhaps
or tear into rags.
Mary Franklin: Clock
Hearing the grandfather clock
chime four from its alcove
by the shady-windowed
living room door prompts me
to contemplate that my days
are regularly winding down
though no sound will signal
quarter, half, three-quarters
or hour when my allotted time
will end. I cannot be rewound.
But I must break this reverie
of focusing on the future.
I don’t possess foresight,
the gift of prophesy nor have
premonitions come to me.
From the window I see
the sun cocooned behind fluffy
cumulus clouds rounded on top
like cotton balls and floating
close together in the blue sky.
For now I won’t allow
a chiming clock to threaten
my tranquility though I know
dark clouds will gather in time
but not yet, not yet.
Alex Josephy: The Quiet Carriage
As usual, you’re dozing with your back to the direction
of travel; I’m opposite, forward-facing.
Outside the window everything is green and gold,
a tingle of November sun across marshes.
I check our tickets on my phone, I check the time,
I make a cushion of my rolled-up cardigan.
You lean back, light warming your face,
fingers interlaced, eyes half-closed.
I watch what’s coming, a sequence of little shocks
flicking through on an endless reel.
You observe what’s already passed us by;
parallels converge into blur.
Woods, wind turbines, an idle tractor, late roses
against a wall, the details of the route
confront me, bigger, more insistent the closer
they come. From where you sit they slip away,
moment by moment less important;
almost impossible to name a shape or colour.
What would happen if we swapped seats?
Would you be overwhelmed? Would I suffer
heart-sinking loss? The train passes a pylon farm,
approaches the city, and after all it’s you with our cases
already at the door, while I scan the table,
the rack, for anything we might have left behind.
Mike Wilson: Wild Horses
That not-mine thing on the ground?
Someone else’s wallet.
But clock-wheel teeth of right and wrong don’t mesh.
The decision to steal slips into our pocket.
Conscience runs a tin pan back and forth
across prison cell bars, calling for help.
The Guardian Angels don’t move.
It’s one of those moments now,
an afternoon, four-fifteen to be exact, in September.
Her child plays pick-up football in the park
on lush green grass under blue-eye sky.
Her husband’s at the office, working a meaningful job,
laughing with gregarious people.
She’s home alone, sitting on a cold nest.
Her pock of emptiness is about to hatch.
She steps through the kitchen to the utility room,
opens the cabinet her husband made from scrap lumber,
looks behind Ajax, Chlorox, and rags
on the bottom shelf, where the liquor hides.
She reaches for the amber hand she knows
will stroke her soul with soothing fingers, poured.
She unscrews the cap, sniffs the genie,
releasing wild horses that never stop running.
Guardian Angels watch with uncountable eyes.
Sometimes, inexplicably, a passerby
grabs an old lady’s arm and jerks her back
from the crosswalk, and the speeding car sails past.
Sometimes not.
Matt Gilbert: Spring gathering
Iceland bag dangled from her wrist, a woman
stoops to pluck at crocuses, cornered on the brink
of the park. Scattered, as though spilt there by a startled
florist. Bike-basket overturned. Accident,
unseen. A nervous child looks on, glances
my way from a muddy scar of path – multiple desires
short-circuiting the grass. Her mother’s busy, scooping crumbs
of purple comfort to carry home. Reminds me of a morning
once at school, a girl, face-bowed, made to stand throughout
assembly. Humiliated, for picking flowers from someone
else’s garden. In memory of distant guilt, I blurt: ‘please don’t
take them all’,’ but cannot explain the reason.
S C Flynn: This Evening
There are so many details to choose from,
but these are the ones we will notice.
Autumn has turned back, but winter walks on
in chilly loneliness, a signpost
leading to an abandoned garden
where fruit trees, once carefully tended,
keep producing for as long as they can
and the vegetables support the snails
that feed in turn the chickens running free.
The clock in the house wound down and silent.
Blossom Hibbert: A slice of bread in sparta
Do you really think so? I am all of those things? A bag
of salted cashews with their jackets on and my steel
tin of tobacco. Cross legged in the petrol station after
three long, hard days of marching a foreign city
on the edge of a smile. There’s trouble fighting through
the skin of his own front teeth. I wear a neat little dress
and climb the 10 hour bus seat to an unknown greek
village, where an old lavender woman cares. Just like
kicking white legs in the ocean, unaware of eels and
jellyfish slipping past naked flesh, I fall asleep. It’s quite -
darling, really – my heart. Under all that hard bone. Upon
waking, the woman's breakfast table is still warm from
milky leftovers of light. It's not like you to leave me so
down and out.
Charlotte Gann: pattern hid behind the cotton wool
(Virginia Woolf)
I could walk on the shoulders of those
summer trees, I tell myself, looking out
of my high window. I habitually tell
myself such things, write a story: whether
to worry, whether to stop. Whether what’s
happening now is fruitful or terrible.
If we three were characters from a film,
what film might that be? Walking the white
path by the river yesterday, late, to escape
the heat, why is a grown son walking
with us, on a Sunday evening in May?
What’s the story – as we follow the
sack-cloth path, and comment on the clumps
of scarlet poppies punctuating buttercups,
almost arguing, as the hill folds in
and we approach the town. What movie
even is this? Have I seen it?
And if the lorry driver – who leaps now
into my mind, as he leapt from his cab
one morning I walked to school aged twelve
and, unthinkingly, stepped off the pavement
into his path, terrifying him – IF, instead
of yelling at me, he hadn’t braked
in time and accidentally struck me –
in that moment that morning when our
stories almost collided – of course neither
of my sons would’ve even happened.
We wouldn’t have walked along that
same pavement yesterday, chatting.
And I wouldn’t be standing here, now,
in my summer window. Picturing three
figures toil up the road towards me.
Charlotte Gann: Loops
This pavement is a messy hopscotch of pinks
and greys, with a low kind wall at its steep end.
I walk along it most days now – on my loop.
And what I sometimes picture, as I hurry to
the tarmac on the other side, is dots and dots of
deep red blood, and they carry on up the hill
in little splotches, an erratic trail on my mind’s eye
for nearly half a century now. I don’t remember much –
this isn’t such an obvious piece of family history –
not like, say, the fact I lived my first eighteen
years on this road. Or that my sixteen-year old
big brother had his awful accident just here.
Or that our beloved golden dog suffered
a heart attack on this hill, pissing himself
where he lay, darker trickle on the grey.
No, I don’t remember much: one girl, two boys –
siblings – all three with lovely dark curly
hair, unlike mine which was straight and fair.
One of them cut his foot or ankle – how?
On broken glass. Where? Why? ((Was it our fault?))
I just recall the feeling – of something being
very wrong, and dangerous and frightening.
I think my mother said something worrisome,
and that’s still there, and how I found it puzzling –
and then those dot dot dots which somebody
had to follow to find this hurt child before it’s too late,
as if, perhaps, an angry adult said that to me, or to us?
Either way, many days, as I cross that corner,
my mind still finds those staccato spots of blood
as well as all the meshing of the rest.
Michael Foley: Fernando Pessoa Celebrates Failure and Disappointment
Employee, neighbour, suitor, friend,
I play the allotted roles, just like the others
… Except all at once,
Simultaneously the philosopher dreaming in his study
And the errand boy seducing his daughter in the kitchen.
