Relevant, brave and urgently important
Subtle description of very complicated inter personal inter cultural situation.
Sometimes a poem is of the moment. It needs to be read; its contents need to be heard.
‘At the End of the Class’ by Viv Fogel is that poem. This beautiful, moving, powerful and empathetic work with its unusual and compelling format is the IS&T Pick of the Month for August 2026.
Viv Fogel is a London-based psychotherapist, poet, artist, grandmother, activist daughter of refugees. Her poems are published in many anthologies and journals. Her recent collection is Imperfect Beginnings (Fly on the Wall Press, 2023) and she’s currently co-editing the writings of women in Afghanistan, to be published in October.
Her £25 ‘prize’ will go towards supporting Afghan women.
At the End of the Class
- The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me
- For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her
- Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah?
- How did she find out/ realise/ discover that I was Jewish?
- I was shocked/ unprepared/ almost ashamed that she’d asked me
- Would that matter/ affect her?/ impact on our work together?
- Would she still trust/ accept support/ be taught by me?
- I wanted to explain/ dissociate from/ apologise for the genocide.
- I am silent/ confused/ there are no words. We exchange a look.
- Did something like recognition/ warmth/ sisterhood/ flit between us?
Additional voters’ comments included:
Love the choose the endings element. It makes this lovely and thought provoking in a way which goes beyond writing the lines without choices.
Because some people still deny genocide has and is happening so voices of truth and heart need to be supported as much as possible in the conversation. And that’s on top of the painful, yet lyrical beauty of the poem itself or the utter genuineness of the author
I really like the unusual form which underpins the idea of a class
I’m a Jewish teacher who works with many hijabi girls in a secondary school. I am unable to speak freely about the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. I so admire Viv’s original method of expressing the teacher’s turmoil oI this painful situation.
it is subtle but powerful in its impact
It expresses something I feel very close to, in such an elegantly simple way and distils an experience that so many people will I feel relate albeit in different contexts.circumstances
Extremely apposite and moving
It deals believably with the difficulty of people communicating across a vast divide
Very profound and touching
It’s stunning. I’ve not read better since Thomas Hardy’s ‘Dead Man Walking.’.
I love the way the poet’s empathy leaks through the formality of the multiple choice format borrowed from the lesson and how the horror of genocide slides into the poem so unobtrusively.
It’s important to focus in a live streamed genocide
The immediacy of uncertainty made me tremble
I was compelled by the escalating emotion within the poem
Addresses the moment. So well written too
The subtlety and restraint together with the single use of the word “genocide” and concern for the other person gives this poem its understated punch
I liked its experimental form.
Examines the difficult, hard-to-voice elephants in the room & how still to connect.
Simply brilliant and moving-utterly relevant!
I love the way the poet lets empathy leak into the formal multiple-choice structure. And the way the horror of genicide lands so quietly and unexpectedly, changing the poem’s tone.
Solidarity above hate
I like its simplicity, human connection, and relevance. The image in the last line is beautiful
So poignant and understated, yet brimming with emotion.
Mystery, tension and a warm ending.
The simplicity of this poem belies the complexity of the relationship both as described and existing on a global level
Love the unusual construction & the human/woman’s hope & sincerity
I like the structure of the poem, which moves you steadily through to the end. I also enjoy the choice of verbs with each line, which opens the possibilities of interpretation out. It is a really well-crafted poem.
Could relate to it being Jewish but anti genocide pro Palestine
Very interesting showing that identity, trust, painful history background through the connection
Evokes a lot of feelings for me, as I engage with what it means for me to be Jewish at this time
Moving and insightful. Edgy.
THE REST OF THE AUGUST 2026 PICK OF THE MONTH SHORTLIST
Chavittu Nadakam
Canvas boots, pig-iron tacks.
At midnight, the wooden platform groans like a hull.
The raw earth shakes below the planks,
cardboard stage-sets buckling under the stride.
The Emperor wears a crown of tinsel,
his beard fixed with stinking spirit-gum.
The heel-strike splinters the cedar wood,
bruising the shin beneath the leather.
A low thrumming runs through timber long after the crowd leaves.
Cedar grain stamped into skin.
Aardhra Chandran is a poet from Kerala, India. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review, Active Muse, The Punch Magazine and Borderless Journal, and is forthcoming in other literary journals. Her poetry engages with material landscapes, labour, memory, and the ecological textures of place.
