‘Everywhere beings who worry, who notice birthdays, who war. / And still, existence’s single dice-throw – / the wish to go on, over not.’
Poetry by Jane Hirshfield.
Helen When Asked by Nina Reljić
‘My face was not the most beautiful / but any person was entitled to think it was / and what terrifying pleasure in that.’
Nina Reljić’s winning poem in this year’s Poetry Prize.
Poetry | Monrovia, 2010 by Nathaniel Calhoun
‘there were war criminals around. that was / in the air. in our ice cubes. it made you feel like a decent guy.’
New poetry by Nathaniel Calhoun.
Poetry | Dear Dolly by Jasmine Gibbs
‘And when // they upped your dose of anaesthetic, from lucid haze to euthanasia, / it was almost a mercy.’
New poetry by Jasmine Gibbs.
Poetry | Consumers, Global Capitalists, Environmentalists, Weirdos by Stephen Kampa
‘the global capitalists / were thrilled, too, because to make / every consumable product organic, // a veritable living thing, is to guarantee / perpetual repeated / obsolescence’
New poetry from Stephen Kampa.
Poetry | Time Management by Nasim Luczaj
‘So what that it was okay to call it / a day? Does delight ever feel done? And hell / will come, whether or not you schedule it.’
New poetry by Nasim Luczaj.
Poetry | The Erymanthian Boar by Rachel Curzon
‘We’re going now, I said, // to say something definite. / And when the car began its song / the street sang it back, // all lamentation.’
New poetry by Rachel Curzon.
Poetry | Let’s Dive In by Daniel Addercouth
‘I don’t want to exaggerate, / but I could be happy anywhere. Together, / our losses make a home, wouldn’t you say?’
New poetry by Daniel Addercouth.
Poetry | Two Poems by Sam Harvey
‘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.