Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gareth Writer-Davies
In the Dales
after John Ashbery
it’s a special kind of empty
the footed earth, saluting the sky
so much to see
I took a photograph of you
posed in the window seat
punchy red slippers
blurring rock and field
the same window in five years?
jenny wren says yes, the crows caw no
what do they know
as days go by
certain details are already hazy
and new succeeds new
as we spread over the vast stone barns
of Swale and Wensley
and there we are, older certainly
walking to the monument
where there is no monument
the upper left corner of the sky
a history of what might have been
Gareth Writer-Davies: Hawthornden Fellow (2019). Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014 and 2017) and the Erbacce Prize (2014). Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition (2015) and Prole Laureate for 2017. Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) and Highly Commended in 2011. His pamphlet Bodies was published in 2015 followed by Cry Baby in 2017, The Lover’s Pinch in 2018, The End in 2019 and Wysg in 2022.
Sarp Sozdinler
As a kid, Nehisi used to sleep in a treehouse. He could curl right into it from his bedroom window. He would have a hard time falling asleep every time his parents got loud or physical.
Three poems on Counting for National Poetry Day: Max Wallis, Julie Anne Jenson, Brian Kelly
I don’t wear them
or have any
but you gave me a pair
of seven-inch goth platform heels.
Fizza Abbas
They say change is a constant,
but this constant became a coefficient
always racing to catch me
Scott Elder
What will you do in winter dear when drifts
cover your fingers and shoes
Laura Webb, Edward Alport, and Jaime del Adarve: Day 3 (re)place feature
Tour of the Excavation Collaged from text in the ‘Ice Age to Iron Age’ gallery at the Great North Museum, Newcastle, UK The enigma is why this civilisation became extinct at the same time as a peak in carbon 14, which is a natural element, but in...
Richard Meier, Will Pendray and Fiona Dignan: Day 2 (re)place feature
Agony Because of all the sleep, the rooms that show up reddest on heatmaps for recording the use of space in houses tend to be the bedrooms. Orange or orange-yellow, the next most-used – the kitchens. And so on, getting colder – living rooms, green or turquoise – till...
Erik Kennedy, Sally St Clair and Catherine Edmunds: Day 1 (re)place feature
Animals on Leads We entered the town and the first thing we saw was a woman taking her ferret for a walk. ‘Nice day for it,’ I said significantly. The ferret was going everywhere at once, an absolute possibility engine producing the energy of a...
Roger Allen
AFTER YOU HAVE GONE Morning moves with tempered sound. A heel turns by the green gate. The alley setts rest in purple curves. Some night seems to have been left here. Pots of sweet herbs are placed to fill the yard with subtle scent. Somewhere a...
Andy Hoaen
On flat plains of low juniper scrub
monolithic, massive remnants of ice
dwarf the land, draws the herds: mammoth, deer, horse