Puddocks by John Greening
for SECH Clare would have called these five red kites circling above dead or stag’s-headed oaks like iambs broken…
Hammer and Tongue Poetry Slam Finals at the Royal Albert Hall
I had watched countless videos on YouTube, attended other poetry slams and kept abreast of the ‘scene’ on social media,…
Chan by Hannah Lowe
Hannah Lowe’s latest collection of poetry Chan (Bloodaxe, 2016) revisits the characters and stories from her first collection, Chick (Bloodaxe,…
Poem in which my Mother is Monica Galetti
I am a child. In our yellow kitchen before school she whistles breakfast from the London smog and plates…
The Crossing
‘When any of the fugitives said, “Let me go over”, the men of Gilead said to him…”Say Shibboleth,” and…
Rua Do Olival (Street Point 17)
And if she leant lonesome on the sill, they’re talking by their shops, one of them that is filled…
A Literary Landscape
Winter Migrants, Tom Pickard, Carcanet, 2016, 74pp, £9.99 (paperback) Quennets, Philip Terry, Carcanet, 2016, 135pp, £12.99 (paperback) Tom…
I was walking
that bit more quickly then less purposefully down a sunlit road that ran from traffic-lights at the town’s or…
An Old Photograph, dated 1945
My sister has found an old photograph Of me holding a bucket and spade, On a beach fringed by…
Crickadarn
From the top of the slope, among the desire lines of crows, looking down to the house and its…
Wooden Spoon
Not knives or pans. The genius of a kitchen is the wooden spoon, that archaic thing – a dugout…
Two Daughters
There was once a widowed lord with two comely daughters. Though the loss of his wife brought the lord…
The Upper River at Christmas
It is late December, a mild midwinter’s day ——in the week that stumbles ————between Christmas and New Year when…
how to pronounce Peckham
*After Nate Marshall’s Pronounce pĕk Fold your lips like uniform of de … boy. Parents said it was when…
That Boy by Robert Nazarene
He was patient as a dead bird. He perched on the ledge of bottom and rocked. He was the…
Two more from ‘Mother Goose’ by Bernard Gutteridge
Two fairytale poems from ‘Mother Goose’ by Bernard Gutteridge with a little twist, first published in The London Magazine in…
Ghost Story by J.G. Warry
For close on forty years I have pursued The ghost of my personality Down endless corridors of a castle Unsuccessfully.…
Interview with Caleb Femi – Young People’s Laureate for London
Caleb Femi, a 26 year old teacher and poet from Peckham, has been chosen to be the new Young People’s…
Notes Made Long Ago
Sun and moonlight scattered in furrows, only red clay remembers turning blade of plough while iron soon forgets…
Unkindness of Ravens
12 February, 1554 In the silence of winter Lady Jane Grey, brittle as a stalk of fern. Rime…
Journeying Souls
The Verandah Poems, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Bloodaxe, 2016, £9.95 (paperback) Selected Poems, Michael Symmons Roberts, Cape 2016, £14…
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