ON BEING A FATHER IN GAZA The hospital doctor told memy son had a slight chance of survival.When I went back I couldn’t findmy son,the doctoror the hospital. THE WRITING ON THE…
Category: POETRY
THE HOUSES OF VLADIMIR: Poem by Anthony Owen
THE HOUSES OF VLADIMIR Nothing weighs more thana child’s body limp as flagsof blue sky and wheat. Nothing deafens morethan mothers ululatinggrief that scatters birds. This permanent rainof worldly things turned hellish…
John Lucas (1937-2025): A Tribute
Photograph of John Lucas copyright Graham Lester George When Roy Marshall asked me, back in 2016, when I was going to stop mucking about and put a collection together, my reply was…
TRUMP’S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE: Two poems by Shaun Belcher
Trump’s Birthday Party Surprise In Minnesota a right-wing evangelistDressed as a Marlboro County Cowboythen as a policeman knocked the door And fired multiple shots through it at two lawmakersand a Spinal bifida…
POEMS VS THE CURSE OF TRUMPERY: Four poems by Graham Lock
Liar! Liar!with sincere apologies to William Blake Liar! Liar! orange bright,beacon for the ultra right.What immodest boast or liecould TRUMP your own mendacity? On what distant golf-course greendid you learn to strut…
Kathleen Bell – Three Poems
LEAVINGS I Left behind Some left. Just being scaredwasn’t enough. Cash helpedand social statusmight give a useful contact.Luck mattered most. As for the left behind,we struggled. The unlucky always do.Some were unwise….
Fawzia Muradali Kane – Guaracara (Carcanet): Book Review by Wayne Burrows
The writer and architect Fawzia Muradali Kane’s third book, and her second full length collection, Guaracara, emerges almost fifteen years after her debut, Tantie Diablesse (Waterloo Press, 2011), and more than a…
Cathy Grindrod: Three Poems
The best days of your life The girl in the nettles, rolled overand over, for talking posh the sensational bruise a hockey stickmakes on a mottled leg the shape of my undiagnosed…
Graham Lock: Three Poems on Gaza
Shylock and Portia Address Benjamin Netanyahu Shylock: Hath not a Gazan eyes? Hath not a Gazan hands, organs, senses, passions? Are they not subject to typhoid, hunger and despair? If you bomb…
Ruth Hobson: Three Poems
The King is Dead In 1536, a woman imagining the death of a kingwas to be drawn on a hurdle to the pyreand burned alive. Well, I don’t want him to die,…
Benjamin Zephaniah, Sitting Bull and a Sleepy Nation – Andy Croft
Effective oppositional spaces are rapidly disappearing. Democratic process is blocked by inequality, authoritarianism, deceit and a narrow ideological consensus. Constitutional and legal constraints on power, within and between nation states have no…
Mu Cao: Poems translated by Hongwei Bao
Translator’s note:All the poems are translated from Chinese into English with Mu Cao’s permission. I have chosen to use small case to translate all of Mu Cao’s poems because Chinese characters do…
Mu Cao: Dark Chronicler of China’s Working-Class Queer Life – Hongwei Bao
For more than two decades, working-class queer Chinese Mu Cao 墓草 (b.1974, Henan, China) has been a unique voice in Chinese literature and global queer literature. Often referred to as a ‘folk…
Fiona Robertson – Three Poems
Bittersweet I bathe in the bittersweetnessof ill sonsand bereaved friendsand strangers connectingand and and old friends back on trackand death in lifeand birth after deathand the limitations of languageand the beauty of…
Gregory Woods – Three Poems
HOLDING STILL You imagine me standing at the windowwatching the fireworks above the harbourYou imagine me choking back the tears and the cocaineheartrate uncommonly highspirits expectedly lowYou imagine me burning your lettersand…
REVIEW: Release the Sausages! edited by Andy Croft (Culture Matters) – Neil Fulwood
There is a technique in poetry, borrowed from Apophatic Theology, called the via negativa, whereby attention is drawn to the subject by dint of its absence. This new anthology, subtitled Poems for…
Tuesday Shannon – Three Poems
On Belper Bridge At the plunge three blackened alder snagsreach for this final January morning. Unwavering against the crushing flow, waterfroths at each darkened trunk. A magpie circles, swoops,settles on a branch….
The Greenwash Recycle – Shaun Belcher
THE GREENWASH RECYCLE Starts in a marketing agency hand-out around the milleniumSocial demarcation and quantifying statistics showed newer markets More social class segmentation and new science of social media metricsIdentified new opportunities…
Martin Figura & Helen Ivory – HUM
Martin Figura and Helen Ivory .
Commissioned for a performance at The National Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, Norwich as part of the European Poetry Festival
Martin Figura – Two Poems
Martin Figura – Foundling – A Poem