The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

The Frip

Photograph showing poetry books on a bookshelf.

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life

Sarah Mnatzaganian gives us a tour of her poetry bookshelf
An oil painting (done by some geezer called Manet) of Mallarmé. He has curly hair and a fine moustache of the handlebar persuasion. He is reading and smoking a big old cigar.

Learning to read with Mallarmé, the most obscure of all poets

Bertrand Marchal discusses why Mallarmé wanted to make poetry so difficult for readers to understand
Ink line drawing on crumpled cartridge paper. A round face looks almost like a tribal mask with an open mouth and a block bad around and across the eyes (though we can still see the eyes). The nose is a triangle.

No one wears Brooches anymore

Hilary Menos reviews Savage Tales by Tara Bergin (Carcanet, 2022
Image showing the painting 'The Goldfish' by Paul Klee. It shows, unsurprisingly, a goldfish on a textured blue background; there are other small fish artfully arranged (well it is your actual Paul Klee innit) in the corners.

What are poets really after?

Helena Nelson considers the pros and cons of the ‘after’ epigraph, poetry’s exclusive codes, and the necessary art of bluffing
Section of a book cover. The background is blue and parts of the letters A and F are shown in a bold yellow font.

To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things

Rory Waterman reviews This Afterlife: Selected Poems by A. E. Stallings (Carcanet, 2022)
A textured image showing a dark red line drawing on a white and red background. The drawing shows what looks like an open hand holding maybe small cruciform shaped flowers in its palm.

How else were you to mend lineage?

Isabelle Thompson reviews Ixora by Prerana Kumar (Guillemot Press, 2023)
Photo of Di Slaney looking straight at the camera. The background is dark blue. She has glasses and shoulder length dark hair.

There’s space for all of us

We talk to Di Slaney of Candlestick Press about about publishing poetry that appeals to non-poets, whether poetry should be able to pay for itself, and the joy of wonky animals
Part of a painting showing the inside of a house and a long corridor. The lighting suggests it could be evening.

A basic beginning in tegnsprog

Carl Tomlinson reviews The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly (Carcanet, 2023)
Abstract image showing a black circle on a white background containing blue, orange and red splodges. Some spill over the page outside the circle. Landsick? Maybe.

Our version of the sea not quite knowing how to touch the land

Mat Riches reviews Landsick by Genevieve Carver (Broken Sleep Books, 2023)
Watercolour showing green grass, white flowers and two leafy trees with a light blue sky.

A lesson for all

Rowan Bell on Ukrainian-American graphic artist Paul Peter Piech and his bold illustrations of poetry
Pen and ink slightly washed out picture of a man's face.

The weight of history

Matthew Paul reviews Selected Poems 1983–2023 by Ian Parks (Calder Valley Poetry, 2023)
A study in blue. It looks like a close up of large heads of coral in an eerie blue light.

Unfashionable almost to the point of provocation

Victoria Moul reviews Arctic Elegies by Peter Davidson (Carcanet, 2022)