This week: yellowing pears, oleander petals, the rattle of swans’ wings, the engines of our envy, and much more. Enjoy.

Last weekend at Lumb Bank a butterfly came into the cottage after dark and settled on my skirt, refused to fly away even as I walked around. Finally, it startled into a corner of my bedroom where it spent the night.

Next day I found it in the window above my writing desk. By the evening there was no sign of it.

I first came to Lumb Bank in 1998. I was in the dining room when it was announced that Ted Hughes had died. All morning, the door to the outside world kept blowing open and shut. This house has been far out at sea all night, I thought.

At Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in the early 2000s, I heard Christopher Reid perform extracts from the book of Hughes’ letters he had just edited. It was a chilly November morning, sober skies. Reid was reading a piece (from memory, I think it was a letter from Hughes to Ben Sonnerberg about the composition of Hughes’ The Jaguar) and as he got to the point in the letter where Hughes describes a bluebottle irritating him mid-poem in his room, those of us sitting close to the stage noticed a black butterfly circling Reid’s head. Very lightly, very deftly, it settled on the page of the book. A collective murmur rose from the crowd.

A black butterfly is thought to symbolise transformation, endings, and – in some traditions – a message from someone who has died. Readings vary slightly by culture: ominous in parts of Europe and Central America, auspicious in Japan, China, and the Philippines. Most modern interpretations read it as a phase closing rather than a warning (much like my understanding of the ‘death’ card in a tarot deck).

The night the Lumb Bank butterfly stayed in my room it rained with peculiar gravitas and I couldn’t sleep. It seemed as if the whole valley had been struck by something and it was ringing. The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills / Winds stampeding the fields under the window….

As I waited for morning, I thought about Hughes’ ‘blade-light…. Flexing like the lens of a mad eye’.

Helen Mort, A house at sea all night

i.m rachel blau duplessis (1941-2026)

/ i cannot face it: the diligent and scheduled day.
/ between endeavour and divide.
/ my cup runneth over. my cup becomes accustomed, is an eye.
/ what fresh hell is this? inside of which we recognise and formulate, traverse entrapment sadly.
/ a poem, aye. envoi of exhaustions. envoi of extremes.
/ to strive inside the limit and the light of it.
/ to swallow it, horoscope and gospel, down in one.
/ what is it – the necessary defect in our nature, a mercy owed to ignorance.
/ that keeps us here, softly espousing? […]

Fran Lock, AGLÆCA #2

At the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Altemps, we spend an entire slow afternoon with the Gods. There are sun-drenched terraces adorned with saffron murals of birds and plants; the sculpted stone limbs of Demeter and Apollo lounging in the high noon sun; amphorae and funerary reliefs and bones.

I am particularly drawn to Dionysus/Bacchus—always have been, with his pinecones and staff and grapes. I linger in rooms with him, wishing the sculpture would talk back to me. Like a child I covet his attention.

I have always longed for and feared the ecstatic. As a Scorpio, as a writer, I am always tugging at the precipice of ruin, peering behind its delicious curtain. I want the rush of abandon, and then I run from it. An erotic push-pull, where the threshhold is my kink.

Dionysus is the embodiment of The Me that Stretches Beyond Fear, into an erotic expanse that verges on the divine. It is the part of me that eats to excess and drinks and dances and gets lost in beauty and uses my sensuality as currency and lets go of expectation and order. Dionysus tells me to write poems, to lose my fucking mind. But it’s less about the wildness itself and more about what it takes to get there.

In Rome, the closest I get to bacchanalia is staying up late, laughing with my friend and the ghosts, drinking dark, thick wine and smoking a dozen slim Vogue cigarettes. My friend called our last night a “loopy giddy fever dream.” Dionysus would approve.

And then when things feel too heavy, I pull back on the ecstatic, march down the hill, pass through the scrim, and become good again.

Lisa Marie Basile, Missives from beautiful, bloated Rome

The academic whirlwind yanked me up into its funnel cloud this August with extra force, or so it seemed, after a sabbatical’s saner pace. Struggling with the workload, I thought with surprise, I do not want this. I definitely do not want to go to these endless workshops on how AI can help improve faculty efficiency. I want to take slow, inefficient walks in the woods, looking at mushrooms.

