The Climbing Frame
by Sarah Corbett — Square of hot concrete and new plimsolls / pulled on, elastic at the front, the soft/snap / over my heels & I leap up
Archive
What are poets really after?
Helena Nelson considers the pros and cons of the ‘after’ epigraph, poetry’s exclusive codes, and the necessary art of bluffing
To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things
Rory Waterman reviews This Afterlife: Selected Poems by A. E. Stallings (Carcanet, 2022)
How else were you to mend lineage?
Isabelle Thompson reviews Ixora by Prerana Kumar (Guillemot Press, 2023)
Photobombing Dad’s moment
by Maggie Mackay — I am playing fiddle with the Volga boatmen. / My father conducts from the riverbank. / His baton swings like a machete.
There’s space for all of us
We talk to Di Slaney of Candlestick Press about about publishing poetry that appeals to non-poets, whether poetry should be able to pay for itself, and the joy of wonky animals
A basic beginning in tegnsprog
Carl Tomlinson reviews The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly (Carcanet, 2023)
Our version of the sea not quite knowing how to touch the land
Mat Riches reviews Landsick by Genevieve Carver (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)
Mom cooks fish
by Samiksha Ransom — from my nose to my chest / i feel the pangs of panic / and want to un-smell it // vile saltiness / swish of the sea
A lesson for all
Rowan Bell on Ukrainian-American graphic artist Paul Peter Piech and his bold illustrations of poetry
The weight of history
Matthew Paul reviews Selected Poems 1983–2023 by Ian Parks (Calder Valley Poetry, 2023)
Unfashionable almost to the point of provocation
Victoria Moul reviews Arctic Elegies by Peter Davidson (Carcanet, 2022)