Poem of the week: Holy Sonnet XIX by John Donne
The great love poet is here locked in an anxious wrestle with his religious conscienceOh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:Inconstancy unnaturally hath begottA constant habit; that when I would notI...
View ArticlePoem of the week: 7th Nerve by Rhiannon Hooson
A hi-tech medical exam draws its subject back to a more archaic, essential experienceContinue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Grey Evening by DH Lawrence
The desolation of losing a lover inspires a forceful and imaginative lament for their lossWhen you went, how was it you carried with youMy missal book of fine, flamboyant Hours?My book of turrets and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Zucchini by Peter Balakian
Sensuous memories of his grandmother’s cooking leave the poet reflecting on the struggles she enduredMy grandmother cored themwith a serrated knifeContinue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Self-Unconscious by Thomas Hardy
A curiously jaunty account of the bright life of nature a man misses while wrapped up in his own plansAlong the wayHe walked that day,Watching shapes that reveries limn,And seldom heHad eyes to seeThe...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Lightning Strikes School Tree by John Clegg
A droll story from a sleep classroom reflects on what can be see from behind closed eyesNo-one saw it but me and I had my eyes shut:I’d given class their Thomas Hardy worksheets,the bell had gone off,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Church-Bell by Elinor Wylie
Still fresh a century on, this is a very neat dramatisation of the clash between religion’s commands and human instinctAs I was lying in my bedI heard the church-bell ring;Before one solemn word was...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Girlfriend, Poem 1 by Marina Tsvetaeva
This daring love poem, written in Russia in 1914, relays its intense passion with sardonic resignationPoem 1Are you happy? You never tell me.Maybe it’s better like this.You’ve kissed so many others...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet 105 by William Shakespeare
In this meditative poem, it feels as if the poet is addressing himself rather than flourishing words for a belovedLet not my love be called idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Morfudd Like the Sun by Dafydd ap Gwilym
This radiant verse by the 14th-century Welsh bard translated by M Wynn Thomas uncovers a forgotten poetic innovatorI wait for a softly spoken girl,Sheen of white snow on a pebbly field,A radiant girl,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Second Sleep by Hannah Stone
In this evocative prose poem, grief is transmitted through an early-hours nightmareIt is during the second sleep that the nightmares rouse themselves. Resurrected, the ungrateful dead saddle up to...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Four Seasons Gone by Patricia McCarthy
A tribute to the spirit and resilience of Ukrainians who have kept hope, and poetry, alive since the Russian invasion(for the outpouring of poems by many who have never written poems beforein Ukraine...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Grains by Esther Kondo
The simple act of planting seed corn is followed through to a rich legacyJewli will go homewhen the maizeis ready to harvestContinue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Small Change by Carole Satyamurti
A stark account of encountering homeless people in London offers no easy consolation to anyoneThis must be the room of last resort,this half-lit passage under the dripping bridgewhere, on the only...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Letter to a Land Owner by Sean Borodale
A poem in response to the ban on wild camping in Dartmoor – a quiet, tender appeal against the belief that ‘powerful landscapes are only for the wealthy’I learnt one night what it is to have the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Simulacrum by Oluwaseun Olayiwola
Crafted with a choreographer’s eye for flow and shape, this nuanced and honest ‘page poem’ recalls a sexual encounter with an unnamed loverThere wasn’t love but there was what love becomes...
View ArticlePoem of the week: here yet be dragons by Lucille Clifton
This short poem with a vast moral force field examines humanity, the monsters of racism, misogyny and militarism, and asks the reader a crucial, mind-stopping questionso many languages have fallenoff...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Not It by Caitlin Doyle
A children’s game conveys the panic-inducing sensation of reaching adulthood, of being ‘It’ before being ready“Not It!” we’d shout before a roundof backyard hide-and-seek,the last to say it left...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Place I Am by Peter Bennet
The boundaries between place and self become intriguingly fuzzy in this painterly reflectionI have become a master of the craftof moulding, patiently and with precision,lethargy into shapes of hours...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Bin-Men Go on Strike by Raymond Queneau
Discovering treasure in what the world has discarded, this freewheeling reverie carries with it radical ideas about artit’s strike day for the bin-menit’s a lucky day for uswe can play ragpicker or...
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