So of course I become everyone on this tram,
The shop assistants, filing clerks and minor officials
Whose banal is sublime. How I cherish them, my vegetables!
My heart is as boundless as the universe
… But darker and deeper …
And now the poor quarter where children with cut knees
And dirty mouths play in the gutter, and a washerwoman
Beats wet clothes with a stone, in a metal tank, singing,
Happiness granted only to those unaware of it,
Gifts only for those who have not asked for anything.
Ask and infrequently shall you be given.
Seek and you shall rarely find.
Knock loudly and often but few doors will open.
More shadowy failures than shining successes.
More mute disappointment than noisy rejoicing.
Success loves to credit its talent and work
But always a hundred as good or better
Fail for want of the crucial factor –
Contacts, fashion, stroke of luck –
And therefore die on lonely arses in the dark.
So I go down the dim odorous hallways and into
The smoke-stained rooms that smell of sweat and fried food,
Where endlessly, in acid choking reflux, the failures repeat,
And I bestow on them the alms of my own desolation,
Not even bookkeeper but assistant bookkeeper.
The adult condition is disappointment, the grey dim
Too dismal to be even emotion, the dispiriting theme
No one wants to explore, and so I have to myself,
Disappointment my teacher, my secret companion,
As hand in hand through failing Lisbon we go,
And I learn disappointment’s reward
Of atrocious lucidity that laughs from
Behind a high window at the prodigal
Absurdity of the antic world. Blessed are
The lucid for they know the jests of God.
So I ease the pain of the wound of failure
With the balm of understanding God
… And a game sun attempting to waken the dead.
The city’s torpor paralyses even its river
But sunlight cavorts on the somnolent water.
My comrades, my fellows, what if we in the shadows,
The hidden confraternity, the community of strangers,
Emerged together into the sunlight
And made our shared fate not a shame
But the source of a new solidarity and pride?
Come forth, O multitude unknown to the multitude,
And appreciate the dignity of failure, endow it
With grandeur, raise awareness of defeat
Like a victory banner. I would lead you, except
That I could never join a communal endeavour.
But now when I take out a cigarette
I am not the assistant bookkeeper
But a reverent Head of State
Solemnly lighting the Eternal Flame
At the Tomb of the Unknown Failure.
Note - this poem does not quote from Pessoa’s poetry except for a few phrases from
The Book of Disquiet. But it is based on the tone of his work, his personality and
personal circumstances. He was indeed an assistant bookkeeper (according to
The Book of Disquiet) and was addicted to role playing and pseudonyms, writing as
four different poets. A mad idea – it’s hard enough to be one poet.
Kate Maxwell: Basking
The mogul’s getting hitched again
at ninety-three. He can’t seem to make one last
past his plans for an afternoon nap
and world domination.
He’s obviously outfoxed us all
bought some miraculous elixir
promising another century or two
for him to bask; enjoy the world he’s etched
into his own tabloid of alternative
facts and titillation: an empire
so layered in flashy fabrications
that he cannot place
where he left his last wife
or whether he had one at all.
But a cold sharp air
trapped deep within his hardened
throat, dull thud inside his scaly chest
the whoosh and wail of sour sighs
which no employee, pleasure-giver
or physician can relieve
he cannot bear alone.
Each crevice sprawled across his chin
a final line in the sand for each bride
who wasn’t what he ordered
too tall, too much, too mortal
and maybe too unwilling
to take that final step across the threshold
of a split-tongued forever
hold his hand at each rasping breath—
jewelled hand to shrivelled chest—
when darkness comes.
Janet Dean: Queen
Today I hear that Christine has two months left to live.
In the same call John says our bees have swarmed the pear tree again.
Only yesterday I saw their daughter stand on the step and open the door
with her own key. She had always rung the bell.
Kevin has come without his ladder to catch the swarm
and coax it in to the nuc. We are back from buying frames for it.
We’re all upset, says John; you and I are still stunned by the news,
sorry that our wayward bees have robbed Christine of a day of calm.
When the Queen dies, the bees make a new queen. This baby
leaves the hive, using her own key to open the future.
Note:nuc – a box for holding the nucleus of a new hive.
Wendy Klein: Feathers, Flowers, or Flames
…confused and unaccountably frightening…(art critic, The Washington Post)
Baggy-eyed and half-smiling his ageing face
emerges from the pinks and reds
of the artist’s wash – a palette neither pastel
or lambent, the shade of a rose garden
fading in late summer, a uniform daubed in
as if by accident.
What is the artist saying?
The texture hints at feathers or flames,
fronded foliage or pumped-up plumage,
a king emerging in cardinal colours,
a bemused Jonah of Arc?
The hands, the only other flesh
on display, are huge. For what? For the laying on
of what? Or whom? Horses, dogs, grandchildren,
or the absent-minded adjusting of the zipper
on his flies?
A king out of his time,
as all kings are, of course.
Wendy Klein: Life Study, 4pm Thursday
Here is a man on a bus, his sandy beard
unevenly trimmed. His feet shuffle,
in an effort to hide odd socks,
scuffed brogues.
He breathes out stale tobacco, stale beer,
covers his mouth with a hand so delicate
it startles; looks around, hangdog,
eyes filled with fear he’s caused offence.
He pulls a threadbare tweed coat around him,
hands trembling with the effort to fasten
its two remaining buttons, scarred leather --
hanging by a few threads.
A woman across the aisle can’t take her eyes off him;
stares, looks away, stares, looks away, as if scared
to be caught being rude.
Her hat, a scarlet flowerpot, is loose on her head,
allows grey curls to escape down the back of her neck
across her left cheek. Maybe she has a son his age,
a missing son, maybe he is the missing son,
or looks like him.
She catches his glance, and her cheeks pinken
into a crooked smile, which he mirrors, chip-toothed,
reaching up to press the buzzer for his stop;
flaps his fingers as he passes her, in what might be
a wave.
A cough stops him as he steps onto the pavement,
trips up on a loose sole, steadies himself against
a lamp post, taps his pockets for change, tobacco
or his pipe which might be a Big Ben Mercury,
scratched and well-broken-in, or a vintage Ben Wade Briar.
The bus moves on before I can see. The woman
dabs at her eyes with a crumpled lace hanky, kissed
with drying-out lipstick.
Tim Cunningham: Gentleman on the Escalator
At the escalator top, steel teeth
Salivated in anticipation.
The gentleman lay helpless,
Prone on the rising conveyor
Like some mediaeval penitent.
And he would have been sorry indeed
Had I not grabbed him by the shoulders
And rescued him from a King’s Cross grindstone.
I propped him up against the wall,
His flushed face and buckled knees
Incongruous with Saville Row suit,
Waistcoat, cravat and the yellow
Flourish of handkerchief
Peeping out from his top pocket.
He declined help to a taxi,
His wine-rinsed words wrestling
With a different priority.
‘It’s bad enough being found drunk,
But being picked up by a bloody Irishman!’
