Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ian Seed

by | Apr 2, 2026 | ,

 

 

 

Draenog 

What was the Welsh for ‘hedgehog’? That was what he wanted to know. It was a word he could only remember in his sleep when he dreamt of himself as a small boy, barefoot, back in 1966. The sun was shining. He was wandering across fields and streams, and then what seemed like forever along a winding lane. It was only when he found a hedgehog, dead, stuck to the tarmac with its own flesh, that he realised he had no idea how to find his way back to the campsite where his mum would be making tea. A car swept by. Black bits cut into the soles of his feet.

 

Ian Seed’s most recent publications include Forgetfulness (Shearsman, 2026), My Outsize Hank Williams Cowboy Hat, with artwork by Lupo Sol (Sacred Parasite, 2025), and The Dice Cup, from the French of Max Jacob (Wakefield, 2023). Find him at www.ianseed.co.uk

William Collins

by | Jun 25, 2025 | ,

We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.

Oz Hardwick

by | Jun 24, 2025 | ,

The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.

Warren Mortimer

by | Jun 22, 2025 | ,

& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse

Jena Woodhouse

by | Jun 21, 2025 | ,

Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.