I was relieved, after that rush of meetings and paperwork, to settle into teaching. Preparing for class–reading, reconsidering old lesson plans (recently Rukeyser, O’Hara, Ginsberg, Plath)–I lose track of time. Running a discussion about literature or writing is all about giving texts and other humans the respect of unhurried attention.

Yet administrivia keeps pouring in, with deadlines that put firm boundaries on how much time I can give my students or my creative life. The latter involves its own administrative tasks, too: slipping a few submissions in before the windows close, checking proofs, booking a hotel for that writing festival, etc. When you get to the events, they’re often great. I LOVED the thoughtful conversation at the ecopoetry panel and reading I was a part of recently at Stone Soup Books. Blockage on the interstate, though, meant I broke speed limits getting there.

The unhurry-able process of writing, revising, and working to get poems in front of audiences has fruited lately, as a reminder of where rumination can lead.

Lesley Wheeler, Snailing along in the moonlight

If you ask me, I’ll probably say I’m not writing much. Because even I forget about the poor little thing. “My blog.” I periodically slip into sentences in conversations with friends mention of “my blog,” knowing none of them read it. There is invariably no reaction, or a furtive look away. “Blog,” I think, has come to mean long-winded all-about-me blather that no one wants to read, although if you put it up as a video on TickyTacky I guess it might be a viral Thing. I wonder if I called it “my Substack” if I’d get a different reaction, as that seems to be where the cool kids blog, at the moment. I had a podcast for a while, and a friend actually jokes about NOT listening to the podcast, as if I’d think that was funny, and I do fake-laugh just to make it okay. (But you know what, it’s not really okay.) In spite of this particular long-winded all-about-me blather of a post, some of my best works comes out on this blog: mini-essays, some, or prose poems, others. Not all of them, by any means. But as it turns out, this is my writing practice, this blog. Much to my surprise. And it won’t make me known to the world and has not garnered me many readers and will not turn into a published book, and I can’t turn around and try to publish these mini-essays/prose poems in lit mags because this blog is considered a published thing, and therefore no longer shiny new for most lit mags. I’m just pausing here to give myself credit for this practice. Turns out practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes purpose. It makes sanity. It makes a small grace. And I pause to thank you for reading.

Marilyn McCabe, It may be that when we no longer know what to do

A fortnight today I’ll be 60, which seems ridiculous but such is life. Half a lifetime ago I wrote this (not especially brilliant) haiku, which was published in Blithe Spirit in 1997:

thirtieth birthday
yellowing pears
in a porcelain bowl

In Stepping Stones (British Haiku Society, 2007), a book of commentaries on English-language haiku by British poets, based on his doctoral work, Martin Lucas wrote of that haiku:

The internal comparison is rather obvious, but [. . .] there is a secondary appeal: the intrinsic beauty of the sill life, which we can dwell on for its own value.

As an introduction to the possibilities of haiku in English, it’s yet to be bettered, because Martin had such a gift for analysing haiku simply and concisely, in the spirit of the haiku themselves.

[…]

I’ve not written any new poems for a while now, and have just been tinkering revising, and often adding to, poems originally drafted way back when, in some cases yonks ago. That suits me fine. I find revisiting old poems, i.e. ones that have hitherto not quite worked for whatever reason in order, to see if they’re salvageable almost as enjoyable as editing newly drafted poems. Some poems of mine have been as reworked and battered about as sculpture maquettes, in attempts to elicit their true heart and point. Poems without heart and point aren’t worth persevering with, yet I’m a terrible one for hoarding drafts of poems that I know are never going anywhere, usually because there’s some line or phrase that I think might be recyclable. That said, I’ve inadvertently managed to delete many drafts over the years. For every poem I’ve written that I’m happy with, I would think there’s another 10 or 20 that didn’t cut the mustard – an eyewatering total, I should think. I may be older, with forty-four years of writing poems behind me, but dragging them into the light doesn’t necessarily get any easier.

