And Four More New Poems. By MARC VINCENZ. ◊ Holy Ghosts efore the mercury arouses their guiles, before arriving on the softest flurry of air, before they’ve seen what we’ve been through, they might say in all their fading traces across the meadows, through Luna’s secret garden, over the apples ripening in the grass, passing […]
By John Taylor. Paintings by Marc Feld. • 1 behind you, not ahead, a gap that only your gaze could span and that you’ve now long crossed 2 behind you, not ahead, remain the wounds you still see ahead on the uncommitted sky 3 stitches removed too soon, yet they had sealed the essential, left […]
By John Wilkinson. ◊ hese adages were prepared for students at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, whom I met to talk about their poetry on the afternoon of March 19th 2023. It surprised me that they should have agreed to a Sunday class, but much about Jadavpur surprised me, starting with a campus bedecked with far-left graffiti, […]
Wednesday, 14 August 2024
And Two More Poems. By KITTY HAWKINS. ◊ Cocoon othing has changed in eight hours except it’s dark and I’m writing. The sea is in my cave-mouth, dew webbing around me. When drowning, I’ve learned people experience ecstasy and an elevated temperature. Dates between diary entries reach like tendrils. My parents are doing more old […]
By Richard Berengarten. ◊ Rimbaud recocious pupil, teenage layabout, He’s played provincial brat, brash schoolboy slut, Barbarian beast, filthy louse-ridden mutt— Until piss-artist drink-mates chuck him out; Absinthe and argot mingling in his throat, Teacher’s best pet, deranged, turns foul-slanged slob, Illumination-seeker, cannon-gob, Working his passage on a drunken boat. And then he’s twenty-two. And […]
And two more poems.By Clive Watkins. Intercontinental by day in a pillar of a cloud . . . by night in a pillar of fire . . . —Exodus 13:21 hirty-two-thousand feet and cruising westward, my head against the headrest, tired eyes closed in a half-sleep, I follow with my mind’s eye the miniature winged […]
< from Book 9 from Book 11> A Fortnightly Serial. By ANTHONY HOWELL. ◊ ANTHONY HOWELL writes: My own romantic notion of myself has encouraged me to attempt an epic. It will have 24 books and be the same length as the Odyssey. Each book will be approximately 24 […]
< from Book 8 from Book 10 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ANTHONY HOWELL. ◊ ANTHONY HOWELL writes: My own romantic notion of myself has encouraged me to attempt an epic. It will have 24 books and be the same length as the Odyssey. Each book will be approximately 24 pages long, with three seven-line […]
< chapters 27 & 28 A Fortnightly Serial.By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Nine. The Blues in Paris HARLIE TOOK his thesis with him. He would give it to Jennifer with all the corrections when they returned. He was still uneasy writing a thesis about the blues, even though it was effectively finished. He always remembered […]
< chapters 25 & 26 chapters 29 & 30 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Seven. Black Dog O THE FATHER of Malcom and Jessica Filey was arrested. Suspicion was lifted from Will’s shoulders. The Inspector had been in no doubt that it wasn’t him anyway. As he told his Sergeant: […]
< chapters 23 & 24 chapters 27 & 28 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Five. The Dolphin’s Back IS FATHER was in bed sedated, and Charlie was sitting nursing a coffee in his grandfather’s bathroom. The old man seemed to have gone into some sort of trance. Charlie peered through the […]
< chapters 21 & 22 chapters 25 & 26 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Three. Thesis RUE IVORY for the purist comes only from the tusk of the elephant. It’s a modification of dentine which in its transverse sections or fractures exhibits striae which proceed though the arc of a circle. […]
By JAMES PEAKE. ◊ after Susanna Clarke 1. omeone who recovers what’s been lost, has committed to the steady and dubious art of unforgetting, ways of being, blind spots we didn’t know to compensate for, weight no one thought to infer, things without a name in our language. Someone whose own lives are many, and […]
Executed on the Scaffold, Westminster, 29 October, 1618. By Richard Berengarten. ◊ He dresses in the Tower T five, the priest. The prisoner, confessed, Cheers up a little, even seeming merry, Taking his usual care in how he’s dressed, Stylish as ever, fashionable (very)— Doublet, hair-hued; taffeta breeches, black; Waistcoat, embroidered, black; kid gloves, in […]
By Mélisande Fitzsimons. ◊ Alone in her Prison Cell, Aliénor d’Aquitaine Reflects on the Randomness of Language and History ngland, England, land of sputum and spit, I love it. I have always loved your spirit, even when your buttery tongue licked me into near losing the deep fur, felt sounds of my own. Against the […]
Adages for poetry students.
By John Wilkinson. ◊ hese adages were prepared for students at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, whom I met to talk about their poetry on the afternoon of March 19th 2023. It surprised me that they should have agreed to a Sunday class, but much about Jadavpur surprised me, starting with a campus bedecked with far-left graffiti, […]