Declan Geraghty: Bobby
Me uncle Bobby
died ten years ago
in fact
early next month he’ll be dead ten years to the day
I was sure I saw him at a bus stop this afternoon
like he’d been resurrected
or he’d faked his own death
and was coming back to laugh at us all
at how gullible we were
and cameramen and sound crew from some obscure hidden camera show
would come from behind the bus stop and laugh at me,
and I’d laugh with them
and it would be all OK
somehow forgotten
and we’d all get on with our lives
like the ten years was more like ten months
I was certain the man at the bus stop was Bobby
the same beard
the same stance
his face had all the same angles
even down to how he clutched his cigarette
fist like
each drag taken in
as if contemplating war
for the next move on the battlefield
as I got closer to the man I realised it wasn’t him
just someone that looked like him
I wanted to say hello
how’s things?
I wanted to chat with him
even though I didn’t know him
but I didn’t
I just kept walking
early next month Bobby will be dead ten years to the day.
Steven Taylor: A Fine Drizzle
I’m sitting in my memory
of the back bar in a tavern with Pete the pensioner
who, as he gets drunker swears more loudly and
aggressively at the gangsters sorted round a table.
They were hoping for a quiet evening without wives
or girlfriends, perhaps a leisurely game of darts, pool,
or simple gossip, but Pete’s relentless. Pete doesn’t
like them, gangsters, pretending to be normal, despite
their gold and swagger. He’s only saying what everyone
is thinking. He accuses them of rank hypocrisy, cruelty
meanness, double standards. A lack of moral fibre.
Eventually, one of the gangsters has a word
and so the landlord takes away Pete’s pint
and tells him that he’s banned, barred, until
further notice. I think it was a Wednesday.
I remember it was raining, softly.
Pete was 80 when this happened.
He’d absconded from the hospice where he was meant
to be dying, and met me in the North London. An Irish
pub in Kilburn. When we’d been thrown out of there
we moved across to this one. It was Pete’s suggestion.
He said it was where the gangsters used to drink
when he was driving for them, and if anyone
deserved a rollicking, they deserved a rollicking.
Ingrates.
More than half came to Pete’s funeral
and shook my hand and said how they remembered me,
looking after Pete that evening. They still talked about it.
Fearless.
Pete, in his dressing gown and flannelette pyjamas.
Norbert Hirschhorn: The Dough Not Taken
Two banks stood in a neighborhood, and sorry I couldn’t heist
from both and be one robber, long I stood and stared down the
road as far as I could so not to get caught through any sloth.
Thus, I aimed at one within the square seeming to have more
loot to its name with marble columns showing less wear,
though as for the custom going there, people entered both just
about the same.
But both that morning had a cop stay out front, with guns and
batons that thwack. So, I kept them for another day! Yet
knowing how way leads on to way I doubted I should ever come
back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere decades and
decades hence: Two big banks stood in a square, and I - I held
up neither, which, by the by, averted any consequence.
Norbert Hirschhorn: Twenty-Third Psalm For The Twenty-First Century
1. The carrion bird is my jailer; He leaves me bereft.
2. He maketh me lie down on bombed concrete, drink foul water.
3. He destroyeth my family, erases our name for His sadistic sake.
4. Yea, as I lie in the shadow of impending death, His despotic eye trembleth me,
His beak & claws lacerate my flesh.
5. To the derision of my enemies, He tippeth my head into oblivion. His hatred
runneth over.
6. Surely evil & cruelty will follow to the end of my days, & buried in this charnel
Hilary Thompson: Cold War
February. We eat at our favourite restaurant.
You smile at me often before I leave.
I didn’t want to travel East
first to Brussels, then Cologne, then the train for Warsaw.
In Cologne it’s raining.
In the cathedral I light a candle to you.
Back on the train, lunch served by a waiter in limp clothes
grey veal sad and tough, potatoes, boiled,
as we trundle, rattling like old bones
on the GDR railway across the northern plain.
We slow, feel the brake pressing me against the worn-out seat.
Probing searchlights rake the windows in slow motion
solid wooden watchtowers lean in
silhouetted in barren light.
Post-war, near-war, cold war
nothing prepares for the guns
and guards wrenching open the compartment door, hard.
The partitions shudder.
Passports snatched by summoning hands.
The sharp fear of force.
Nothing is said.
Vacant eyes in fixed faces
the scathing disembodied emptiness of power.
Looking through the window streaked with old dirt and winter rain,
watch as a silent German Shepherd caught in the lights
slides under the carriage sent in by its handler
uniform helmet gun.
And we wait.
I think of you and the restaurant and the fathomless comfort of peace.
Remember all the way to West Berlin.
Elizabeth Rimmer: The Good Neighbours
We know they’re here, unseen mostly, a law
unto themselves. They keep strange hours.
Their food is not for us. They do no harm,
not really, with their music, beauty, mischief,
horror – scattered leavings of feasts and feuds -
bones, feathers, empty shells in the grass.
Those who see them do not tell, those
who tell do not thrive afterwards. Much
depends on pleasing them, leaving gifts
of milk and apples, seeds and mealworms.
We love to see them, but we do not get
too close. We wish they were elsewhere.
Colin Pink: Shadows
The shadows try to warm themselves by the fire
see them flicker in the light of dancing flames.
It’s cold being a shadow, it feels weary sprawled
across the floor like an outline in a crime scene.
They’re tired of being dragged along behind us
like a reluctant child or shoved ahead like a scout.
Even shadows die these days, torn apart from
the bodies to which they were firmly attached.
Catherine Redford: after the end
locked away in a rusting safe
the papers that once claimed these fields
grow yellow and ripen
then rot
grass crosses thresholds
trespassing under the barn door
unconcerned by the pair of black boots
mimicking authority
a man’s shadow scorched behind them
on the wall
the world is husk
the earth unpeopled
land now undivided
edges unravel
then merge
hogweed invades wheat
thistle chokes barley
baked footprints beneath nettles
on untrodden paths
dissolve across seasons
like empty towns
on the horizon
Tony Steven Williams: Human Dichotomy
From my lakeside vantage,
office blocks, apartments, shops,
cafes, galleries, fitness centres
command the far shore skyline.
Not so long ago, cranes leant over
them like proud concerned parents,
not ready to let go, always prepared
to lend a mechanical arm. Now,
the buildings are mature adults,
crisp, confident, shining in sunlight.
I marvel at the complexities
of plumbing, electrics, carpentry,
carparking, masonry, glass . . .
all those skills required to fashion
such architecture from wet, dirty
excavated holes to be occupied
by a growing community. We
have come such a long way.
Yet . . .
projectiles could suddenly fall,
human to human, crushing us all.
Danielle Hope: Mrs Uomo visits Myddelton House GardensIt catches the heart off guard Mrs Uomo thinks –
this warm smell of May, lilacs bursting open,
a purple rhododendron. Newly arrived swallows
dive at midges above the pond.
Later in the crocus-patterned Gussy Bowles tearoom,
relishing her raspberry and ginger swirl cake,
she imagines those swallows’ journeys –
migrating flocks looking down on oceans, ships,
leaping dolphins, whales blasting out their hot
alabaster sea-breath, coastlines, waterfalls –
the swallows flutter to feed in reedbeds
before their wide sweep to dodge around mountains,
deserts, windstorms and around rockets and
fighter jets. They fly over the heads of
okapis, elephants, antelopes and giraffes, cross
borders, green forests where guerrillas hide, on over
machine guns, bombed out cities, bits of buildings,
towns of ochre tents and the wide, winding, slow
rivers of people. Then Mrs Uomo carries her emptied
teacup to the counter. Frogs are ribbitting at dusk.