Matthew Paul, September

As I was reading blog posts from past Septembers, I came across this fascinating poem possibility in this post from September 18, 2024:  “As I’ve been puttering this morning, I thought, I should write a poem with the title “Hildegarde of Bingen Forgets Her Feast Day.” The poem could go in several possible directions: she forgets because she is busy, she forgets because it no longer matters, she forgets because she has dementia.”  I went back to my files, and if I composed this poem, I didn’t do it on the computer.

Chances are good that I did nothing with this idea because a few days later, I was dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Helene, which left us without power for roughly 9 days, without internet for roughly a month, and boiling water until early December.  Again and again, I am a bit whipsawed when I think about all we have managed to survive.

Deep breaths–let me do something with poetry before it’s time to get ready for church–or just sit here and breathe deeply.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Guardians of Lesser Galaxies

At the beginning of 2023, I had my gallbladder taken out due to the presence of a stone so impressive that a someone from the surgical team came to find me afterwards to tell me she’d never seen anything like it. Naturally, I asked to keep it. They said no, but left it in a tube within my reach for a suspiciously long time. That same week, I discovered the poetry of Irish poet Eavan Boland. What a pair of gifts that week gave me. One of them looks better on the shelf, though. [photo]

The poem I came across first was The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave Me, and it stopped me in my tracks. For context, I read a lot of poems. Like, a lot. I’m also relatively easy to please, poetically speaking, which means that I read a lot of poems I like, like, a lot. It’s lovely. But very occasionally, I read a poem I can’t get out of my head, that I am compelled to play on repeat for weeks or months like I did in 1992 with my cassette of the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack (Jason Donovan version, obvs). I assume this happens to everyone (the poetry thing, not Joseph). I can never figure out exactly what the magic is that makes a poem shoot into my favourites like this, but maybe it’s more poetic that I don’t know. Either way, I fell hard for this one. […]

It’s possible that, in 2023, having had a small object recently removed, I was more than usually open to the idea of the enormity of tiny things. But I’m no less enchanted by this poem now than I was then. This collection, by 1990 already something like Boland’s seventh, is teeming with objects and specifics – her mother’s stockpot, a mug with a hunting scene, the ‘sugar-barley iron of a garden chair’ – which ground and colour the broad profundities and classical allusions that lie in seams in these poems. You won’t mistake this for cosy, domestic poetry. It uses those themes to tell us about women, and writing, and Ireland, and love, and the past, and the now. It’s remarkable writing, and I’m so happy to have spent time with it this week.

Eavan Boland only died in 2020, after a stellar career. I wish I’d found her earlier. But I’ve been making up for it and she’ll be making more appearances on this Substack. The gallstone, thankfully, will not.

Nia Broomhall, Week 27: Outside History

Circumstances being what they are, too numerous to mention here, I continue amid distraction and creative malaise. To counter the mood, and to educate myself, I turn to poetry. Often I buy or borrow books that are new to me for excitement or inspiration; this month, I’ve decided to do some re-reading. Since I’m not writing much myself these days, and not too thrilled with what little I have been drafting, it seems time to re-examine poetry that I really admire. Maybe I can learn a few things.

I’ve long been a fan of Elaine Terranova, whom I met many years ago in Philadelphia. I have all of her books but the latest (and will get to that one soon), but the one I’m re-reading is Not To, New and Selected Poems, which came out in 2006 and which contains selections from The Dog’s Heart, Damages, The Cult of the Right Hand, and from her early chapbook called Toward Morning/Swimmers –as well as about 80 pages of what were then new poems.

I don’t want to do a book review here, nor am I interested in poetry analysis right now. The reason I’m re-reading these poems with care and interest is to endeavor to understand why I appreciate her work so deeply. For one thing, Terranova consistently surprises me, but with quiet surprises. The turns in her poems are seldom the powerful, swift changes of mood, direction, or language that I like in many writers’ work…but they are there, and their subtleties and reflective twists engage me in ways perhaps more lasting. Because I have to think about where the poem chose to go, and how it got there. It’s not merely ambiguity, though sometimes the closure’s ambiguous, it’s because the last lines of Terranova’s poems feel so right to me. They don’t always circle back to an image or idea in the opening–sometimes, they travel quite a distance away.

