Sheila Saunders

      Man in a Room after Interior at Paddington  – Lucian Freud. Which is the subject? Limp-leaved yucca reluctantly dying, the foreground figure in its stony pot? Or the man with a stare glassy-eyed behind spectacles, fixed into absence or...

Trelawney

      What is holding you back from building your wormery? You can’t say there isn’t the time. Everyone has the time when it comes to a wormery. Born with the right tools to hand. And no lack of wood – an affluence of pallet offcuts. Here –...

David Van-Cauter

      House …4am and the birdsong begins, a wet January in a new city and I’m alone watching a man in Minnesota, murdered for protecting a woman from a fascist hit squad and the politicians are smirking trying to deny the evidence, saying no it...

Tim Dwyer

    Unexpectedly My neighbour opens her window for fresh salty air Along the lough the first ferry in daylight skims silently by A strange bird with brilliant markings soars by my window— I imagine a miracle that carries illness away.   Tim Dwyer’s...

Paul Moclair

      Postscript Dusk on the third day of the Buddhist feast of Obon and toro nagashi gets underway across Japan. Their shore leave over, the spirits of the dead are bid farewell until that time next year, when ritual grants them reprieve again. The...

Susan Elizabeth Hale

    Cup Sometimes words are the only thing that get you through, But not the words you think, not a word like love or hope those are imprecise. It’s more a word like window or fenêtre even curtain words that are more certain, that have weight on the tongue...