Nolo Segundo: After Costco, Before Ukraine
You saw the lines weren’t too long
so you went for the gas first---
spend a little time, save a lot of
money you thought. But it took
much longer than you expected
so by the time you went into the
giant store, you were feeling like
a crab trapped in a net as you
wrestled through the weekend
horde of bargain hunters….
Finally at home, you plopped
down in the comfy chair as
the nightly news came on and
sipped the fresh brewed French
roast and ate a piece of rich
chocolate cake you bought at
Costco and felt a bit sad for
those poor people in Ukraine
as you watched war in hi-def.
Still, the thought uppermost in
your mind, as your eyes scanned
so many dead bodies lying quiet
in the streets like stones thrown
randomly, was just how damn
good the coffee was and how
much you had saved going to
the big box store….
Fran Fernández Arce: Medicine
I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t there but this is what I heard.
I heard a wound rots faster when left unattended.
I heard a wound becomes a rumour becomes a thought
becomes a fire when given the wrong kind of medicine.
I heard the right kind of medicine comes in tasting like a rumble
and a rumble is a suit made of anger that most people cannot afford.
I heard anger turns to rage before you realise
time has already passed. I heard them chanting on the streets:
not thirty pesos, thirty years.
I heard the broken-down words written in asphalt, cobblestones:
they are killing us for profit, they are blinding us for fun.
I heard the voices from the faces painted on the walls,
names of daughters and sons from absentee parents
dressed in smart suits, drinking imported rum.
I wasn’t there but I was there before.
Philip Dunkerley: Oblivion
The fact that Stalin’s despotic rule
resulted in the death of between 3.3 million
and 7.5 million people in the Ukraine,
and 1 to 2 million people in Kazakhstan,
or 14 million people across the Soviet Union,
and the fact that I was made explicitly aware
of this rather more than fifty years ago,
but had forgotten completely and managed,
somehow, to go quite happily on
with my life, until reminded of it just now,
probably provides more insight into
the mysterious dark matter, that makes up
about 85% of everything in the universe,
than achieved so far by theoretical physicists.
Philip Dunkerley: I Want You to Close Your Eyes and Imagine
You are here with friends sharing your poems.
Suddenly, there's an explosion, and you know,
from the direction and an inexplicable instinct,
that this time it’s your home that has been hit.
You shout out ‘No! No! No!’ and set off running,
your friends run after you. Yes! it was your home!
Look at the dust rising! Neighbours are there,
and you can see straight into your living room,
smashed furniture, the TV, the pictures, water
gushing from the broken pipes of your bathroom,
there’s no sign of your wife, or of your children.
‘Oh! God in Heaven’, you cry, ‘Save them!’
But they tell you ‘She’s dead, your wife is dead!’
And they can’t find your daughter. Your son,
he’s injured but alive, they’re caring for him.
It’s all a nightmare of grief and rubble.
Judy Chicago Weeping Malehead — if only they would … (detail)
What will you do? Where will you start?
She cannot be dead - it’s not possible,
and where is your daughter? You call her name
again and again, ‘Oh my daughter, my girl!’
Your son, now in your arms, stunned, hurt,
but alive, breathing! You hold him close.
Where is your daughter? You fear the worst.
Now open your eyes and remember.
It really happened.
contains graphic descriptions of violent incidents
which occurred in Somalia in 2008
I am thirteen. I have never been alone with a boy.
I have never touched a boy.
Please throw the last rock.
My parents are good.
They said I should stay indoors.
There was chaos in the streets.
Please throw the last rock.
I was travelling to visit grandmother.
I was stopped by three men.
They had guns. I was frightened.
The men attacked me.
They pushed themselves into me. They hurt me.
They pushed themselves into my bottom. They hurt me.
Please throw the last rock.
I was bleeding and I hurt.
My aunt took me to the police station.
We told them what had happened.
They said come back in a few days.
When we went back they said I had committed adultery.
They could see I had committed adultery.
I did not understand.
They had not arrested any men.
Please throw the last rock.
I was guilty of a sin.
A few mornings later a car went round with a loudspeaker.
I was still hurting from what the men did.
In the afternoon men came and took me to the stadium.
I struggled and screamed.
There were lots of men there.
They forced me into a hole.
I was buried in sand.
I was buried up to my neck.
I could not move.
There were many men round me holding rocks.
I screamed for help.
Please throw the last rock.
The first rock hit me above my eye.
Blood ran over my eye.
I could not wipe it away.
The second rock hit the side of my head.
There was a ringing sound in my ear.
I am thirteen.
I want to be with my parents.
I love my parents.
I feel more rocks hitting me.
My head is hurting all over.
I cannot see.
Please throw the last rock.
I am guilty of a sin.
I want God to forgive me.
The men are laughing.
More rocks hit my head.
I do not cry any more.
Please throw the last rock.
I hurt badly and I cannot see and I cannot move.
The rocks have stopped.
I hear a man’s voice and women’s voices.
I am pulled out of the hole.
The women sound like nurses.
One says I am still alive.
The man says they must bury me again.
Please throw the last rock.
I hurt everywhere.
It is dark.
Please throw the last rock.
A heavy rock lands on top of my head.
It is like an explosion of light.
God is great. I love God.
God will forgive me.
I am my soul.
My soul is safe with God.
Thank you God, for throwing the last rock.
Fran Fernández Arce is a Chilean poet currently living in the intersection between Suffolk, England, and Santiago, Chile. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, and The Honest Ulsterman.
Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh and her poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink and Queen of Infinite Space were published in 2021. For more seehttps://ruthaylett.org
Freya Bantiff won the New Poets Prize, placed third in the National Poetry Competition and was highly commended in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry. She won the Bridport Poetry Prize (18-25s) and the Canterbury Poet of the Year competition. Freya won second prize in the Bedford Poetry Competition and was winner of the Walter Swan Poetry Prize (18-25s).
Jean Bohuslav’s poems are often influenced by mindfulness philosophy which she teaches. She contributes to Kissing Dynamite, Meniscus Literary Review, Spelt Journal, The Interpreters House, Poetry On The Move, Poetry Wivenhoe, and Mad Swirl and has poetry pamphlets published by Ginninderra Press
Graham Buchan has published poetry (five books and a pamphlet), short fiction, travel writing and a large number of reviews of film, art, theatre and literature. Prior to retirement he was a freelance film-maker and prior to that a Chemical Engineer.
Tim Cunningham is Limerick-born, and has worked in education in Dublin, London, Delaware and Essex and now lives in Westport, County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. He has had nine poetry collections published since 2001, the most recent being Peristeria .which was launched by Revival Press in April 2023
Janet Dean is a writer from Barnsley who lives in York. Her poems have been shortlisted (2012) and Highly Commended (2022) in the Bridport Prize, awarded second prize in the Yeovil Poetry Competition (2020), included in the Northern Poetry Library’s Poem of the North (2018), and appear in print & online in Alchemy Spoon, Acumen, Ink Sweat and Tears and Black Nore Review.
Philip Dunkerley lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire, where he runs a local poetry group. He takes part in open-mic readings and other activities whenever he gets the chance. A fair number of his poems have made their way into magazines, webzines and anthologies – London Grip, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen and IS&T, among others. He reviews for Orbis and has translated poems into English from both Spanish and Portuguese
S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in more than a hundred magazines in more than ten countries. His forthcoming collections are The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) and An Ocean Called Hope (Downingfield Press, May 2025).
