You are the player. Wake up.
Inigo Brodie on the story behind the Minecraft End Poem, and how sometimes poetry is the only option
Ender Dragon Image: Mojang/Microsoft
Archive
The Big Reveal
by Julie-Ann Rowell — Nantes, teeming rain like an angry child’s tears / and everything closed because it’s Monday. / We topple into a bar tabac. Men cluster / around tin-top tables, a fat Jack Russell / wandering despondently between their legs.
SEQUINS NOW
Isabelle Thompson reviews Dirty Martini by Natalie Shaw (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)
Blown like glass into brittle intricacies
Hilary Menos reviews Slide by Mark Pajak (Cape, 2022)
Evening on the Porch
by Jodie Hollander — The rocking chair is rocking, / though no one sits in it / on this windless evening, / and yet this rocking, rocking, / back and forth as if / a soul could somehow wish / to be here once again / on long warm evenings
Choose a poem, learn it by heart, share it out loud
Julie Blake, co-founder of Poetry By Heart, talks about the benefits of learning poetry, the joys of performance, and the Poetry By Heart national poetry speaking competition
Photos by Sam Strickland
玫瑰, गुलाब, rose
D.A. Prince reviews After all we have travelled by Sarala Estruch (Nine Arches Press, 2023)
This barter of enthusiasm 5
Matthew Paul, Charlotte Gann and Rory Waterman choose poems by Geoff Hattersley, Kathy Pimlott and Wendy Cope
The Dowry of Hera
by Rebecca Ferrier — I am training myself in happiness through lemons: / think well, dart citrus to tongue, take joy’s embalmment as sweet lemonade. / Between an avenue of knuckle is a pip I squeeze from joint / and plant to yellow the outside.
All Quite Thoroughly Dirty (Part Two)
Alan Buckley continues his close reading of ‘Filling Station’ by Elizabeth Bishop (Part Two)
This is for the poets
Bruno Cooke says the new Forward Prize category for Best Single Poem – Performed shows that the literary establishment is finally starting to take an interest in Spoken Word Poetry
Monsoon night-song
Steven Lovatt reviews Mother of Flip-Flops by Mukahang Limbu (Out-Spoken Press, 2022)