‘No one wakes up on // top of an oak tree and everyone is convinced, for a / moment an angel is sitting next to her on the branch.’
Two poems by Sam Harvey, shortlisted for The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025.
Poetry | Aspiration by Kevin Graham
‘We talk lightly as if we know the outcome / of things, the floor of knowledge // an oily ghost that leaves me when they shift / gears into medical jargon.’
Winning poem from The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025.
Poetry | Realism by Jo Bratten
‘Let’s talk about our terrible / childhoods, I say. Over tiramisu, Chekhov asks me to marry him / and I say yes, of course.’
New poetry by Jo Bratten.
Poetry | Aphorisms on Poetry by Lee Seong-Bok
‘Because poetry must use language, which is inherently opaque and unstable, it has to be more precise than mathematics. For poets, there is no higher morality than precision.’
Lee Seong-Bok on poetry.
Poetry | Two Poems by Miruna Fulgeanu
‘Yes I understand the world; it doesn’t mean I want / to do it. It’s hard!’
Two poems by Miruna Fulgeanu.
Poetry | Two Poems by Tim Tim Cheng
‘For the grass to reach the mirror, you cannot be proximate. / It is generous. Both of us, almost missing. / We seem not to go or stay.’
Two poems by Tim Tim Cheng.
Poetry | Of the Death of Brutus by Graham Allison
‘No sudden catastrophe; witness / years of crumbling stone, / rotting libraries, addled brains.’
New poetry by Graham Allison.
Poetry | Two Poems by James Appleby
‘I’ll be young with you still. One stroke of pen / cancels a decade: our unfaithful room / evicts new tenants, guts our suitcases.’
Two poems by James Appleby.
Poetry | Tyrant by Meredith MacLeod Davidson
‘Did you know the T-Rex / was quite likely an excellent swimmer? / Its skeletal frame light enough to float.’
New poetry by Meredith MacLeod Davidson.
Poetry | Needle by Michael Martin
‘I’m the way she likes anyone left behind — / undeserving, falling.’
New poetry by Michael Martin.
Poetry | Medieval Mystic Margery Kempe in Tesco by Laura Varnam
‘She’s losing tins of custard powder & / baby formula and she’s crushing the body / & blood of Christ under her arm while / John Junior tucks into a doughnut.’
New poetry by Laura Varnam.
Poetry | Vanishing Points by Christopher M James
‘The train driver’s one straight line, as / he calls to mind his schoolboy love / or stillborn child whose name haunts / like an abandoned station.’
New poetry by Christopher M James.
Poetry | Self Portrait as an Unreliable Narrator by Damen O’Brien
‘But if she was brown-eyed or blue-eyed, / they will not recall, only that her eyes / asked a question that no one could answer.’
New poetry by Damen O’Brien.
Poetry | Punctum by Lisa Kelly
‘If all the protesters were smiling serenely, / would a scowling woman become / the punctum? Or is a scowling woman / too much of a cliché to be a punctum?’
New poetry by Lisa Kelly.
Poetry | Glitch by Nicholas Hogg
‘What figure / is the chance that a poet can appear / on praise.’
New poetry from Nicholas Hogg.
Poetry | Temporary Shores by Holly Pollard
‘And again – I arrive to set out my fears, / to still rot in watery luck.’
New poetry by Holly Pollard.
Poetry | Karma by Jane Zwart
‘Of justices, karma is the most poetic— / a magistrate who makes us wear / our wrongs: albatrosses, ugly charms.’
New poetry by Jane Zwart.
Poetry | It’s About Time by Michael Bazzett
‘I’d rather let roots slip between my ribs / and knit these bones into the black soil / to keep them still and ease what restlessness/ might remain.’
New poetry by Michael Bazzett.
Poetry | Motif by Luciana Francis
‘I feed the birds / before I feed myself.’
New poetry by Luciana Francis.
Poetry | Even My Portraitist by Sylee Gore
‘Like clouds, I take my colour from the air.’
New poetry from Sylee Gore.
Poetry | Hit me with your rhythm stick by Rachel Burns
‘Dad drinks a pint of Newcastle Brown
feet sticking to the floor,
the room thick with fag smoke.
Dad 70’s cool, beard & sideburns & swagger.’
New poetry by Rachel Burns.
Poetry | If you look closely by Tim Relf
‘everything is muddled, everything is metaphor.’
New poetry by Tim Relf.
Poetry | Dansette by Nicky Kippax
. Nicky Kippax Dansette . Grandad’s pride and joy, black kit set square in a red box – glossy handle…
Poetry | Message by Imogen Wade
Imogen Wade Message . . Sometimes we are insects, communicating with each other from opposite ends of a vast yellow…