1st December 2003 and 23rd November 2005 – Frieda Hughes and John Kinsella
1st December 2003 Dear John, Counting Blessings. I put aside the idea of A letter-poem in May, in answer To…
Solitaire – Theo Greenblatt
Solitaire is the winning story from our 2018 Short Story Competition, written by Theo Greenblatt. ‘Hey, Miss. Is it okay…
From Achebe to Lessing: What Reading Aloud Reveals – Ted Hodgkinson
Though reading is almost always a solitary act, the books that change us as individuals also bind us to unseen…
My London by Maggie Butt
I was born, brought up and have lived most of my life in London, and it fits me like a…
Old mother moor by Sarah Westcott
Old mother moor is bitter – peat is the thinnest of comforts the bedrock is recalcitrant as teeth moor like…
The Rise and Fall of the Irish Faery
‘The Second Battle of Moytura’ (Cath Maige Tuired) c. 875 is the centrepiece of the extraordinary Irish Mythological Cycle,…
Kleist Single Malt by Konrad Muller
Riding He tried to be a soldier. Seven years he spent in the Guards, seven years he described as irredeemably…
Seeing Robert Lowell Plain
Pushed by professors I came to hear him read, peered down upon a greying shock of hair to catch…
A Walk Through Rackham Land by Steven O’Brien
Ideally, if you go into Rackham Land you should go on your own. Take a deep breath and walk. Don’t…
Homage to Dufu’s Cottage
Translated by Kailan 1. Thirty years ——- I walked from this side to the other side of summer thirty…
A Gamble with People and Money
Summer Opera, 2017 (Glyndebourne Festival, The Grange Festival, Grange Park Festival at West Horsley, Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Opera…
The Ribbleway by John Gimlette
Wild horses wouldn’t get me to central Lancashire for a bank holiday–or so I thought. In fact, all it took…
Walking Through London with Sherlock Holmes
If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the…
The Sandman by Holly Howitt
Quiet: the poet is taking the stage. (Well, it’s not a stage, but a circle of bookshop carpet: Shush, we…
Emotions Run Cool
First Love, Gwendoline Riley, Granta, February 2017, £12.99, 176 pp. (hardcover) ‘How many boyfriends are treated like the father…
Encountering the Unwelcome
Travelling back from Belgium this summer I was inadvertently caught up in the rush of returning holidaymakers, all making for…
White Building
For Paul and Maya Between still life and low relief, the squared off, plain, distempered walls of Japanese size,…
The Hardship of the Voyage
Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong, Jonathan Cape, April 2017, £9.99, 96 pp. (paperback) Kumukanda, Kayo Chingonyi, Chatto…
Pagan Pleasures and Youthful Subjects
On Pagham Beach, Photographs and Collages from the 1930s, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, 25 October – 8 December 2017…
Posthuman Poetics
Fast, Jorie Graham, Carcanet, June 2017, pp. 96, £12.99 (Paperback) ‘I was very lucky. The end of the world…
The London Road
The summer and autumn of 1651 was make-or-break time for the future Charles II. These were two seasons when his…
Tree Surgeons on the Aberdeen Line
You woke one night to railway tree surgeons giving the trees by the track their yearly trim with their hybrid…
‘Each takes a turn, as one does, south of Market’
Selected Poems, Thom Gunn, Faber and Faber, July 2017, pp.336, £18.99 (hardcover) Proprietary, Randall Mann, Persea, July 2017, pp.80, £12.99…