Tim Relf

      …walking on one of those sunny January afternoons before the light goes and warm – a warm breeze, can you believe it – and ploughed fields and sun on soil and you press play, the song you first heard and loved a few days before on a boxset, and...

Jim Murdoch

      Sad Streets and Side Streets My dad is a sad man— I’ve said this in another poem only it wasn’t me, it was Dad pretending to be me which is a thing he does. (that said I have thought it before, more than thought, I know he’s a...

Tessa Foley

      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...

Christina Lloyd

      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...

Mark McDonnell

      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...