Beth Brooke

      The Birdman at Manchester Airport Makes His Confession  1962, Elisabeth Frink, Manchester Arrivals Hall We are envious, full of longing, incapable of looking at the setting of a raspberry-peach sun without desire. We want to hurl ourselves into...

Clive Donovan 

      Park At night in the dreary park empty swings the roundabout on well- greased gimbal manages to budge a little I tread the slight bounce of reconstituted tyre at the slide’s base rakish boys and girls sip from a single bottle spark up a...

Sarah Davies

      The Curse   I bless you love, like the bee is blessed in honey, though, in the hive, the beekeeper has seen the bees drowning in honey. Is this a blessing, a dying from cloy and sugar, surely, slowly? Or, is it this, this, as you will see, the...

John McKeown

      In Rut Eaten alive, being me I step into the street Where November leaves are falling. The air is fine, the clear sky As finely brittle; the aroma of late decay A delicate call to loving. Shed of worries I tread the cobblestones with antlers...

Andrew Pidoux

      The Cyclist’s Breed of Freedom Cycling the five miles to work under the blue sky of something like summer, I see hundreds of cars going past me in a blur of metal and memory. The garden greens and reds of the traffic lights hush me over and under...

Jenny Robb

      Everything You Need to Know about Australian Magpie Swooping Season Protecting your baby is natural – and it’s the same for magpies. The black and white swoop loosens her grip. Here’s how to avoid their protective swoop. She drops her baby....