Today’s choice
Previous poems
Antony Dunn
Plainsong
Have you heard the one about
how I’m hoping to bow out –
playing guitar for the Cure
on a wide stage – the riff pure
as wind-bells in the twilight,
the crowd stretching beyond sight
into the dark and the rain –
smiling, not ageing, not in pain,
lost in the longing song, doubt
done with, drowning myself out?
Antony Dunn has published four collections of poems most recently, Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets) and Take This One to Bed (Valley Press). Winner of the Newdigate Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, he edited and introduced Ex Libris, a posthumous collection of poems by David Hughes (Valley Press). Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and has taught many times for Arvon. He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, Israel and China. He has been Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival, the University of York and the People Powered Press. Until 2018 he was Artistic Director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival. Antony lives in Leeds. Website: antonydunn.org
Lisa Rossetti
Toughened Bark it takes a hefty blow sometimes to split you open a sharpened blade to split through years of tough old bark in the deeper channels feel how sap and resin thicken sap to carry nourishment keeping the woodiness supple resin to...
Maggie Mackay
A thirty-year-old woman walks into
the wee sma’ hours of a December
night. Snow is light
on her hair and the back
garden shrubs. It thickens. The sky
turns white. She stands still.
Short Poems Feature III
as a child, I learn to eat words
fill me up with words
brittle like sugared almonds
they crunch in my bones
Amaleena Damlé
Short Poems Feature II
The second Short Poems Feature with poetry from James McDermott and Edward Heathman.
Short Poems Feature I
Our first Short Poems Feature with poetry from Sylvie Jane Lewis and Joanna Woznicka.
Jemma Walsh
Siberian Larkspur Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. She is currently doing an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. Her work has been published in The Irish Times, Moth Magazine, HOWL Magazine, Crossways...
Cormac Culkeen
Stay silent
under eyes of stars
quietly watching,
Rebecca Gethin
I won’t forget her on the beach – fur the colours of sand.
We wouldn’t have spotted her were it not for the jiggle
of her gait, the turn of her head with ears pricked,
the spine’s taut bow and torque of her hocks.
Sarah Hulme
you
stoop
& shell
your self
touch
in gustgasp