*
In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal
This is summer
and Mum can’t put out
her trot line with its hooks
because of swimmers
so I buy three mackerel
from the fishmonger.
I cycle to the school bus stop
one arm on the handlebar,
carrying my ingredients
in a square biscuit tin
under my other arm.
In the cookery room
I slit the fish open,
bright-eyed, translucent
green and silver,
tip the guts and
maroon hearts
into the bin.
I scrape off the scales
with a blunt knife,
place the fish under the grill.
On the plate
I pipe mashed potato
around them
in rosettes.
My cookery teacher is pleased.
I come first in the exam.
Janet Hatherley’s pamphlet, What Rita Tells Me, and collection, On the road to Cadianda, were published by Vole. She has poems in magazines,including Culture Matters and Ink Sweat & Tears, winning 1st prize in Enfield poetry competition, 2025. @JanHatherley
*
Grief shows me just another sunset
Dusk is dancing & all the visual technologies at hand feel
overwhelmed: mobile eye, pit pastels, graphic card.
It’s down to language, then, imagine.
Above parade pearlescent clouds
looking more permanent than us.
Behind you, incandescent gloaming
rips through time, retina, skin.
This clarity, it blinds the soul, its old familiar.
Listen
how it sings
setting every edge on fire.
Watch
how it streams,
extends, pinks up.
Maybe now you share my sense
of consolation:
that those who went before us,
& who loved us,
those whom we love,
still,
lived
to see this light.
Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig is a translator, editor, and author. Her poetry publications include the pamphlet kinscapes and the anthology The Joy of Living (both with Dreich). Her work has appeared in various publications, including Poetry Scotland, Dust Poetry and Neologism.
*
First Funeral
Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.
I’m near the coffin on its trestles and a plaster Jesus
whose wounds shed drops of hard shiny blood.
I think he looks a bit disappointed in me.
Perhaps he wants me to Be Brave like Him
and not to make things worse for everyone.
I’m not sure if I should cry. I can see
my father is crying and I know that’s
because, He’s lost his soul mate;
that’s what Fr. Stephens told my auntie.
Mark McDonnell sings, writes and teaches English to refugees. He used to manage a pharmaceutical company and then a counselling charity. He has had work published in a wide variety of journals during the last four years. See www.instagram.com/
*
Driving on Old Roads
The coastline’s smile is sharp with blackened teeth,
seabird shelters, scarps, cutaways, broken reefs:
the bloody mouth of a boxer who can’t be dropped,
punch drunk with the brain’s purple pounding; stopped
glaciers, slipped slopes spilling, the effluxion of scree,
gone into the great gullet and the bite of the sea.
Breakwater, boulders slung with seaweed and white blowback.
Seals baking on blocks, beach bleached or black,
chipped and abraded, the scrimshaw coastline curves here,
doubles back. Ferries enter the salt-haze and disappear.
Whatever is in the mind or memory of the Ring of Kerry
it broods on its shoreline, sheer cliffs, the guillemot’s eyrie.
In my oldest recollections, my grandfather was a cliff of a man,
as distant as MacGillycuddy’s Reeks or Carrauntoohil Mountain.
Already, Parkinsons was working in him – soft turf, rockfall
and we had little to say, shaking hands, big in small.
A policeman, farm-owner, respected neighbour, witty, devout
but Parkinsons bent him forward and hollowed him out
and the mountain my father knew, snow line and plough line
was mostly switchback, tourist lookouts, closed by my time.
On Valentia Island, on a platform of stone that collared
one gravelled beach, are frozen tracks of tetrapods, scrawled
in mud 400 million years ago, dimples, drag-marks and scrapes.
By the time I got to them, down a rough-cut trail, their shapes
were worn down. Bad weather and the sea’s chew,
collapsing one whole section, shifting the beach askew.
Similar to the photo of its first discovery but not the same,
a steep path through sheep fields, though I was glad I came,
I could see what it would have been like, the gooseflesh
of prints. I wish I could have seen it when it was fresh.
Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning Australian poet. His prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and second prize in the National Poetry Competition. Damen’s poems can be found in New Ohio Review, Aesthetica and Arc Poetry Magazine.