Ruth Beddow

      Does it hurt? You were lying when you said it wouldn’t – the measles vaccine, the own brand tampon, rows of dead jellyfish on Dyffryn beach. Leaving that place to come home each summer, leaving home at the end of that summer and never coming back....

Julian Brasington

      In a moment of absence The road whispers in a language not heard these seventy years the sea eats only its pebbles and can be heard calling its kinfolk who listen can listen now the sea can be heard and all the candy floss falls strangely silent...

Rachel Cleverly

      Back to Work This morning I made eye contact with myself for the entirety of a 48-minute video interview. My manager asked me where I see myself in five years’ time. My Mum says I am careless. I forget to switch off the hob, walk around with my...

Jayant Kashyap

      ’Twas a long summer of thin air after Vera Iliatova’s ‘Cruel Month’ (2010) Of a drier Sahara. Of the sun living late into the nights; waking before dawn. Of cattledeaths and heatstrokes. Of brown cities in a gas chamber. Of distant, trailing...

Kate Hendry

      At Home with Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy White lilies wilt in the window of number four Park Road. A paper lamp’s stranded in space. No one’s ever in. On my way home from school I invent owners: glamourous Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy from the...

Jan Norton

      The Next Day I talk to pepper seedlings in their earthen pots, water their soil with gathered rain, tell them of the hope in their beginning I am the dark morning, edged with light. They tell me in Spanish of their home, talk of cool verandas and...