Michael Foley has published four novels, four non-fiction books and six collections of poetry, including New and Selected Poems, (Blackstaff Press 2011) and most recently The Whole Thing (Mica Press 2023). Details of all these on michael-foley.net.
Mary Franklin’s poems have been published in numerous print and online journals including Anthropocene, Hobo Camp Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip and Three Drops from a Cauldron. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Charlotte Gann writes “I’m an editor from Sussex. My most recent poetry collection is a pamphlet called Cargo from Mariscat Press, 2023. I’m author of two full collections from HappenStance: The Girl Who Cried (2020) and Noir (2016); and a pamphlet from Pighog: The Long Woman (2011), shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award.”
Declan Geraghty is a writer and poet from Dublin. He’s had short stories feature in Epoque Press, Double Speak Magazine, Lumpen Journal, Culture Matters UK. His poetry featured in Cry of the Poor, The Brown Envelope Collection and Militant Thistles. He won a place on the Words Ireland, Irish Writers National Mentoring Program in 2022. And has recently won a writing scholarship with The Stinging Fly.
Matt Gilbert is a copywriter, from Bristol, but now gets his fill of urban hills in South East London. He’s had poems published by Acumen, Atrium and Finished Creatures among others. His collection Street Sailing was published by Black Bough poetry in 2023.
Blossom Hibbert has a pamphlet, suddenly, it’s now, published by Leafe Press. Her work has appeared in places such as The Temz Review, Litter, International Times and Buttonhook Press. She hides inside the wet walls of Jerusalem, drinking Turkish coffee and rising before the dawn.
Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. Hirschhorn has published seven previous collections, recently ‘Over the Edge’, was published in 2023, by Holland Park Press, London.
Danielle Hope is a widely published poet, Italian poetry translator, and doctor, originally from Lancashire and now living in London. She has four poetry and a dual language collection with Rockingham Press. She created the character Mrs Uomo, who struggles with life’s complexities, the ridiculous and rickety. Her poems have featured on the London Underground and health care waiting rooms. She is the editor for Acumen Literary Magazine http://www.daniellehope.org @Danielle_Poet
Philomena Johnson lives in ?tautahi/Christchurch, New Zealand. Her poetry has appeared in The Quick Brown Dog, London Grip, takah?, a fine line and in the anthologies broken lines / in charcoal,Voiceprints 4 & Fuego (2023). Philomena tutors at the School for Young Writers
Alex Josephy lives and writes in East Sussex and Italy. Her poems have been published in Italy, UK and India. Her most recent collection is Naked Since Faversham, Pindrop Press 2020 and her pamphlet Again Behold the Stars won the Cinnamon Press pamphlet prize in 2023.
Noel King was born and lives in Tralee, Co Kerry. His poetry collections are Prophesying the Past, (Salmon, 2010), The Stern Wave (Salmon, 2013) and Sons (Salmon, 2015) Alternative Beginnings, EarlyPoems (Kite Modern Poetry Series, 2022) and Suitable Music for a View (SurVision Books). He has edited more than fifty books of work by others (Doghouse Books, 2003-2013) and was poetry editor of RevivalLiterary Journal (Limerick Writers’ Centre) in 2012/13. A short story collection, The Key Signature & Other Stories was published by Liberties Press in 2017.www.noelking.ie
Wendy Klein once won first prize in the Ware Poetry Competition, the Cinnamon Press Single Poem Competition, the Cannon Poets Sonnet or not and a few others, along with writing 3 collections, a Selected and a pamphlet based on her great grandfather’s letters when he was serving as a Confederate Officer during the US Civil War. Now, more or less content on the poetry periphery, she is musing on a 4th collection. https://youtu.be/L2JlbpAdUcU and https://www.cronepoet.com
Kate Maxwell grew up in the Australian bush. Now a city dweller, her interests include film, wine, and sleeping. Her work is published and awarded in many Australian and International literary magazines. She has published two anthologies, Never Good at Maths (2021)and Down the Rabbit Hole (2023). https://kateswritingplace.com/
Rosemary Norman lives in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. One poem, Lullaby, is much anthologised and her fourth collection, Solace, was published in October 2022 by Shoestring Press. Last year she and video artist Stuart Pound published Words & Pictures, a book of poems and stills with a link to Vimeo
Sue Norton has been published in various anthologies and magazines, most recently in the June editions of London Grip and The North.
Matthew Paul was born and grew up in South London and lives in South Yorkshire. His collection,The Evening Entertainment, was published by Eyewear in 2017. He regularly writes reviews and essays, and blogs at www.matthewpaulpoetry.blog.
Colin Pink co-chairs the Barnes & Chiswick Poetry Stanza. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and four collections, most recently Typicity and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy. He posts on Instagram @colinpinkpoet.
Catherine Redford lives in the West Midlands. She started writing poetry after being widowed at the age of 35. She has poems published in Under the Radar, The Storms, New Welsh Reader, Propel, Lighthouse,and Ink Sweat & Tears.She is an editor at Dust Poetry Magazine.
Elizabeth Rimmer is a poet and editor with Red Squirrel Press with whom she has published four collections, the most recent of which is The Well of the Moon (2021). She writes about plants, place and community.www.burnedthumb.com
Jennifer Rogers was born in west Australia, 1946. Educated university of WA, trained as a journalist, worked on newspapers in Australia, Hong Kong, Brighton and Reading in the U.K., Then with the UN office of public information in New York. Then a journalist in Dorset, then the Midlands. Moved from reporting to sub editing. Married in the U.K and went with husband to Kaduna in NIgeria, working as a teacher for two years. Returned to U.K. after marriage breakdown and worked as a sub editor and feature writer with the Salisbury Journal. Joined the Dorset Health Authority as PR manager for five years. Came to London as PR manager with the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Met Mary, married, and was with her for 30 years.
Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] L.j. Carber, 77, became a published poet in his 8th decade in over 200 literary journals in 16 countries on 4 continents and 3 collections published by Cyberwit.net: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and thrice for Best of the Net.
Jill Sharp’s poems have appeared most recently in The Ekphrastic Review, Stand, The Fib Review, Prole and The Frogmore Papers. She reviews for The High Window and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2023.
Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). His debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in summer 2023. Website: paulstep.com / Instagram: paulstep456 / Twitter: @stephenson_pj
Seán Street’s most recent collection is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press, 2024). Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, and several studies of sound poetics, the latest being Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong, published in July 2023 by Bloomsbury Academic. He is emeritus professor at Bournemouth University and now lives in Liverpool.
Marjorie Sweetko’s poetry has appeared in journals like Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, The North, The London Magazine, Artemis Poetry, South and in the Poetry Business anthology One for the Road. Born in Montreal, she lived in London and Sussex, then in Morocco, Thailand and Italy, before settling in Marseille.
Steven Taylor was born and raised in Hyde, Greater Manchester, but now lives in Kilburn, London. His poems have appeared in publications including: ACUMEN, Brittle Star, Critical Quarterly, Envoi, Magma, The North, Orbis, Stand, The Stinging Fly, Strix, Urthona and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He is currently working on a collection of poems called HYDE which is about coal mining, cotton and culture.
