Matt Kirkham

      Farmer’s Piano Shop Plate Glass Window, Luton, 20th July 1919 I will tell you that after the jet of water lifted me and before it threw me through the plate glass window, I had time to notice a number of things, namely: that the window looked...

Vote for your October 2020 Pick of the Month!

  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...

Jay Whittaker

      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...

Paul Connolly

      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...

Billy Fenton

      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....

Claire Sexton

      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...