It sometimes goes beyond any idea of the good poem or the great poem. Or anything like that. Sometimes, it is a rarer event. On these occasions, you read a poem, a single poem by a poet you have not [...]

Recently I have been thinking about what a poet leaves behind. Since late last year I have been in contact with the family of a young woman regarding how best to remember their late daughter’s work. She died aged eighteen, [...]

‘You are really living the writer’s life, aren’t you?’ Such was a friend’s opinion when last year I was working as a night manager of a fairly dodgy hotel. I would work from 11pm until 7am, return home to get [...]

The mini-features in this issue, supplied by Gwyneth Lewis and Karen McCarthy Woolf, are on the topic of what changes between poetry collections. How does our understanding of our own work change? How do approaches to writing shift between books? [...]

I apologise for an editorial that is perhaps less personal and more around the business of what the magazine is trying to do, but these past few months have been some of the busiest – but I hope that this [...]

I remember Nia Davies taking the stage at the 2019 Gestures Conference in Manchester, nestling up to a long table bedecked with mics from panel discussions and pulling one towards her. Without a word, she placed a punnet of blackberries [...]

Richard Scott was born in London. His pamphlet Wound (2016) won the Michael Marks Poetry Award in 2016 and his poem ‘crocodile’ won First Prize in the Poetry London Prize 2017. His first book Soho (2018) was a Gay’s the Word book of the year and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, a Costa Book Award, and a Forward Poetry Prize. His poetry has been translated into German and French. He is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and he teaches poetry at Faber Academy. His latest collection, That Broke into Shining Crystals (2025), was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Shortly after its release, poet Serge ♆ Neptune corresponded with Scott about channelling writers from previous generations, and the transformative, healing power of crystals that reverberates through his work.

Dzifa Benson’s debut collection Monster is inspired by the life of Sarah ‘Saartjie’ Baartman – a South African Khoekhoe woman who was brought to England in 1810 and displayed in freakshows across Europe for her large buttocks. Our knowledge of [...]

Oluwaseun Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer, and performer based in London. His poems have been published and anthologised in the Guardian, The Poetry Review, PN Review, Oxford Poetry, Tate, bath magg, fourteen poems, Re·creation: A Queer Poetry Anthology (2021), and Queerlings. As a Ledbury Poetry Critic, he has written reviews for the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry London, the Poetry School, Magma, Poetry Birmingham, and the Poetry Book Society. Shortly before the release of his debut collection, Strange Beach – published in January 2025 by Fitzcarraldo (UK) and Soft Skull (US) – reviews editor Isabelle Baafi interviewed him about his depictions of landscape and the body, which interrogate notions of time, identity, and connection.