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection is A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (KDP / Swan Village Reporter). His work has appeared in, among others, The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and the TLS. He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland).www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
Hilary Thompson draws inspiration and support from Ledbury Poetry House, a poetry hub in Herefordshire, and has been writing poetry seriously for three years. She has been published in The Morning Star, Snakeskin and Dawntreader.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad has two pamphlets published: Sleeping Under Clouds , a collaboration with artist Sula Rubens (Clayhanger Press, 2023) and A City Waking Up’ (Dempsey and Windle, 2020). Palewell Press will publish her third pamphlet, Once There Was Colour in September 2024.Website
Tony Steven Williams is a poet and short-fiction author from Canberra, Australia. Tony’s poetic output is intentionally diverse both in form and material; however, in all his work, the environment and the human condition are very important to him. His two poetry collections are Sun and Moon, Light and Dark (2018) and Reimmersion (2023), both published by Ginninderra Press.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Fiction Southeast,Mud Season Review, The London Reader, The Phare Magazine, Beir Bua Journal, Dust Poetry Magazine, and Mike’s book Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
Aug 31 2024
London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2024
*
Issue 53 of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:
*Jennifer Rogers *Philomena Johnson *Michael W. Thomas *Rosemary Norman
*Freya Bantiff *Jill Sharp * Matthew Paul *Jean Bohuslav
*Paul Stephenson *Sue Norton * Marjorie Sweetko *Ruth Aylett
*Seán Street *Sue Wallace-Shaddad *Noel King *Mary Franklin
*Alex Josephy *Mike Wilson *Matt Gilbert *S C Flynn
*Blossom Hibbert *Charlotte Gann *Michael Foley *Kate Maxwell
*Janet Dean *Wendy Klein *Tim Cunningham *Declan Geraghty
*Steven Taylor *Norbert Hirschhorn *Hilary Thompson *Elizabeth Rimmer
*Colin Pink *Catherine Redford *Tony Steven Williams *Danielle Hope
*Nolo Segundo *Fran Fernández Arce *Philip Dunkerley *Graham Buchan
Contributor Biographies and Editor’s Notes are also included.
A printable version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Autumn 2024
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Send up to THREE poems & a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or included in the message body
OUR SUBMISSION WINDOWS ARE NOW JANUARY, APRIL, JUNE & OCTOBER
*
Editor’s notes
London Grip is not in the habit of issuing trigger warnings – but the final poem in this issue contains unusually difficult material and we wouldn’t want our readers to be taken by surprise. We thought very hard before choosing to include Graham Buchan’s “The Last Rock”; but in the end we decided it deserves its place among poems about our readiness to look away from humanity’s worst cruelties. The content – based on real events – is undoubtedly shocking; and we could only feel able to publish such horrors within the carefully controlled framework of a poem.
Elsewhere in this edition there are many other poems that are gentler and more optimistic; and we might, of course, have opened with a harsh and brutal poem simply in order to offer some kind of progression towards more tender themes. However it is hard to see how any other poem could have followed “The Last Rock”. Yet by placing this one last we do not mean it to be a final despairing word; instead we invite readers to recognize that, while the story it tells is true, so also are the various kinder-hearted narratives that precede it. This indeed is a paradox of human existence which poetry – at its best – can perhaps help us deal with. If only we will let it engage and work deeply with our imaginations then maybe we can begin to acknowledge our dark shadows and then see how to escape from or pacify them. Encouragingly, similar thoughts appear in the editorial of Modern Poetry in Translation 2 (2024), where Janani Ambikapathy boldly proposes “a thought experiment like no other – a poem, if you allow it, can change your mind.”
*
Shortly before publication of this issue we were shocked to learn of the death of the much-admired poet Ann Drysdale. The many tributes that appeared on social media show how warmly regarded she was and how much she will be missed. She was noted for the wide range of her writing which one reviewer has described as encompassing “both refinement and rough edge” and her collections combine sombre and serious themes with a lively sense of humour. For anyone unfamiliar with her work a readily-available introduction exists in three London Grip reviews
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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Philomena Johnson: Maybe You may have been the shadow that emptied the room, the keen change of temperature that always gave me the edge over my sisters; it may have been you who helped me down when I climbed too high in the pine tree. You were the one who read to me under the covers by torchlight, the one I played hopscotch with on the driveway, the one taken from your mother’s breast, the one who taught me how to catch green plant hoppers, and how to let them go. You were the scratched initials in the table top. You were the guess I always got right. You were the darkness of curiosity. You were the warrior of my lost days. You were the succulence of pollen rejected by the bees. It may have been you who recited poems to me, like ringing bells, on my sad days; you who set fire to the church, you the one I wrote about in my red striped notebook, you the one who walked me to school on my first day. It may have been you who shattered Sister Angelica’s arm in netball, who rang the church bells when the godwits arrived, who taught me to read. It may have been me who substituted for you, you who helped me disappear into silence. Maybe it was you I heard singing in that fire-damaged church. Maybe it was you who exhausted what love could have been or maybe it was me, and yet here we are and it may be if I had known you I would have loved you. Note: This poem borrows & slightly alters a phrase from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s original words: It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Rosemary Norman: An Undivided Heart “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 11:19 Our hearts are of flesh, the fattish man with a paper carrier bag from a well-known London outfitter, whose companion nods while he talks on about investment speculating once more what confidence is. And two sisters? lovers? Young women who shop together and dress in black jeans, quilted black jackets and cerise crocs so pleasantly easy to slip your feet into and out of. Sometimes on the tube one voice selects itself and for a moment you overhear perfectly, miss nothing till there’s break-up from the train. A Hassid with his first beard. His luggage won’t settle and his ear-locks fall forward as he attends to it. O heart and flesh, disorder is in the commonest of journeys, you leave, you’re brought elsewhere. What station is it, one, has a fire exit of 193 steps that we’re warned not to use unless necessary? Depth is given in terms of height, equivalent to “n” storeys which the two young women would run up in black socks, their pink shoes in hand.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Weeping Woman (alternative version)
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Marjorie Sweetko: About to be seduced by a glass bird
Pick of the flock perched on a rickety shelf
behind the junk shop window, she plays it cocky,
fixes me with her amber pin-eye and fires
a loaded bid straight at my avid heart.
She’d be fleet, a spark from a craftsman’s breath,
a woodland alarm, beating tail-feather morse
faster than heart’s hammer watching her prey
meet death. The tilt of her head, disarming,
announces her gamble: that I’ll place her in my cupped hand,
that its warmth will melt her pose, that we’ll by-pass
nature’s laws and the glassmaker’s art.
Once I felt her tremble, she knows I’d be hers.
