Jennifer Militello for ‘A Dictionary of Having Been Prey in the Voice of the Grandmother’ Alex Toms for ‘Becoming Sei’ NJ Hynes for ‘The Hands Washing Us’ David HW Grubb for ‘Joe Boy Learns His Words’

In a recent collection of essays Al Alvarez (adept at poker and extreme sport, and advocate in 1966 of new American poets ‘Beyond the Gentility Principle’) describes the writer alone with his own, rather dismal company. ‘For five or six [...]

Poetry London started life back in 1988 as Poetry London Newsletter, produced with the aid of an Amstrad PCW and intermittent access to a photocopier. It was a project born of enthusiasm by a group of poets interested in creating a space [...]

Observe my delicate Koong-see, whey-faced beside the lattice fence and warming in her palm my gift of an ivory bead.   In the palace garden’s midnight blue the apple tree lets fall its fruit as Koong-see walks and thinks of [...]

‘Who wants poets in lean years?’ That was how Michael Hamburger translated the phrase ‘wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit?’, from Hölderlin’s poem ‘Bread and Wine’. ‘What are poets for in a destitute time?’ is how the question reappears with different [...]

The process of judging a poetry competition can feel like a bombardment: hundreds of poems all clamouring for attention, almost crying out Choose me! I’m the poem you want! It’s something of an emotional rollercoaster too: being suddenly sucked in to so [...]