Spring 2021
Issue 98
£7.95
Out of stock
Physical magazine. Includes free UK shipping.
The Spring 2021 issue of Poetry London, Martha Sprackland’s final issue as acting poetry editor, contains translations from Spanish and Dutch, a stunning, adamant erasure-poem written through the Ferguson Report by American poet Nicole Sealey, and a showcase of new work emerging from the inaugural residency of the Obsidian Foundation, introduced by its founder, Nick Makoha. There is new work by Selima Hill, Major Jackson, Holly Pester, Ruth Padel, Paul Muldoon and Rowan Ricardo Phillips, among many, many others. Poets interrogate the notion of work, family and love in a changed world, in an issue that is at once provoking, entertaining, exhilarating and insistent. Newcomers to the magazine include Adham Smart and Alex Bell.
Threading through the prose of the issue are three essays that address the shifting contours of poetry and society since the start of the pandemic. Marvin Thompson writes about balancing the demands of creativity, community and activism, at a time when poets are being asked to step up to the plate. Zoë Brigley presents a report from the field, reflecting on how digital technology and online events can improve accessibility and equalities. In the issue’s third essay, Laura Maw offers close readings of recent poems by Nadia de Vries, Warsan Shire, and Leah Horlick, three poets whose work depicting the trauma of domestic spaces resonates newly during lockdown.
Our interview for the issue sees Jennifer Lee Tsai talk to T.S. Eliot Prize-winner Bhanu Kapil about her transatlantic career, and the ongoing quest to find ‘a sentence that shakes’. And as always, alongside the features in the issue, you will find the most incisive reviews of new poetry, surveying recent collections by Natalie Diaz, Fred Moten, David Morley, and many more.
Discover more from this issue…
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Category: Videos
Tommes Gaarder & Chris Cusack reading from ‘when my mother died’ (in Dutch and in translation)
Tommes Gaarder, Chris Cusack
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Contents
Notes
Editorial by Martha Sprackland
‘Looking out of the window is work’
Poems
Selima Hill
Prawn Cocktails
Paper Napkins
Holly Pester
Without fingers
Legna Rodríguez Iglesias (tr. Abigail Parry)
Frogs everywhere
Twins
Major Jackson
Mercy
The Sound We Dressed For
Nicole Sealey
Pages 22–29, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
James Womack
There is an America Here
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Ars Poetica
Adham Smart
Spring comes then leaves again
Sara Saab
My Body is a Failed State
Alison Winch
Sad Pylons
Chrissy Williams
Moon Illusion
Ruth Padel
Microsoft and Gamble-Fish
Paul Muldoon
Ducking for Apples
Tara Bergin
We Get a Lot of Writers in Here
Romeo Oriogun
It Begins with Love
Padraig Regan
Pitcher Plants
Risotto
Alex Bell
Betty
Tommes Gaarder (tr. Chris Cusack)
from when my mother died
Fran Lock
La jena di Londra
Joe Carrick-Varty
Sometimes I Talk to Myself as if I’m on a Chat Show
Jacob Polley
Down
Kit Fan
A Story of a Labyrinth
Charting a New Constellation: Poems from the Obsidian Foundation retreat
introduced by Nick Makoha
Tanatsei Gambura
Photograph of a Black girl on a Straße in Bonn
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa
The Devil Can’t Two-Step
Candice Nembhard
The Last Time I Wore A Blue Dress
Fahad Al-Amoudi
Yewel Bet for the non-speaker
Topher Allen
Gutted
Jay Bernard
Quartet
Notes on Contributors
Reviews and Features
Remnants as an Articulation
Bhanu Kapil in conversation with Jennifer Lee Tsai
What Anansi Taught Me
Marvin Thompson on creativity, community and COVID-19
Careful Ecologies
Jack Belloli on Bhanu Kapil and Natalie Diaz
Tectonic Plates
Joanna Lee on Romalyn Ante, Nina Mingya Powles and Cath Drake
A Channel to the Sea
Khairani Barokka on Melody Moezzi
Poetry in the Age of Zoom
Zoë Brigley on new technologies
Quantum Entanglements
Kashif Sharma-Patel on Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Fred Moten
Delicate Fierceness
Billy Ramsell on Alan Buckley, Katrina Naomi and David Morley
Corvid Song
Chris Cusack on Matthew Welton, Crispin Best and Geraldine Clarkson
Swelling the Flock with Voice
Becky Varley-Winter reads six new pamphlets
Wounded Houses
Laura Maw on poetry of domestic claustrophobia
Multiply Masked
Nia Davies on Anne Carson and Taliesin