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Sue Wallace-Shaddad: Interlude You used to love listening to your radiogram as you painted now the pathways are no longer there it’s difficult for the music to reach art magazines with too much colour you find blinding but you enjoy our daily pastime of creating collages from newspaper photographs pictures of the sea at Shingle Street sheepdogs working a flock kittens toying with a ball of wool a murmuration of starlings rising above distant trees I talk you through each choice I’ve made I don’t know if you really hear me but I believe you enjoy the calm of my voice once you pencilled in the shape of a bush on the page and I thought you’d found your calling again but that was the only drawing you made you watch a lot of television not really taking it in falling asleep most of the time the remote is difficult to understand today we listen to your granddaughter singing in the broadcast of a concert* her voice soaring a free spirit on the wing. *Clean Bandit and friends with the BBC Philharmonic 10 September 2014Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Kate Maxwell: Basking The mogul’s getting hitched again at ninety-three. He can’t seem to make one last past his plans for an afternoon nap and world domination. He’s obviously outfoxed us all bought some miraculous elixir promising another century or two for him to bask; enjoy the world he’s etched into his own tabloid of alternative facts and titillation: an empire so layered in flashy fabrications that he cannot place where he left his last wife or whether he had one at all. But a cold sharp air trapped deep within his hardened throat, dull thud inside his scaly chest the whoosh and wail of sour sighs which no employee, pleasure-giver or physician can relieve he cannot bear alone. Each crevice sprawled across his chin a final line in the sand for each bride who wasn’t what he ordered too tall, too much, too mortal and maybe too unwilling to take that final step across the threshold of a split-tongued forever hold his hand at each rasping breath— jewelled hand to shrivelled chest— when darkness comes.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Wendy Klein: Feathers, Flowers, or Flames …confused and unaccountably frightening…(art critic, The Washington Post)
Baggy-eyed and half-smiling his ageing face
emerges from the pinks and reds
of the artist’s wash – a palette neither pastel
or lambent, the shade of a rose garden
fading in late summer, a uniform daubed in
as if by accident.
What is the artist saying?
The texture hints at feathers or flames,
fronded foliage or pumped-up plumage,
a king emerging in cardinal colours,
a bemused Jonah of Arc?
The hands, the only other flesh
on display, are huge. For what? For the laying on
of what? Or whom? Horses, dogs, grandchildren,
or the absent-minded adjusting of the zipper
on his flies?
A king out of his time,
as all kings are, of course.
Wendy Klein: Life Study, 4pm Thursday
Here is a man on a bus, his sandy beard
unevenly trimmed. His feet shuffle,
in an effort to hide odd socks,
scuffed brogues.
He breathes out stale tobacco, stale beer,
covers his mouth with a hand so delicate
it startles; looks around, hangdog,
eyes filled with fear he’s caused offence.
He pulls a threadbare tweed coat around him,
hands trembling with the effort to fasten
its two remaining buttons, scarred leather --
hanging by a few threads.
A woman across the aisle can’t take her eyes off him;
stares, looks away, stares, looks away, as if scared
to be caught being rude.
Her hat, a scarlet flowerpot, is loose on her head,
allows grey curls to escape down the back of her neck
across her left cheek. Maybe she has a son his age,
a missing son, maybe he is the missing son,
or looks like him.
She catches his glance, and her cheeks pinken
into a crooked smile, which he mirrors, chip-toothed,
reaching up to press the buzzer for his stop;
flaps his fingers as he passes her, in what might be
a wave.
A cough stops him as he steps onto the pavement,
trips up on a loose sole, steadies himself against
a lamp post, taps his pockets for change, tobacco
or his pipe which might be a Big Ben Mercury,
scratched and well-broken-in, or a vintage Ben Wade Briar.
The bus moves on before I can see. The woman
dabs at her eyes with a crumpled lace hanky, kissed
with drying-out lipstick.
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Catherine Redford: after the end locked away in a rusting safe the papers that once claimed these fields grow yellow and ripen then rot grass crosses thresholds trespassing under the barn door unconcerned by the pair of black boots mimicking authority a man’s shadow scorched behind them on the wall the world is husk the earth unpeopled land now undivided edges unravel then merge hogweed invades wheat thistle chokes barley baked footprints beneath nettles on untrodden paths dissolve across seasons like empty towns on the horizonBack to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Tony Steven Williams: Human Dichotomy From my lakeside vantage, office blocks, apartments, shops, cafes, galleries, fitness centres command the far shore skyline. Not so long ago, cranes leant over them like proud concerned parents, not ready to let go, always prepared to lend a mechanical arm. Now, the buildings are mature adults, crisp, confident, shining in sunlight. I marvel at the complexities of plumbing, electrics, carpentry, carparking, masonry, glass . . . all those skills required to fashion such architecture from wet, dirty excavated holes to be occupied by a growing community. We have come such a long way. Yet . . . projectiles could suddenly fall, human to human, crushing us all.Back to poet list… Forward to next poet
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Weeping Malehead —
if only they would … (detail)
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Fran Fernández Arce is a Chilean poet currently living in the intersection between Suffolk, England, and Santiago, Chile. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, and The Honest Ulsterman.
Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh and her poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink and Queen of Infinite Space were published in 2021. For more see https://ruthaylett.org
Freya Bantiff won the New Poets Prize, placed third in the National Poetry Competition and was highly commended in the Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry. She won the Bridport Poetry Prize (18-25s) and the Canterbury Poet of the Year competition. Freya won second prize in the Bedford Poetry Competition and was winner of the Walter Swan Poetry Prize (18-25s).
Jean Bohuslav’s poems are often influenced by mindfulness philosophy which she teaches. She contributes to Kissing Dynamite, Meniscus Literary Review, Spelt Journal, The Interpreters House, Poetry On The Move, Poetry Wivenhoe, and Mad Swirl and has poetry pamphlets published by Ginninderra Press
Graham Buchan has published poetry (five books and a pamphlet), short fiction, travel writing and a large number of reviews of film, art, theatre and literature. Prior to retirement he was a freelance film-maker and prior to that a Chemical Engineer.
Tim Cunningham is Limerick-born, and has worked in education in Dublin, London, Delaware and Essex and now lives in Westport, County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. He has had nine poetry collections published since 2001, the most recent being Peristeria .which was launched by Revival Press in April 2023
Janet Dean is a writer from Barnsley who lives in York. Her poems have been shortlisted (2012) and Highly Commended (2022) in the Bridport Prize, awarded second prize in the Yeovil Poetry Competition (2020), included in the Northern Poetry Library’s Poem of the North (2018), and appear in print & online in Alchemy Spoon, Acumen, Ink Sweat and Tears and Black Nore Review.
Philip Dunkerley lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire, where he runs a local poetry group. He takes part in open-mic readings and other activities whenever he gets the chance. A fair number of his poems have made their way into magazines, webzines and anthologies – London Grip, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen and IS&T, among others. He reviews for Orbis and has translated poems into English from both Spanish and Portuguese
S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in more than a hundred magazines in more than ten countries. His forthcoming collections are The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) and An Ocean Called Hope (Downingfield Press, May 2025).
Michael Foley has published four novels, four non-fiction books and six collections of poetry, including New and Selected Poems, (Blackstaff Press 2011) and most recently The Whole Thing (Mica Press 2023). Details of all these on michael-foley.net.
Mary Franklin’s poems have been published in numerous print and online journals including Anthropocene, Hobo Camp Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip and Three Drops from a Cauldron. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Charlotte Gann writes “I’m an editor from Sussex. My most recent poetry collection is a pamphlet called Cargo from Mariscat Press, 2023. I’m author of two full collections from HappenStance: The Girl Who Cried (2020) and Noir (2016); and a pamphlet from Pighog: The Long Woman (2011), shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award.”
Declan Geraghty is a writer and poet from Dublin. He’s had short stories feature in Epoque Press, Double Speak Magazine, Lumpen Journal, Culture Matters UK. His poetry featured in Cry of the Poor, The Brown Envelope Collection and Militant Thistles. He won a place on the Words Ireland, Irish Writers National Mentoring Program in 2022. And has recently won a writing scholarship with The Stinging Fly.
