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Poems from Priya Subberwal, Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan and Jenny Mitchell are IS&T’s Submissions for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
Each year, we select our three submissions for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem from those winning and shortlisted poems from our Pick of the Month series that remain eligible. This year our choices are 'Vanishing Mother' by Jenny Mitchell, Priya Subberwal's...
John Greening
1901: The Interpretation of Owls (Four owls on a branch, and one on its own, all smoking long churchwarden clay pipes, and listening to the music of a songbird in front of a giant moon – like five patients waiting for wise Dr Freud.) The First...
Rebecca Lowe reviews ‘The Ear of Eternity’ by Xavier Panades I Blas
Xavier Panades i Blas, a Catalan-born poet now living in Wales, is passionate about two things: The first is his Catalan language and culture. The second is his writing, which comes from deep within the heart. His live poetry performances are vivid,...
ONCE by Catherine Gander
ONCE sunlight splashed like wine across our table where you knelt at work on crayon glyphs announcing your creations two by two Spiral! Spiral! Words turning to songbirds in your mouth dancing helix to my ear one sparrow then a second lifting in defiance of the arrow...
Carolyn Oulton
Vaccination Day At the surgery my mother doesn’t want to wait in the car, keeps opening the door. It’s deadly out there, and all I can think is she’s going to say Yoohoo! It’s Mrs … yoohoo! No one is actually warm enough. Mr Poole never does turn...
Carla Scarano D’Antonio
A safe den When my girlfriends come we delineate our territories. I build a fence with a cradle, two chairs and a stool, a cut-out space that protects and defines against trespassing. Knitted blankets cover my baby dolls, rags are my curtains. I arrange...
Nora Blascsok
Something Boy, I see you, turn up day after day, crouch by the pond, assortment of snacks, hold out a hand or stand still as air. Trackies, oversized tee, slowly scattering feed, pigeons land on shoulders that carry the world, there’s room for a thing...
Lucia Sellars
moment Once upon a teacup, I woke up. The eyelids yawned and reality percolated down. This is not how rain starts, this is not how the world keeps on its axis. I had a hat to cover my sinful thoughts, and a mouth, to zip them in. My hands...
Philip Dunkerley
Flying Away I sit watching the green line on the screen, your flight moving relentlessly onwards, away from me. Everything feels hollow. So many people here didn’t want you to go. What have we done to the world, how did we shrink it to allow us to...
Paul Connolly
Winter Thorn Before the bend he remembers what he usually sees at the bend even in mist-less and anemic days the thorn’s bespoke glow, a hazed corona of frozen smoke its branchlets weave and hold working the air with web, a murk his rallentando steps of...
Owen Gallagher
The Neglected Partner Love the way your bones keep you upright. your skin a raincoat. Don’t neglect the beauty of all those organs working ceaselessly. Let your body and mind flirt, have a constant honeymoon, swear vows regularly. Praise the...
Dick Jones
In the Days Before they Came What interests me so much more than those pages of scripture foxed with turning is his choosing of a blue gown over a white; his weighing of two stones in either hand, the one mottled like a perfect moon, the other...
Colin Bancroft
Looking out on the Menai Strait The viewpoint is deserted. The sky a pastel chart. Beneath the bridge the Swillies gargle, Fish traps bob like U-boats. The glaciers are gone but the air is deathly still. Text messages haunt like Ouija. This age has...
Scarlett Ward Bennett
Space Two astronauts take off into space and not a single person notices the earth contract as they do so. They are birthed free from terra firma and propel themselves into orbit and perhaps mother nature is too tired to strain now so the umbilicus is...
Surprise by Mariam Varsimashvili
Surprise by Mariam Varsimashvili (illustrations and animation created by Sleep Never Comes To Me) Open the rock. There, by the river where a streak of blood is so thin it cannot be alarming. Split the rock in half and you will find cooked ham, bubbling white...
Ella Sadie Guthrie
Heartbreaker We are all just works in progress, muscles aching and eczema breaking skin Our minds playing tricks on us from Our last relationships. I confided this in the pub and you called me a heartbreaker, helping me eat yellow cheese off cold chips....
Steve Xerri
The Year in Thirteen Moons i gardener's forgotten fork a pronged Excalibur locked in iron ground, round pond a mirror to the ice moon ii pollen-yellow catkin moon, a token of death loosening its grip : frost gone, sap on the move iii mass of gelatinous...
Sophia Charalambous
Before I saw India I was a banyan tree – roots multiplying, pampered leaves. I would often sit and think about the shape of things, swastikas, shri yantras, and how many shapes are memorised and how many are inherited. I imagined the thousands of shades...
‘Vanishing Mother’ by Jenny Mitchell is the IS&T Pick of the Month for January 2021
The subject matter is important and is expressed with grace and craft - the pressure of whiteness and what passes for beauty. A comment that encapsulates why Jenny Mitchell’s deeply personal yet universal and multi-layered ‘Vanishing Mother’ is the Ink Sweat &...
Maria-Sophia Christodoulou
Matinal Fears I’m going to mess your life up— taping my thumb to my finger. I’m a big foot kind of bitch god, my father is scared to ask me the truth. I cannot wake from meat dreams, orange pulp fighting my maternal instinct. Let’s calm ourselves, wash...