Today’s choice
Previous poems
Seán Street
Candlelight
We lit a candle for you
that day in Sacre Coeur,
under its white-flame dome
as high as Paris could go
and still be Paris, stood there
awhile as the dark fire
caught, aspiring to spirit,
then turned as the dusk church rang
with candles, remembering
beers and salades gourmand
in the streets by the Sorbonne
held by a small fountain of light
that became the pole star
for this blank page, and which
as far as I know burns still
as high as Paris can go,
and Sacre Coeur, escaping
like you the prison of shape
through this small portal, glows white.
Seán Street’s latest is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press, 2024). Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, as well as a number of studies of sound poetics, the latest of which, Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong was published by Bloomsbury, (paperback edition in May, 2025.) Previous prose includes The Poetry of Radio, The Memory of Sound and The Sound of a Room, published by Routledge. He has worked in audio production for more than 50 years and lives in Liverpool. He is emeritus professor at Bournemouth University.
Laurence Morris
The night of his arrest I climbed a hill
to find a deep cave in which to hide
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...