Matt Gilbert is a copywriter, from Bristol, but now gets his fill of urban hills in South East London. He’s had poems published by Acumen, Atrium and Finished Creatures among others. His collection Street Sailing was published by Black Bough poetry in 2023.
Blossom Hibbert has a pamphlet, suddenly, it’s now, published by Leafe Press. Her work has appeared in places such as The Temz Review, Litter, International Times and Buttonhook Press. She hides inside the wet walls of Jerusalem, drinking Turkish coffee and rising before the dawn.
Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. Hirschhorn has published seven previous collections, recently ‘Over the Edge’, was published in 2023, by Holland Park Press, London.
Danielle Hope is a widely published poet, Italian poetry translator, and doctor, originally from Lancashire and now living in London. She has four poetry and a dual language collection with Rockingham Press. She created the character Mrs Uomo, who struggles with life’s complexities, the ridiculous and rickety. Her poems have featured on the London Underground and health care waiting rooms. She is the editor for Acumen Literary Magazine http://www.daniellehope.org @Danielle_Poet
Philomena Johnson lives in ?tautahi/Christchurch, New Zealand. Her poetry has appeared in The Quick Brown Dog, London Grip, takah?, a fine line and in the anthologies broken lines / in charcoal, Voiceprints 4 & Fuego (2023). Philomena tutors at the School for Young Writers
Alex Josephy lives and writes in East Sussex and Italy. Her poems have been published in Italy, UK and India. Her most recent collection is Naked Since Faversham, Pindrop Press 2020 and her pamphlet Again Behold the Stars won the Cinnamon Press pamphlet prize in 2023.
Noel King was born and lives in Tralee, Co Kerry. His poetry collections are Prophesying the Past, (Salmon, 2010), The Stern Wave (Salmon, 2013) and Sons (Salmon, 2015) Alternative Beginnings, Early Poems (Kite Modern Poetry Series, 2022) and Suitable Music for a View (SurVision Books). He has edited more than fifty books of work by others (Doghouse Books, 2003-2013) and was poetry editor of Revival Literary Journal (Limerick Writers’ Centre) in 2012/13. A short story collection, The Key Signature & Other Stories was published by Liberties Press in 2017. www.noelking.ie
Wendy Klein once won first prize in the Ware Poetry Competition, the Cinnamon Press Single Poem Competition, the Cannon Poets Sonnet or not and a few others, along with writing 3 collections, a Selected and a pamphlet based on her great grandfather’s letters when he was serving as a Confederate Officer during the US Civil War. Now, more or less content on the poetry periphery, she is musing on a 4th collection.
https://youtu.be/L2JlbpAdUcU and https://www.cronepoet.com
Kate Maxwell grew up in the Australian bush. Now a city dweller, her interests include film, wine, and sleeping. Her work is published and awarded in many Australian and International literary magazines. She has published two anthologies, Never Good at Maths (2021) and Down the Rabbit Hole (2023).
https://kateswritingplace.com/
Rosemary Norman lives in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. One poem, Lullaby, is much anthologised and her fourth collection, Solace, was published in October 2022 by Shoestring Press. Last year she and video artist Stuart Pound published Words & Pictures, a book of poems and stills with a link to Vimeo
Sue Norton has been published in various anthologies and magazines, most recently in the June editions of London Grip and The North.
Matthew Paul was born and grew up in South London and lives in South Yorkshire. His collection,The Evening Entertainment, was published by Eyewear in 2017. He regularly writes reviews and essays, and blogs at www.matthewpaulpoetry.blog.
Colin Pink co-chairs the Barnes & Chiswick Poetry Stanza. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and four collections, most recently Typicity and Wreck of the Jeanne Gougy. He posts on Instagram @colinpinkpoet.
Catherine Redford lives in the West Midlands. She started writing poetry after being widowed at the age of 35. She has poems published in Under the Radar, The Storms, New Welsh Reader, Propel, Lighthouse, and Ink Sweat & Tears. She is an editor at Dust Poetry Magazine.
Elizabeth Rimmer is a poet and editor with Red Squirrel Press with whom she has published four collections, the most recent of which is The Well of the Moon (2021). She writes about plants, place and community. www.burnedthumb.com
Jennifer Rogers was born in west Australia, 1946. Educated university of WA, trained as a journalist, worked on newspapers in Australia, Hong Kong, Brighton and Reading in the U.K., Then with the UN office of public information in New York. Then a journalist in Dorset, then the Midlands. Moved from reporting to sub editing. Married in the U.K and went with husband to Kaduna in NIgeria, working as a teacher for two years. Returned to U.K. after marriage breakdown and worked as a sub editor and feature writer with the Salisbury Journal. Joined the Dorset Health Authority as PR manager for five years. Came to London as PR manager with the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Met Mary, married, and was with her for 30 years.
Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] L.j. Carber, 77, became a published poet in his 8th decade in over 200 literary journals in 16 countries on 4 continents and 3 collections published by Cyberwit.net: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and thrice for Best of the Net.
Jill Sharp’s poems have appeared most recently in The Ekphrastic Review, Stand, The Fib Review, Prole and The Frogmore Papers. She reviews for The High Window and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2023.
Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). His debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in summer 2023. Website: paulstep.com / Instagram: paulstep456 / Twitter: @stephenson_pj
Seán Street’s most recent collection is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press, 2024). Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, and several studies of sound poetics, the latest being Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong, published in July 2023 by Bloomsbury Academic. He is emeritus professor at Bournemouth University and now lives in Liverpool.
Marjorie Sweetko’s poetry has appeared in journals like Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, The North, The London Magazine, Artemis Poetry, South and in the Poetry Business anthology One for the Road. Born in Montreal, she lived in London and Sussex, then in Morocco, Thailand and Italy, before settling in Marseille.
Steven Taylor was born and raised in Hyde, Greater Manchester, but now lives in Kilburn, London. His poems have appeared in publications including: ACUMEN, Brittle Star, Critical Quarterly, Envoi, Magma, The North, Orbis, Stand, The Stinging Fly, Strix, Urthona and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He is currently working on a collection of poems called HYDE which is about coal mining, cotton and culture.
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection is A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (KDP / Swan Village Reporter). His work has appeared in, among others, The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and the TLS. He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland).www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
Hilary Thompson draws inspiration and support from Ledbury Poetry House, a poetry hub in Herefordshire, and has been writing poetry seriously for three years. She has been published in The Morning Star, Snakeskin and Dawntreader.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad has two pamphlets published: Sleeping Under Clouds , a collaboration with artist Sula Rubens (Clayhanger Press, 2023) and A City Waking Up’ (Dempsey and Windle, 2020). Palewell Press will publish her third pamphlet, Once There Was Colour in September 2024. Website
Tony Steven Williams is a poet and short-fiction author from Canberra, Australia. Tony’s poetic output is intentionally diverse both in form and material; however, in all his work, the environment and the human condition are very important to him. His two poetry collections are Sun and Moon, Light and Dark (2018) and Reimmersion (2023), both published by Ginninderra Press.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Fiction Southeast, Mud Season Review, The London Reader, The Phare Magazine, Beir Bua Journal, Dust Poetry Magazine, and Mike’s book Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.