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Index: Poetry & Fiction

Two cautionary tales.

By SIMON COLLINGS. ♦ The Fish Eye t the bottom of his plate of fish soup Gunther found an eye looking at him. He was horrified. In the local folklore, discovering a fish eye in one’s soup was a worrying omen, and Gunther believed strongly in local lore. He scooped the eye onto his spoon […]

from White Ivory, chapters 21 & 22

< chapters 19 & 20   chapters 23 & 24 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-One. Old Friends HARLIE HAD BEEN working hard on his thesis when the call came.  ‘Come on Charlie. Two slots on a CD, it’s all set up. You can do Whiskey Straight and Sitting On Top Of […]

Two eclogues.

By JOHN WILKINSON. ◊ ECLOGUE: EACH TO EACH The flattened world is incapable of folding its creatures; they enter no burrows, nests cannot raise a rookery aloft amidst spheres of mistletoe, new carrot-top curls subside, creep along the earth they intrigue and disguise, matted and too shallow. What can break the bed, transparency of air […]

Last poems.

 By Béatrice Douvre. Translated by John Taylor. ◊  arewell to inset words, to glorious words. Here, a place drunk with blossoming, the enameled field of living. The green water is a face effaced by confines. Farewell to inset words, to glorious words; the voices change, the sad steeples shift while floating. Snow in the brown […]

What Is Poetry?

Death keeps — an indifferent host — this house of call, whose sign-board wears no boast save Beds for All. —Sylvia Townsend Warren, ‘East London Cemetery’ And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as […]

from ‘The Runiad’ book 7

< from Books 5 & 6               from Book 8 > 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 […]

from White Ivory, chapters 17 & 18

< chapters 15 & 16     chapters 19 & 20 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Seventeen. The Return ill gave Paul Quinto his drink and sat down on the sofa opposite him. Paul stared at him in silence for minutes, not touching the drink, and Will finally couldn’t take it […]

from White Ivory, chapters 15 & 16

< chapters 13 & 14      chapters 17 & 18 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Fifteen. Absent Voices, Absent Faces ILL GOT BACK to his flat in Oswestry that Friday to find the light on his answering machine flashing. ‘It’s Paul.’ He dialled 1471 and for the first time was […]

from White Ivory, chapters 13 & 14

< chapters 11 & 12                                                                                                       […]

A sowing of the sky.

Nine fragments for Juan Carlos Ceci. By Franca Mancinelli. Translated from the Italian by John Taylor.   he rain—dense fabric in which we are generated from a warm color and a cold color. la pioggia—tessuto fitto dove siamo generati da un colore caldo e un colore freddo. ◊ ater bears fruit on the picked stems […]

from ‘The Runiad’ books 5 & 6

< from Books 3 & 4   from Book 7 > 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 […]

from ‘On the Road to Lviv’.

By CHRISTOPHER MERRILL. ◊ he faithful chanting in Armenian At vespers in Ivano-Frankivsk, shaped The way I posed for a photograph outside The church—between a pair of Christmas trees Festooned with lights, which framed a cross or khachkar, Altar, and iconostasis sculpted Out of a block of river ice. Natalya Would add this photograph to […]

A stubble like stars.

(after Jaccottet) By PETER LARKIN. ◊ had been reading Philippe Jaccottet in French and English for many years, so was particularly moved to come across his last published poems (La Clarté Notre-Dame) in the version translated by John Taylor. I wondered whether I could work with these texts in their English form in some way […]

from ‘The Runiad’ books 3 & 4

< from Books 1 & 2                                                                                          from Books 5 & 6 […]

from White Ivory, chapters 7 & 8

< chapters 5 & 6    chapters 9 & 10 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Seven Readings he first thing Will did when he got back home was to take his one remaining copy of Kicking Away the Ladder from the shelf. He stood by the window and turned it over […]