by Kate Birch | Nov 4, 2020 | Featured, News
A touch of menace lurks among the lines of our shortlisted poems for October’s Pick of the Month. It may be just outside the door that you cannot seem to get out of in ‘Dressed’ from Lucy Ashe or what is revealed in Niamh Haran’s...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 4, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
In the first days of lockdown At the edge of the tilled field two hares draw an arc towards the riverbank where long luxurious tongues of wild garlic are coated with thick frost. I can’t smell or taste a thing. I pledge myself to this field to the...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 3, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Field Mouse He’d crouched and scragged loose aubrieta strands and flower-less leaves off the pond’s low wall. Pause precedes recoil: for the thing is small and pretty, sleek as a conker. He jags back from it, stands. Some force lofts the...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 2, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Clock At Carnac, lines of ancient stones stretch across fields, reach for the sun. I can almost hear them tick as they count the days to winter. I can almost hear them tock as they count the nights to summer. We take selfies among the stones....
by Helen Ivory | Nov 1, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
The new doctor With every new doctor, I start again. Trying to explain my condition to him, or her. Trying to explain my level of cognition; the drugs I’ve had; the therapists I’ve listened patiently to; the vocabulary acquired and absorbed, like...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 31, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Cellar Stories: Ash & Elder Sunday afternoon there’s always roast dinner. Then mum and dad go to church. The twins stay and wash dishes. Elder-twin picks up a plastic bag with unused Brussels sprouts inside. The cellar door is open. Elder-twin...
