Summer 2022

Issue 102

£7.95

Physical magazine. Includes free UK shipping.

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The Summer 2022 issue of Poetry London proudly carries new poems by our featured author, Grace Nichols, who was recently awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, in addition to work by Yousif M Qasmiyeh, Sean O’Brien, Kostya Tsolakis, Jennifer Wong, Fred D’Aguiar, Saddiq Dzukogi and Jenny Xie, as well as Jemilea Wisdom-Baako, a recent participant of our mentoring scheme, who makes her debut appearance in the magazine.

Other highlights include translations of poems by Li Qingzhao, Sun Tzu-ping, Tomaž Šalamun, and Herman Hesse, and interviews with Valzhyna Mort and Mohammed El-Kurd. This issue’s criticism section sees Maryam Hessavi analyze three brilliant debuts – by Maia Elsner, Alice Hiller, and Jason Allen-Paisant – as they excavate the traumas of the past, while Leo Boix considers the work of Christopher Soto, our Summer 2021 issue’s cover star, whose first collection has just been published to great acclaim in the U.S., as well as Forrest Gander’s translations of the Mexican poet Coral Bracho.

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Contents

Editorial

Editorial by André Naffis-Sahely

Poems

  • Niall Campbell Confessions
  • Harriet Jae Departure
  • Tristram Fane Saunders Before we go any further
  • Li Qingzhao Ci to the tune of “Drunk in the Blossom’s Shadows”
  • Jacqueline Saphra Who?
  • Fred Voss Timeless Wrench Brothers
  • Jennifer Wong The truth is, when you stopped speaking to me for a whole year
  • Grace Nichols Tea in the Garden / Not a Constant Gardener / Watching a falling
  • Helen Bowell On Eggs
  • Jemilea Wisdom-Baako Single bed shoved against the wall, Croydon, 1993
  • Will Burns Dovecote Farm
  • Ali Lewis The Touch
  • Fred D’Aguiar Haikus for Arthur Scargill & Bill Morris
  • Aoife Lyall Wildflowers
  • Nicholas Friedman Habit
  • Jo Clement Travelling Light
  • Kim Moore The Kidnap
  • Saddiq Dzukogi Compass
  • Kostya Tsolakis The Dead of the Greek Enclosure in West Norwood Cemetery Speak to Me / I, Wonky Nose
  • Robin Myers Parts
  • Henry St Leger the dig
  • Paolo Javier Best Dream Offer Wind / Hollering Chardonnays
  • Mbizo Chirasha Letter From The Propaganda School
  • Catherine Gander Imaginary Vase
  • Sean O’Brien Not the Same
  • Sun Tzu-ping Postcards I Suspected Were Stolen
  • Tomaž Šalamun The Vermont Rome Axis
  • Yousif M Qasmiyeh The Camp is a Bait for Time
  • Ron Slate At Sardent
  • Jenny Xie Broken Proverbs
  • Herman Hesse For the Children (End of 1914)
  • Ian Humphreys Wasp in a jam jar
  • Breyten Breytenbach lament for a revolution
  • Matthew Zapruder Hvar

Selected Essays & Reviews

  • ‘I speak my Valzhyna Mort language’. André Naffis-Sahely Interviews Valzhyna Mort
  • ‘No Disabled People Wanted Here’: Accessing The Estate of Poetry by Karl Knights
  • To Be Human. Kate Simpson on mythology, psychogeography, and acts of untethering
  • Unearthing and Entering. Maryam Hessavi on three debuts that excavate the traumas of the past
  • Memory Loss and Defiance. Leo Boix reviews two collections in translation from Latin America and the debut of a Latinx poet from the US
  • Collective Awakening. Isabelle Baafi Interviews Mohammed El-Kurd
  • Spectral Licks. Síofra McSherry on three collections that use music to mine collective and personal histories
  • No happy lists. Chris Cusack on three collections that explore palimpsests of memory and nature (human or otherwise)
  • ‘O humble receptacle’. Maria Sledmere on two poets writing rural life through a solvent lyric of past and present
  • Poetry at the Precipice of the World. Sana Goyal on three pamphlets that navigate geographies of memory and identity

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