The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Frip

An open book with a colourful party blower resting on the pages. The words "Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, She should have looked after her teeth" are just about visible above it.

This barter of enthusiasm

Funny poems by Norman MacCaig, William Makepeace Thackeray and Alexander Hutchison, chosen by Chris Edgoose, D.A. Prince and Richie McCaffery
Dark purple circles on a pale pink background. The circles look a bit like cells and are surrounded by dots and same shapes in swirling patterns.

The year I was lost in the core of a star

Hilary Menos reviews Ovarium by Joanna Ingham (Emma Press, 2022)
Looking through an underpass. A house can be discerned through distant mist.

Tangerine seethe beneath coal crackle

Annie Fisher reviews Relativism by Mary Ford Neal (Taproot Press, 2022)
Picture of Don looking straight at the camera, He has a gray beard and a bald head, black jacket and white shirt.

My boy is painting outer space

Unpack a poem: Ben Wilkinson on 'The Circle' by Don Paterson
Black background with the face of a china doll, cracked, with piercing blue eyes.

Your gift living on in cracked pots carried from garden to garden 

Maggie Mackay reviews The Doll's Hospital by Jenny Robb (Yaffle, 2022)
Naive painting of the backs of two people sitting on a wall, one has a red headscarf and orange skirt, one is dressed in black

The cruelty and largesse of high water

Mat Riches reviews Summer / Break by Richie McCaffery (Shoestring, 2022)
Greta Stoddart looking directly at the camera, smiling. She has brown hair with a grey streak and she's wearing a black shirt with small blue and red flowers on.

Castaway Companions

Castaway poet Greta Stoddart choses poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Raymond Carver and Czeslaw Milosz for her desert island stay
A thin black diagonal line running from top right to bottom left separates two blocks of colour, one orange, one white

Deep fake, rush fade, tilt shift, whip pan, smash cut

Jane Routh reviews Dream into Play by Richard Skinner (Poetry Salzburg, 2022)
A fifties-style graphic showing the rocky surface of a planet with coloured moons and asteroids. The words 'Space Baby' are superimposed in white.

Maybe it’s already gone supernova

Carl Tomlinson reviews Space Baby by Suzannah Evans (Nine Arches, 2022)
Part of a painting which shows a foot on a tightrope.

Ready to catch light

Emma Simon reviews the small manoeuvres by Kathy Pimlott (Verve, 2022)
The word 'iamb' in white a light grey circle on a dark grey background. Underneath it says 'poetry seen and heard' in small white lower-case text.

Inside iamb

The Friday Poem talks to Mark Antony Owen, founder and editor of poet directory and quarterly journal iamb
An abstract design. The left hand third of the image is yellow, the right hand two-thirds is black with one orange and two yellow triangles.

The mind begins this squeaking

Nell Prince reviews Finishing School by Michaela Coplen (Ignition, 2022)