Ann E. Michael, Re-reading, re-learning

For Rachel Blau Duplessis,

Blue, legion. Drafts. A polyvocal entry. One’s ear, to lend. A visual, daily practice. Days and works and days. Cartographic, the position of collage. This vanishing point. A sure cure, applied. Categories. So necessary, membrane. How big a threat? What, temporality. How grand, this arrangement of stars. Encompassed. The onset, journey. Heart, and blood, and facts. An ocean. The structural divisions of trees, thin lines of fence. How redundant the aesthetic. Leaves tarnish, fall, and then. Thus, exegesis. These scraps of humanity, assembled. Chorus.

rob mclennan, seven poems from a new project,

“Up//Roar” is the follow up to “Joy//Us Poems of Queer Joy” also published by Arachne. Whereas the latter celebrated, the new anthology encompasses poems for bleaker times, although that’s not to say the poems are bleak or full of doom and gloom, there is a celebration of allyship and resistance. As the introduction points out even in 2026 some families still cannot welcome the spouse/partner of departed loved ones because they’d prefer to erase the departed’s love life. […]

“Up//Roar” brings together a wide range of queer voices, all celebrating resistance and strength gained from being true to oneself however that may to look to other people. It’s a timely reminder that currently there is still discrimination and exclusion faced by LGBTQ+ communities. But here are also glimmers of light within the darkness that come from shared experiences and ways of owning being the outcast. Humans should not be forced to pretend to be something they are not or suppress major parts of themselves to “fit-in”. Let the hyenas not change their spots, “Up//Roar” is a necessary demonstration that hyenas should find their pack and not shiver in isolation.

Emma Lee, “Up//Roar Poems of Queer Resistance” edited by Cherry Potts and Jeremy Dixon (Arachne Press) – book review

The publication of Path means that, at last, the entire body of [Chris] Torrance’s 50-year engagement with The Magic Door is now available. Sort of. Unfortunately, the Test Centre volume is out of print with the occasional copy being sold online at funny-money prices, and the original individual volumes are collectors’ items, rarely surfacing at any price. And even the Test Centre edition excluded The Book of Heat, as it was originally written for performance. The inclusion of performance pieces here (RORI and Frinite) in Path would seem to indicate a change of heart on that front.

The Magic Door/Path is one of the most important long poems in British poetry of the last 50 years, and needs to be available to readers in its entirety. Now that we have the conclusion, we really need a reprint of the full pre-Path text, including The Book of Heat. Meanwhile, I urge you to read this book, whether you are familiar with the earlier parts or not. Torrance is quite simply a vital, important, dare I say major poet. We owe a debt of gratitude to Phil Maillard for keeping his work alive and to Aquifer for publishing this book.

Billy Mills, Path by Chris Torrance: A Review

In an excellent prefatory essay to the Clay Sanskrit Library edition of the Gitagovinda (translated and also introduced by Lee Seigel), Sudipta Kaviraj very neatly summarises what Jayadeva achieves in these songs:

Jayadeva composed in an astonishing form of Sanskrit in which the visible marks of its complex grammar are so minimally used that it became intelligible, almost without residue, to a much wider audience of vernacular readers. Literary skill obliterates the formal boundaries between different natural languages. It is an ironically democratised Sanskrit which can be read and enjoyed by those who do not know it. It is a strange bridge language and it is a text that lies at the crossing and therefore joins the literary world of Sanskrit and of several vernaculars.

I think it’s fair to say that none of the translations I’ve quoted so far really come anywhere close to suggesting this extraordinary blend of tradition and innovation: a newly transparent and accessible style which nevertheless draws upon the long history of kāvya. Recently I received a review copy of Inderjeet Mani’s new version of the Gitagovinda. This is a very different approach to the text, which draws in particular upon a long-standing tradition of understanding the Gitagovinda as a kind of drama. Mani’s version isn’t a close translation at all but I admire the way it incorporates elements from the long tradition of commentary on and performance of the poem into the English text. 

