Ring of Brodgar
Asking a blessing of stone. Nestled in a blaze, blue water and a cup of soft heathered hills, Orkney’s…
The Tulips
The Tulips enter like a corps de ballet crimson and violet vivid as wax crayons. Heads held high in expectation…
A Different Sort of Provocation
This January I moved from a flat in central Exeter to a wooden house in the Loire Valley. I’ve replaced…
Polyphemus
There were good Cyclopes, and had this particular Cyclops not turned mean after decades of living alone in the…
Pictish Beast
There is a beast swimming in the belly of the earth, crouched in the salt-water of waiting. It slithered…
Response to Finding a Fossil at Writhlington Coal Batches
A Fossil (a Fern) on Writhlington Batches Re-Take (Pt.II) Time not as we know it but another time quite skilled…
In the Corridor & other poems
In the Fall “You’re not going in there – ?” I turned but there was no passage on waking.…
The Last Hangman
An Extract. His signature trick was to light a cheroot, and to leave it In the condemned cell’s ashtray…
Masterplan
I will not travel tonight. Toward dawn a star In Andromeda will abruptly Die, but the world and his…
Infinite Archive
Disinformation, Frances Leviston, Picador, 2015, 80pp, £9.98 (paperback) Kim Kardashian’s Marriage, Sam Riviere, Faber, 2015, 112pp, £10.99 (paperback) These two…
Wishing Tree at the Dargah of Hazrat Moosa Suhaag
To Heba Ahmed for the story Many wishful bellies Offer their bangles, Green, not with envy But melancholy, Of childless…
The Ideal Conditions for Reading this Poem
You’ll be sitting in a bar that used to be a brothel or at least that markets itself as such…
My Father’s Job Book
Rippled by snow, the cover’s blue rose into crests. At nine, he drew it from the sideboard drawer. Scrubbed, late…
Real Life by Suzannah Evans
The producers decided things were getting slow so I caught you with Arabella at the charity regatta, delivered a flute…
His Bottom Lip by Rachel Long
His Bottom Lip Clitoral, like finding a small, hidden part of myself in someone else. Nerve-wet, fleshy – for a…
Two Wives and a Widow by Angela Carter
From The London Magazine March 1966 Two Wives and a Widow A modern version from the Middle Scots of William…
This Dark Art by Neil Burns
This Dark Art If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which…
40 Sonnets by Don Paterson
Paterson is at his best when writing about heartbreak. “The Six,” this reviewer’s favourite piece in 40 Sonnets, speaks…
Independence Day by Manash Bhattacharjee
Independence Day (15th August, 1947) The day had turned out to be A feast for vultures Every Muslim and Hindu…
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