by Kate Birch | Mar 4, 2025 | Reviews
Janus, the second poetry collection from Catherine Ayres, is unusual in its structure, looking, as the title suggests, both forward and backward. The passage of time is important in this book. The contents page is arranged by date, and then a brief description...
by Kate Birch | Mar 1, 2025 | News
WHEN THE FLOWERS ARRIVE TOO LATE No flowers came till she caught him cheating that May, her apartment unfurled with wreaths of pleas yet, the soothing scent of petals couldn’t stir the dead butterflies in her gut often, we attempt to nectar morgued hearts with...
by Kate Birch | Feb 21, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
Stripped of sentimentality, raw and beautiful. Authentic, deceptively simple and relatable This shortlist was all about lives – lives born, lives saved, lives lived, lives lost – and it is perhaps fitting that the poem that came first with voters was that which looked...
by Kate Birch | Feb 11, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Denizens Mice live in the London Tube. A train leaves and small pieces of sooty black detach themselves from the sooty black walls and forage for crumbs in the rubbish under the rails that are death to man. You can’t see their feet move. They...
by Kate Birch | Jan 20, 2025 | News, Picks of the Month
Evocative portrait of a mining town. Killer last line It was one of the closest contests that we have had in some months, that in the end saw ‘A Town of Shadows’ emerge as the Pick of the Month for December 2024. Voters found it evocative, emotive, gritty...
