Today’s choice
Previous poems
Isabelle Thompson
‘Attention, after all is prayer’ (Jo Bell)
We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle
of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping
her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby,
compact, fierce, not a sinew out of place, alert and spare,
watching us from his high vantage. All these were miracles,
but miraculous too was the stag beetle, thick and black,
gleaming against the white snowdrops; miraculous
and strange was the rat in the car park who sat
licking her tiny paws, her soft brown body touched
with beads of rain, her eyes dark as holes, hypnotic,
calling to us to watch her, note her unnoticed loveliness.
Isabelle Thompson is a graduate of Bath Spa University’s MA in Creative Writing, where she now works as a research assistant on programmes related to storytelling. Her debut pamphlet, Stalin’s Parrot, is published in May 2026 by Poetry Space.
Laura Gibbs
Daffodils Smarmy cunts. Hiding from me, in chattering spheres, year-round spectres of a season delayed. Budding in a darkness unknown - I will remember numbness. A yellow that melts, butter upon frost, their smooth openings jar in the aisles of...
Rachel Bruce
Snowdrops I remember you from my crayon days. Clung about the tree like children to a maypole, you held green secrets close, the magic of the changing seasons folded in your petals. In the months before my mother died I anticipated you with...
Catherine Redford
Death’s Head Moth The effect is to produce the most superstitious feelings among the uneducated, by whom it is always regarded with feelings of awe and terror. ‘The Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth’, in Edward Newman’s An Illustrated Natural History of...
Jessa Brown
Wulf and Eadwacer’s Daughter Make Meatballs after the Old English poem Jessa Brown, a UEA creative writing MA student, has been an Acumen Young Poet. Her work has been published in the Brixton Review of Books, The Mays, and Young Writers,...
Vasiliki Albedo
Our Country Our house was a country my parents founded but none of us were citizens. Nights, the corridor’s iron gate was a border, locking us in our rooms. My mother was both state and warden. I wrapped a hair around my diary before leaving for...
Joanna Wright
Joanna Wright lives in the Scottish highlands. Her poems have been published in Northwords Now and Spelt Magazine.
Jenny Hockey
Bonding I carried you home as if you were an extra bag I might have required while taking my time over shopping — both of us newly hatched on the sun-filled hospital ward. By the time I arrived in the kitchen, the men had already begun on the...
From the IS&T Archive for Father’s Day: Caleb Femi
This poem was first published on IS&T on 15th July 2018. Rose of Jericho I am waiting for water; do not blame my Father though he made me a curling spine of dried roots. In a home not built for foliage he did his fatherly duty to pass on only what is necessary to...
Ann Grant
Confessions to a neurologist When it started, I’d tip my chin down to my chest, loving the sensation of my body buzzing. I’d wake, fall to the wall, panic crawl to the loo, ask my wife if my palms were really burning hot I choke on nothing but...