Matt Nicholson

      Birdsong in the playground   I asked a sea-gull on a see-saw what’s it all for, what’s it all about? He said nowt and flew away. I asked a crow on a swing the self-same thing, but he refused to say anything, he just hopped off to the roundabout,...

Maggie Mackay

      She believes herself to be a field creature   Nessie is losing her mind boiling cotton with bleach all year long. She stalks lands and fields at twilight, fashions a dress from a beetle’s shell. The women in the dormitories don’t sleep a jot for...

Holly Bars

  Holly Bars is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Holly’s poems have been published since January 2021 by The Moth, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Fragmented Voices, Porridge, Anti-Heroin Chic, Visual Verse, Runcible Spoon, and more, as...

David Hensley

      The Waiting Game Waiting is a great leveller. sitting in the waiting room, differences of height and status are almost invisible: we are equally powerless, subservient to the unseen list and the occasional calls of doctors and administrators....

Ryan Norman

      Garden I’ve woken at peace; it’s important not to think. I return instead to familiar images; steam rising from the boiler below the house, the pale leaves on the tree whose name I never learned. All I’ve ever done with these things is try to know...

Iris Anne Lewis

      Consider the snowdrop How it toils through barren months, withstands snow and frost with alchemy of proteins and alkaloids in its sap. How it forges lance-shaped leaves hard-tipped to pierce frozen earth, gifts fresh growth to shaded places. How...