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Andrew Taylor – Four Poems
Small Glass Pouring Light Shake the frost freewide river view to shoreroad noise anticipationof the carrier’s cart loadedwith news & print Bright star above the baybeautiful & simpleendlessly revealing Arctic Drone Winter keeper on watchthe map line of eternal ice Hot Soup Time Machine From afar welcoming window candle litwith the dark drops the dew…
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ALFRED BRENDEL (1931-2025)
An Appreciation by Neil Fulwood How to describe Alfred Brendel? As a pianist, obviously – one of the greatest concert pianists who ever lived. A musician of immense talent and versatility.But also: a poet, essayist, cartoonist; a lover of art; a man who identified completely with the Dadaist movement.But also: a scholar, a teacher, a…
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How Not to be a Poet: Shaun Belcher
How not to be a poet…
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GRETA THUNBERG: A poem by Anthony Owen
TWTWTW : Topical Poems classed as That Was The Week That Was GRETA THUNBERG If only you were a rock starshouting free PalestineCrowd-surfing a flotilla of handsbut you never showed us your fleshWhen you wept for unfashionable fleshAnd you look autistic how dare you You stole their dreams. Antony Owen https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/6/8/who-is-madleen-the-woman-for-whom-the-aid-ship-approaching-gaza-is-named
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DEFENCE: Poem by Neil Fulwood
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/6/8/who-is-madleen-the-woman-for-whom-the-aid-ship-approaching-gaza-is-named
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Writing Home: Arnold Bennett, Stoke and Me – Jonathan Taylor
Jonathan Taylor “No-one ever comes to Stoke, no-one ever leaves Stoke, except for Arnold Bennett, and even he had to write about it”: when I was growing up in Stoke-on-Trent (aka the Potteries) in the 1970s and 80s, this was a saying that everyone knew. It conveyed Stoke’s insularity, its proud tradition of isolation. At…
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Maria Taylor – Three Poems
My Parents’ Wedding, July 1975 A rushed wedding, a year after the fighting.Newlywed Anna unable to finish her breakfastat the hotel. Dimitri insists she drinks upher scalding tea or they’ll miss the train. At St. Pancras, Anna sees the 9:40 pull in.She can still run away. Dimitri who wantedto leave in a hurry, grieves an…
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ELEPHANT X2 – Neil Fulwood
A TALE OF TWO ELEPHANTS: THE TROUBLES, COLUMBINE AND THE PORTRAYAL OF VIOLENCE Alan Clarke’s Elephant is a 39-minute short first broadcast on BBC2 on 25 January 1989, and arguably the starkest, most disturbing made-for-television production since Mick Jackson’s Threads five years earlier. Elephant is set during the Troubles, though no attempt is made to provide political or ideological context for…
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Dennis O’Donnell: Three Poems
TWO CLOCKS TICKING In the house in Shotts, where my grandfather was born,the front room was stifled with velvet drapesand thick brocade table-cloths.There were photographs of whey-faced ghosts,anti-macassars, spotted mirrors,aspidistras, vases, knick-knacks. You could feel the suck of the past on you, there,as you closed the curtained door with a thudand muffled outside, the bright…
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BOY A – Amy Clarke
Boy A “They said I can choose my own name, any name?” says Eric Wilson, a.k.a. Jack Burridge, in the opening scene of Boy A. It’s a line that immediately establishes what the film is questioning. Identity. Who you are, who you don’t want to be, who you can become. Originally screened on Channel 4…
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CHAINLINK ON SUBSTACK
THE FENCE IS GROWING…. JOIN US ON SUBSTACK IF YOU ON THERE ALREADY OR IF NOT CONSIDER JOINING AS A EASY WAY TO KEEP JUMPING THE FENCE.. https://chainlinkculture.substack.com/
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Martin Hayes – Three Poems
the importance of a Marcus a metaphor in support of Kneecap and Spartacus – that maybe it’s the Farmer who’s the instigator of the problem – not all of us animals Marcus hasn’t been doing too well latelyhis woman left him last week and two months before thathis mother diedso his performance stats, which are…
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Dead Centre – Poem by Shaun Belcher
Shaun Belcher DEAD CENTRE If England was a target and you were looking at cross hairsIn the centre of the cross hairs would probably be DidcotThe most normal town in England according to the pollstersThe 11th worst place to live according to crap towns My home town, the town my family still live in, die inA…
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Island of Strangers – Poem Neil Fulwood
Neil Fulwood waxes topical… Talk to her: the woman who applies the gauzeand talks you through the aftercare. Talk to him: the man selling newspapersfrom the old-fashioned stall. The one whose identity’s a mysteryto you? Talk to them. Go ahead. Just smile and be open and say hello.Mention the weather and wish them well. That’s…
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David Graeber (1961-2020) – Andy Hedgecock
Andy Hedgecock writes an appreciation of the works of David Graeber (1961-2020). A dissident writer who in Utopia of Rules tackles the factors that lead us to create and sustain rule-based systems and – in turn – considers the tendency of those systems to determine the way we use our tools and technologies.
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The hedgehog and the goose – Shaun Belcher
ECOLOGICAL THEMES IN THE POETRY OF ALASDAIR MACLEAN AND WILLIAM NEILL. “At heart no flyer, I bristle timidly when touched. When the ice comes I retreat beneath it. I choose at last hedgehogs.” Thus Alasdair Maclean ends his poem ’Hedgehogs and Geese’ in his first published book of poems ‘From the Wilderness’ which has ‘Poetry…
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Roy Marshall – Three Poems
Definition ‘Elon Musk’s appearance at a Trump rally this afternoon is garneringsignificant attention due to a one-armed gesture.’BBC News A tool for digging. A sharp metal blade attached to a long handle.Often has footrests to help drive it into the ground.The Irish version is thinner, and the sharpshooter,used for cutting post holes, is long and narrow.The fishtail with its flared triangular head,…
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REVIEW: Blossom Hibbert
REVIEW: suddenly, it’s now by Blossom Hibbert (Leafe Press) There is a strand of poetry, among a certain demographic of its twenty-something practitioners, which is increasingly informed by workshops, degree courses, social media echo chambers and an almost aggressive approach to networking and self-publicity. Homogeneity ensues; a sense pervades of poetry being written to a…
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Friday the 13th -Lucy Bellingham
Whither Jason? – The Drama and Dichotomy of Friday the 13th Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th might not have been the first slasher – not by a long chalk – but there’s a strong case to be made that it was the first to consolidate the structure, aesthetic and audience expectations of the sub-genre…
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Leanne Moden – Two Poems
Vacuum Cleaner, 2123 after Thomas Lux More kleptocrat than civil servant, she devoured tangled hair cobwebs, choked down our discarded essence, tarnished pennies rattling in her cavernous belly. Crushed Loestrin teased from carpet weave,moths pulverised by her tough plastic throat. Constellations of half-moon clippingschewed from our bleeding fingers, busted earring backs & bent paperclips caught against her Hoover…