Poetry

Anne Carson: a poem

Gnosticism I Heaven's lips! I dreamed of a page in a book containing the word bird and I entered bird . Bird grinds on, grinds on,...

Jo Balmer: a poem

Carol Ann Duffy: a poem

The Dolphins World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple. We are in our element but we are not free. Outside this world you cannot...

Louise Glück: a poem

Photograph © Katherine Wolkoff Song Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white bowls; I think I must get some to you but how is the question...

Alison Jones: a poem

Promises One year I made an oath to be more like a blackthorn tree, standing strong, sustained in strife, making a spell-spoken poppet of...

Bridget Khursheed: a poem

The garden at Elibank or Mucklemouthed Meg What can grow on the north side? Briars and apples bloom & the medlar in the corner all...

Rebecca Gethin: a poem

All that's needed is a little water and oil for whatever is in me to yeast and massage the flour of myself into dough. I stretch and...

Zoë Green: two poems

Plainsong We'll off our shoes and walk barefoot where once pigs put out to pannage, and black-faced sheep grew fleece for Flanders'...

Gillian Clarke: two poems

Sounding (At a concert in Lipice, Slovenia) Underground in a vast emptiness, the settling audience, in the stone cold of the Postojna...

Chris Rice: a poem

Small Blue Thing A jay has left a feather on a pebble by the lake. A tiny thing, a speculum, it pulses like a piece of sky that's briefly...

Lily Thomson: a poem

Citrus The branches have learnt the joys of citrus fruits in bloom. The blackberry bush has started to grow. The seeds have started to...

David Harsent: a poem

from Mirrors and Doors the soft knock water makes in pipes Go to the half-open door. Open it. Nothing. Half-close it. Something returns...

Louise Peterkin: a poem

Photograph by Scott Barron Photography fingers we are faceless nuns with broken television sets in our bellies ...

Maggie Sawkins: a poem

What is Written One among many, red leaf that I troubled to pick from the ground in the walled garden of Strokestown Park. To the hotel...

Ben Morgan: a poem

Giorgio de Chirico painted Le Muse Inquietanti (The Disquieting Muses) in 1917 while recovering from a psychological breakdown in...

Sean O'Brien: three poems

Dead Man The dead man waking in the hedgerow, bound in last year's ivy, lies and listens – seagulls, trains, the vault of heaven. He...

Sue Finch: a poem

Skylarking She searches the sky most days. Never says skies; to her that one vastness holds so much. Sometimes she forgets she cannot...

Oz Hardwick: three poems

Prospectus for an Interim Catastrophe Volunteers fill vials with brine, collecting the sea for later consideration. This is how we do...

Alison Jones: a poem

Divination The park was full of white feathers today, one drifted deliberately to me, between holly and yew. I thought it was my father's...

Angela France: a poem

There is a certain late October light as clouds gather a promise of rain tomorrow when the sun's angle suggests I could count every leaf...

Peter Balakian: a poem

Little Richard On a walk past bulldozers and trucks pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway my grandmother said to me as we turned...

Louise Peterkin: a poem

Photograph by Scott Barron Photography Bunny Boiler all men felled by my aldehyde Alex the glamourer i look like a stepmother ...

Simon Armitage: a poem

The Bears in Yosemite Park are busy in the trash cans, grubbing for toothpaste but the weather on Mam Tor has buckled the road into...

Rebecca Johnson-Bista: a poem

Three Buzzards Three buzzards wheeling over the low slopes. What are they looking for? Today I saved a spider's life from the watering...