by Kate Birch | Sep 8, 2023 | News
I first saw Gboyega Odubanjo read as part of open mic at Café Writers in Norwich in 2017 when he was one of a group of students on UEA’s MA poetry course who had come to support Anna Cathenka, that year’s Ink Sweat & Tears Scholar. I don’t remember the...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 8, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Matters Arising Did you know that if you don’t speak in the first ten minutes, you actually cease to exist? The fat of the universe will eat itself and you will be a breathless speck, rattling a pencil. So speak, repeat the bloodless phrase from...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 7, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Nature Morte The funereal bouquet falls away from itself: sepals are the first to sag, then chrysanthemums drop to the floor like pom-poms. Petal tips and leatherleaf shrink, becoming brittle to the touch. Anthers fur into pollen grains speckling...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 6, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Michael ‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon When I think of Michael I think of ivory, of the epicene torso of a wounded Christ rising from a loosening loincloth with Pre-Raphaelite lilies; of how he made me stop so Allegri’s Miserere...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 5, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...
