The Frip – The Friday Poem

Welcome to The Frip, our reviews and features magazine. It’s July, so head on down to the World Snail Racing Championships in Congham, Norfolk, because you know you want to win that silver tankard stuffed with lettuce.

One Month On

Editorial: You lookin' at us?

Do what you are going to do and I will tell about it

Feature: Katrina Naomi writes about finding permission to write, violence in poetry, and what makes a happy life

Three pamphlets: Selima Hill, Natalie Shaw and Rachael Matthews

Book Review: 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)

Visions of Juana

Book Review: Mat Riches reviews Citadel by Martha Sprackland (Liverpool University Press, 2020)

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

Then the great wheel began to turn

Book Review: Richie McCaffery reviews The Slowing Ride by Will Stone (Shearsman, 2020)

The outsider who writes from within

Essay: Matthew Stewart looks at the work of Michael Laskey

Halfway between stillness and flight

Book Review: Steven Lovatt reviews Still by Christopher Meredith (Seren, 2021)

By golly, I’ve got it

Essay: Bruno Cooke explores how the poetry of the 1918 Spanish flu compares with the poetry of the present Covid-19 pandemic