The Friday Poem
A poem every Friday
by Nicholas McGaughey — At some point someone was moved to / put on canvas something that moved / them towards the easel. These reveries / colour and haunt our walls: some bought, / most bequeathed by the discerning dead / who thought
Nell Prince reviews Angola, America by Sammy Weaver (Seren, 2022)
Following on from Steven Lovatt's evisceration of 'heft' and Chris Edgoose's denunciation of 'palimpsest', Jane Routh takes on ‘hunker'
Photo by Mathias Reding
by John Mee — THE FIRST SCHOOL OF CHARACTER / The most delightful task that can be undertaken by a girl / is to make the home happy. A shovel may be heated red hot / and held over the pie dish. Why not use heather
Alan Buckley gives us his close reading of the poem 'The Walkers' by John Glenday
Hilary Menos reviews I Dreamed I Was Emily Dickinson’s Boyfriend by Ron Koertge (Red Hen Press, 2022)
Rory Waterman reviews Apostasy by John Burnside (Dare-Gale Press, 2022)
by Roger Elkin — Imagine her grin’s wicked innocence — / the sly-eyed tightness of her gaze / glazing over in her blear of peering, /her almost show of not knowing // Imagine her wet ferreting-out snout / nuzzling through earth-dust, her maunching at slops
Will Daunt looks at the work of Roger Elkin and the critical relevance of his latest project The F Word
Chris Edgoose reviews Rescue Contraptions by Joe Duggan (tall-lighthouse, 2022)
Mike Barlow, Helena Nelson and Martin Figura choose favourite funny-serious poems by e. e. cummings, Mark Halliday and Peter Howard
Smiley yellow ball photograph by Chaitanya Pillala on Unsplash
by Christopher Arksey — It was like you’d surfaced after a spell / underwater; spent and roused at the same time, / breathless toward the inevitable / big-reveal of your long-delayed punchline. // Then you let fly — the laugh of someone twice
