River Child An inky blue night, Grandmother moon is full and bright, the small girl sways and the river rages. Little doll clutched...

Leaving Early My Love, tonight Fionnuala is your nurse. You'll hear her voice sing-song around the ward lifting a wing at the shore of...

Escape “no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Warsan Shire ("Home") The shame you bear is exile. Even the borders bare...

Poems from The Book of Baba Yaga Author's note Baba Yaga is the Russian equivalent of the witch from Grimm's fairytales. She turns up in...

What's Passed Down In The Making Sometimes I smile just like my mother, as if the skin and gums remember the day I was born, between...

The Higgs Boson I move tremendously, though I am small. They had to build a circuit larger than amphitheaters just so I could collide...

Brazil Summer as thick as foliage, the city in waves, haze; rank, sweet bins. Through neglect or lack of imperative, I'm overgrown like a...

Photograph by Steve Shepherd coincidentally, parts I - III I. not a believer, but I bought a book of poems and swooned at a coincidence....

In Oils 1 Between fjords and the Firth, the rig whirred from its crown-block to the pit of its possum belly – my father left at dawn to...

embedded she lies under her bed with her nose almost touching the dry sacking. it smells of dusty wood. she counts rusted nail...

An Insider's Note on Love What some call love is a badly brewed wine; a cobweb holding you captive; a field of mire holding your murky...

Changes Two countries ago, mother spread like the horizon. Immutable. She is now crayoned in sepia ink. The borders have shrunk her. Must...

Mistress Moor You breathe with her, the hills like lungs, feather-light heather's olive bronchioles and fractured alveoli scattered over...

The Fine Print (TV programmes, online courses, news feeds and feedback sheets) Write down what you think you understand, scrutinise your...

The Sleeper What can she see behind her eyelids, is it rapid skies, galaxies on fire? Can she hear voices on the other side of the ward,...

Flight radar From the top of the Shard the view unfolds down the Thames to the sea, the city laid by a trick of sight vertically in front...

Photograph by Richard Helyar Rhythm Yes, we were right to tell him no. He was unnuanced, slung in a stooping habit between the crossbeam...

I Could Be a Boxer I have a history of growing wisdom teeth, parting my gums like persimmon fruit and making it look easy. Like bright...

The Playwright's House To achieve déjà vu in a dream you should sleep in an unfamiliar room – the pungency of mint on fingertips, a smear...

the language of blood/rooi taal the moon, a sliver of itself tonight, ‘n stuk in a tongue I had to cut out of my mouth, round and...

The Hyena When I was best friends with a debutante I often ate maids' faces. Leonora didn't know, after the first, and I'm not sure she...

Sid James at the Poetry Society Cor blimey! If you're wearing those clothes for a bet, you've won. If you're wearing that face, and the...

love at the end of the world, part 2 there's a promise in the space between your breath and mine; an intimacy of mist, sheltered from the...

Photograph by Biplap Hazra Prize Photograph And this wild elephant, crossing State Highway 9 – his footprints lakes for dragonflies and...