Poetry London is recruiting a new Administrator. Poetry London, founded in 1988, is a leading international poetry magazine published three times a year in Spring, Summer and Autumn, where new …
The Twilight Sleep II by Alice Tomlinson
We bring them in, bursting with promise, sweet in sherbet-coloured nighties, bright spring flowers picked during a gale. We smooth wild hair and swaddle pretty heads in bales of soft …
Dare by Mark Pajak
You dare me to cross Bently road naked. Its three a.m. and we’re the only two awake and its icy and streetlights shy down their yellow. On the tarmac my …
I Need the Courage of a Cremated Woman by Natalya Anderson
Marguerite called me last night from her rotary dial. It’s been several moons since I heard her rosary beads dancing with the cord of that phone. Marguerite has been dead …
The memory-foam pillow (3rd prize: 2017 competition)
– Katherine Pierpoint
Cages (2nd prize: 2017 Competition)
– Jack Houston
Crocodile (1st prize: 2017 competition)
I know how I will die then in a death roll scales to my cheek claws sunk into my pale shoulders water burning my throat like whiskey the uncountable rows …
Poetry London 2017 Competition: Judges Report
Judging a poetry competition is like putting your ear to a seashell to hear what the sea has to say: a strange, choric and slightly unreal experience, a multitude of …
Metaphors of the Spirit: Shara McCallum on two Poet Laureates of Jamaica
Mervyn Morris Peelin Orange: Collected Poems Carcanet £14.99 Lorna Goodison Collected Poems Carcanet £14.99 I first encountered poems by Mervyn Morris and Lorna Goodison over twenty years ago, at a …
Editorial: Our rubble-strewn hearts
In Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Susan Stewart recounts a strange haunting. It concerns one of Nicholas Abraham’s psychoanalytic patients: an amateur geologist and entomologist, who spends his …
The Experiment by Jane Draycott
Dearests I have arrived. Some things have already been taken: the small blue bowls and airmail stationery, the summer tablecloth (only slightly blue) and the darkness is now quite cleared. …
Augurs by Oli Hazzard
during the course of a particular day the word shapen happens sharpens how I see the snow how I know it is what it is only listening to it glistening …
Poetry London Autumn 2017 Readings – Wednesday 20 September
Poetry London launches its Autumn 2017 issue with readings from Nuar Alsadir, Oli Hazzard, Liz Berry and the winners of this year’s Poetry London Competition. The evening will be hosted by this issue’s Guest …
Freelance Digital Editor (part time)
Poetry London is seeking a new part-time Digital Editor. The person appointed to the role of Digital Editor will work closely with the Poetry Editor, Co-editor and Reviews Editor to …
The Bad Guy – Riad Saleh Hussein
to Sylvia Plath And I remember that the blue woman, when she had seen me weeping corpses and the poor, Said: your two eyes are mirrors …
Mania of Aggregation: Sam Riviere on Ed Atkins’s malignant poetics
Ed Atkins A Primer for Cadavers Fitzcarraldo £12.99 Ed Atkins is known as an artist, not at all as a poet, so he’s not an obvious candidate for the review …