The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

December 2023 Frip

A blue background with some gold solid circles and some gold circle outlines. They look a little like planets.

Across the empty field

Victoria Moul reviews The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse edited by Kaveh Akbar (Penguin, 2023)
Painting of Wallace Stevens. He is wearing a tweed suit and looking stern.

Letters on the Centenary of Harmonium

Paul Stephenson and Lisa Kelly exchange letters on the poetry of Wallace Stevens
Castaway Companions

Castaway Companions

Vanessa Lampert chooses poems by Matthew Dickman, Dorianne Laux and Karen Solie for her desert island
Photo of Nell's bookshelf. Predictably, there are poetry books.

The World’s Undebatably Dark Ages

Nell Prince gives us a tour of her poetry bookshelf and recommends Catullus, Herrick and Frost
Section from the book cover. An abstract image that could be a sun and yellow sand, but ... you know.

Form it from loosestrife, form it remorselessly

Stephen Payne reviews Rope of Sand by Fiona Larkin (Pindrop Press, 2023)
A photograph of a small house, painted half blue and half yellow. The porch is red.

If Tarring Neville was not a village but a procedure

Matthew Paul reviews Instead of an Alibi by Geoff Hattersley (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)
Part of the text "Collecting the Data" in red serif font on a turquoise background.

Each brief puncture of the incoming tide

Isabelle Thompson reviews Collecting the Data by Mat Riches (Red Squirrel Press, 2023)
A collage showing a robin, some soldiers playing football, a Christmas tree, a goose, a running policeman, a pudding and curiously a copy of 'The Joy of Sex'

Poetry Humbug: five poems to ruin Christmas

Tim Atkins selects five Christmas poems – "gifts that really should never have been given"
Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, dressed in yellow, striding forward into the projected fantasy of her come-back

I have never walked a blistering dust road out from San Antonio

D.A.Prince reviews Hollywood or Home by Kathryn Gray (Seren, 2023)