In the end it was a matter of woodworm
Steven Lovatt reviews Restorations by Ros Hudis (Seren, 2021)
Archive
Castaway Companions
Castaway poet Ben Wilkinson chooses three poems by Louis MacNeice, Stevie Smith and John Keats to take to a desert island
Our Children’s Childhoods
by Charlotte Gann — It was a hard, cold, wet slog, that climb. / We were heading away from shelter // talking as we walked, skirting around / our scariest subjects: when we didn’t love / enough, when we loved
Three pamphlets: Selima Hill, Natalie Shaw and Rachael Matthews
Hilary Menos reviews Fridge by Selima Hill (The Rialto, 2021), oh be quiet by Natalie Shaw (Against the Grain, 2020), and do not be lulled by the dainty starlike blossom by Rachael Matthews (The Emma Press, 2021)
Do what you are going to do and I will tell about it
Feature: Katrina Naomi on finding permission to write, violence in poetry, and what makes a happy life
Lone Wolf
by Anthony Wilson — The rain is a lost child / wondering the zoo // at midnight / with only wolves for company. // At dawn they slink / back inside – // the light has nothing to teach them. / The rain is not bothered
Literature is larger than a single set of people or the taste of one editor
In Conversation: The Friday Poem talks to Amy Wack, Poetry Editor at Seren Books, about finding new poets, funding under austerity, and what it's like to be a poetry gatekeeper
Visions of Juana
Mat Riches reviews Citadel by Martha Sprackland (Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Part of me can’t hear the moon calling anymore
by Emma Simon — Isn’t it always the same, within a crisis / another smaller crisis following its own orbit. / For years now I’ve been singing to her tunes / listening to the pluck
The outsider who writes from within
Matthew Stewart looks at the work of Michael Laskey
Then the great wheel began to turn
Richie McCaffery reviews The Slowing Ride by Will Stone (Shearsman, 2020)
Flying the Lanner
by Tony Curtis — A ball of clawed and beaked fluff in the cage: // first she must walk / and then run / and then learn to fly / but only to Griff, who is her mother / and the only mother she will ever know.