How It Began
by Charlotte Muse — The barrel maker gathered up all his wooden soldiers. / One by one he set them where he wanted them. / I am making one of the wonders of the world! he announced. / You will see! And he made a show of planing wood.
Archive
Ticking its own wild time
Tony Curtis on 'In the Theatre' by Dannie Abse, a poem which changed his life as a writer
Photo credit and copyright Amit Lennon
An empty room
Charlotte Gann reviews Towards a General Theory of Love by Clare Shaw (Bloodaxe, 2022)
Ce n’est pas une métaphore
Hilary Menos reviews Our Lady of Tyres / Notre dame des pneus by Claire Trévien, translated from English to French by Marie Lando (Broken Sleep Books, 2022)
Mirage
by Jeremy Wikeley — I’m driving. The devil’s riding shotgun. / Well? He waves out the window. Was it worth it? / Ahead, the A36 piles into Wiltshire / like a needle piercing through a quilt. / The countryside is a knotted rope of cars. / I'm driving.
Strung like an archer’s bow
Steven Lovatt reviews Unexhausted Time by Emily Berry (Faber, 2022)
Castaway Companions
Castaway Poet Suzannah Evans chooses poems by Ian McMillan, Marie Howe and Tony Hoagland to take to a desert island
Biscuit, olive branch, small origami frog
Jane Routh reviews The Rake by Tristran Fane Saunders (New Poets List, The Poetry Business, 2022)
Crowned
by Maria Taylor — Anna who’ll become my mother / enters the café. The matchmaker waves from her till. / Her nephew is thirty-eight. / Anna is thirty-one. She sees crowns of white blossom / crossing over their heads. A money dance. // Hears a baby
Inside Spelt
The Friday Poem talks to Wendy Pratt, founder and editor of Spelt Magazine, about running a literary magazine with a nature focus, elitist gatekeepers, and the importance of planning
Life and love
Matthew Paul reviews Lanyard by Peter Samson (Carcanet, 2022)
Three Live Canon winners
Emma Simon reviews pamphlets by Aileen La Tourette, Elena Croitoru and Mehmet Izbudak, winners of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2021