Simon Armitage ~ dear Hey Lane Cemetery Resident Poet, a.k.a. self-appointed Clerk of Works (Cadavers Division), a.k.a. one-man Inspectorate of Graveyard Bins; why shouldn’t plots be sunk by banana-yellow Caterpillars …
Things Already Lost
Anthony Anaxagorou A dead rat could be a dead lung except nobody wants to touch a dead rat without gloves. At the end of the funeral my son asks when …
Very
Mimi Khalvati Very… the very first time that I heard – or worked out what it meant since at that age English was still a mystery – the word ‘very’, …
Where’s Wally?
Lucy Mercer My aunt tells me elderly Halloween stories of her friends’ husbands exploding blood all over the curtains. I cover the holes in my face – I am filled …
How to master the art of poetry submissions
1. Here’s the headline: read the magazine you’re submitting to, before you decide to submit. You’ll get a sense of where your poems will best fit, and you’ll have an …
The Catalogue of Errors by Helen Mort
not that you fall headlong through the spoilt floorboards of your house drop through layers of darkness ground floor, basement, lower ground slowing, opening steady as a lift not that …
Beggars of Life by Denise Riley
The movie is over, yet the screening reels on through your eyes – you’ve left the cinema, but you’re still seeing ‘in’ graceful Ozu, or ‘in’ kindly Kore-Eda, or in …
The Swords by Abigail Parry
Nine shafts in steely fluency, between the headboard and the wall grey-blue like ice or gunships brute and serious a face between cupped hands and all the saints polite as …
Airplane Above My Bed by Matthew Dickman
Did I die before I was born? Did I have to have a body first, wasn’t I a nobody before I was a baby on earth? Wasn’t I a sucker …
Neon Void by Dorothea Lasky
I lost the will to live Or I never had it St Anthony of Padua St Anthony the ascetic in the desert St Antonio’s The dark wood where I never …
The Daughter Channel by Daisy Lafarge
What’s on the Daughter Channel, old bad goose? Violet aggro, incarnadine sulk a recitation from the Book of Lack Half-baked breadcrumb narratives toed just-so in the floorboard crack So no …
Sun Rises in Mid-City, LA by Fred D’Aguiar
Call for wings, alligator skin, eagle eyes, dog ears, leopard speed GPS coordinates if body ever hopes to slip that helicopter whose searchlight combs late night revelers, two-job commuters, down …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 4: After Zhao Mengfu’s Bathing Horses by Tarn MacArthur
Now the warring is over the ritual begins, and those men we’ve come to know in blood and barbarism return again to the heart’s work of tending to its love, …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 3: A Rumble In Vina del Mar by Jenny McCartney
In Vina del Mar In the swirl of traffic by the sea Everything feels skew-whiff Stiff with salt and gasoline Men mend cars by the side of the road Like …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 2: Tiger Gran by Pascale Petit
My grandmother of the flying electric blanket, who speaks Hindi in her sleep, who has gharials in her black eyes behind steamed-up glasses, a long nose like a mountain between …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 1: Under London by Victor Tapner
Joseph Bazalgette, Victorian civil engineer and builder of the city’s sewer network As the lid closes on Hammersmith Road, muffling the crunch of brewers’ carts, stifling shouts from laundry windows, …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 THIRD PRIZE: Heaven by Selima Hill
We take a yellow cabbage to the hens then carry on downhill to the boats, my uncle in his little crumpled hat, me in shorts, half-hidden in the hair my …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 SECOND PRIZE: Children of the Revolution by S K Kim
for my cousins First the meat disappeared from our rations, then the rice, then the barley and millet, then the rations vanished. _____ We caught croakers, cuttlefish, hauled creels of …
Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 FIRST PRIZE: Names by Romalyn Ante
‘We are nameless and all names are ours.’ – Emmanuel Lacaba My mother’s name is Rosana, but when she left, I had other mothers. Rowena, Jimboy, Alma. I was named …
The mother dream by Rebecca Perry
Daughter, the door is open. For once leave the raincloud outside. Learn how to get along with offal for the sake of your iron levels. Squeamishness will get you nowhere …
