Amlanjyoti Goswami

      To those who don’t want poetry in GCSE It would be nice If you didn’t spend all that time Writing poetry. He could be blunt When he wanted to. All that time. What about reading it? Yes, reading too. Why read something you can’t use? I sipped my...

Niamh Haran

      Refurbishment mum says there’s that generation that covered everything up floorboards fireplaces and now it’s like anti-clockwork searching for original décor I am moulding wet clay into figurines in an unofficial online art class in an unofficial...

Gabriel Moreno

      Angel of Fear He turns up at night, when clocks stop, parading his wings like a white peacock. Shh! I say, It’s late and I cannot sleep. But he is just there spinning the News. He does not drink, puffs menthols sadly and scuffles around like an...

John Greening

      At Christmas All Easyjet flights are cancelled – only difficult journeys now. Three in party hats come dragging their presents over a snowy car park. A few attendants shepherd them into a building: the call to desert places. Looking up for a...

Pippa Little

      Sparklen Bottle Grandma’s sparklen in the winterdark house where I grew up loved me the best: I pushed my nose up close to see fireflies leap and sputter, glow-worms climb and fall in tiny squeezes, flayed hearts of angels – I know she whispered...

Joanne Key

      His Daughters It wasn’t the life you’d imagine. Most nights he’d be out, on the sherry early doors. Closing time, he’d come back and start. Exploding over nothing, he’d throw his tea at the wall, smash the place up, scatter...