The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Frip

Black and white image showing what looks like abstracted, shrouded figures.

One Woman Revolution

Chris Edgoose reviews White/Other by Fran Lock
A line drawing showing an anchor and a compass on a cream background.

A slick torpedo hurled from the blue depths

Isabelle Thompson reviews Temporary Stasis by Lucy Holme (Broken Sleep Books, 2022)
A photograph of Mercy and Jordan in Kampala. They are smiling.

Poetry in Uganda

Rowan Bell visits Kampala and meets Mercy Geno Apachi, performance poet, and Jordan Megolonyo, founder of the Klan poetry house
Avid alt text readers will notice that sometimes I am at a loss to pull meaning from a bewildering array of abstract book covers, this one is more figurative in nature, though not entirely clear. It appears to be painting of a crystal fruit bowl with what looks like an explosion of silhouetted grapes ... or cherries ... fruit anyway ... or maybe berries.

More life!

Stephen Payne reviews Scenes from Life on Earth by Kathryn Simmonds (Salt, 2022)
Cream text on a red background. For added excitement, this text is vertical!

Yielding to water

Clare Best reviews The Water People / Gens de l’eau by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated by Marilyn Hacker (Poetry Translation Centre, 2022)
Black and white photograph showing a poet sitting outside at a tiny table with a typewriter. There is a handwritten sign saying "Poet for hire, pay what you like".

26 things you only know if you’re a poet

by Tim Relf
Section of a book cover. It's mostly black, with silver grey lines that could be woodcuts. It shows in roughly square boxes, a tree, a tower, a bridge, some leaves and a curly vertical squiggle. Nope, I don't know either.

An outstretched imitation of the original

Jeremy Wikeley reviews bandit country by James Conor Patterson (Picador, 2022)
A black and white photograph of a woman's face; she is smiling.

This barter of enthusiasm 4

Mat Riches, Jane Routh and Alan Buckley choose favourite funny-serious poems by Matthew Sweeney, Michael McCarthy and Kathryn Maris
Poetry books on a bookshelf, at least forty of them. I am not going to list them all here, but many appear in the article.

What’s on Maria Taylor’s bookshelf?

British Cypriot poet and reviewer Maria Taylor tells us which books have been important to her in her life and in her poetry
A section taken from the front cover, parts of the words "The" and "Arctic3 can be seen. Th cover is brown with cream text. What can you do?

Hanging onto Tam Lin in The Arctic

Helena Nelson reviews The Arctic by Don Paterson (Faber, 2022)
This is a dark book cover (could have guessed really, "Mouth of Shadows" and all that). The image looks like the inside of a cave (think "Lord of the Rings") a light comes from above and throws a circular glow on the floor.

Murderous parrots eat souls

Richie McCaffery reviews Mouth of Shadows by Tim Murphy (SurVision Books, 2022)
Natalie Shaw, wearing glasses and standing in front of a green wall with a framed painting on it.

Down in the soily waters

Natalie Shaw gives us a close reading of the poem 'Maybe; maybe not' by Denise Riley