Victoria Moul, Translating and re-translating the Gitagovinda

(Translating Valmiki’s Sundara Kāṇḍa)
The three peaks stand like flags piercing the sky.
Forested landscapes hide ponds, and streams
breathe a mist of autumnal clouds.
In the dense undergrowth, oleander petals
sequester light. He pauses, wondering how different
the smell of the earth is—the wild fragrance of long pepper
from coiled creepers. Purple Chironji berries
crunch under his feet, squishy pulp
yeilds crisp kernels his family cherishes.

(From Sarga 2)

I am writing poems in response to a close reading of Valmiki’s Sundara Kāṇḍa of the Ramayana. I allow each sarga to become the seed for a meditative poem, entering its unwritten interior—the spaces between what is narrated and what the text leaves open to the imagination.

Uma Gowrishankar, What the Land Unfolds

Readers familiar with these reviews will be aware that Indigo Dreams Publishing has established a strong reputation for poetry collections of consistently high quality. Zoe Brooks’s Something in Nothing (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2026) is a particularly compelling addition to its list, and one that is likely to stand among the most significant collections of the year. In this highly original volume, Brooks recontextualises figures from traditional fairy tales within contemporary social and political landscapes, using their familiar narratives to examine brutality, misogyny and the forms of violence that remain embedded within modern society.

One of the central figures in this reworking is Bluebeard, whom Brooks presents as a serial predator targeting vulnerable women. In Bluebeard’s Girls, she writes: ‘The first was a stepdaughter/ that nobody wanted. The second was a girl/ who knew how to give but not to take./ The third was a girl/ arms as wide as Clapham Junction. /The fourth was a girl/ you would step over quickly.’ The women are characterised as isolated and socially marginal, their vulnerability rendering them susceptible to exploitation. Brooks’s use of the phrasing and rhythms of nursery counting rhymes is especially significant: a form conventionally associated with childhood innocence and play is placed in tension with Bluebeard’s predatory violence, producing a chilling effect. At the same time, Brooks resists any tendency to blame the victims. Instead, she exposes the social attitudes that enable their erasure. In Bluebeard Likes to Entertain, these women are described as ‘like puppies/ that need drowning./ The sort of women/ that no one will miss.’

Nigel Kent, Review of ‘Something in Nothing’ by Zoe Brooks

Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival is compulsively readable, if overly speculative. I’m glad to learn more about Marlowe’s love life and spy activities. Some of the comparisons between him and Shakespeare are telling. One was so reckless by temperament, the other so cautious. One became a gentleman via university education though from the working class; the other never went to university but managed to buy a title from his theater earnings. Because so little is really known about Marlowe, the book is as much about his contemporaries as him.

In The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England, Nicholas Jenkins makes a convincing case for how the early Auden was preoccupied by the place of national belonging in modern identities. The impact of WWI and its aftermath on young Auden is nicely documented, as is his complicated desire to heal and restore English culture and tradition (Edward Thomas, Hardy, Graves, Owen). Jenkins’s writing is somewhat repetitive. The 537 pages could usefully have been reduced to 400, but the book is a hoard of striking details and insightful criticism of Auden’s major early poems.

Jee Leong Koh, Two Biographies

[Walter Savage] Landor was an interesting figure — a man as definitively out of time as any in English literature: an 18th-century Augustan, come too late to be a peer of Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and Samuel Johnson (1709–1784); a 19th-century political firebrand, come too soon to foment the revolutions he desired. He never quite fit in, and his work was unreinforced by poetic followers and underappreciated by the public. He could not be a Romantic like Wordsworth and Coleridge, and he could not be a Victorian like Tennyson and Browning. The age kept his talent constrained.

One sign of the genuineness of the talent is the fact that other poets have always appreciated his work. Landor preached violence in his political prose, unable to stomach the emerging industrial age. Or, in truth, unable even to understand the new order, which left him flailing in political writings that have not aged well. In his poetry, however, he responded to the industrial remaking of England by finding refuge in a deeply classical verse: typically, short poems on grief and the old virtues, written with a classically serene tone. “Rose Aylmer” is a good example, or “Mild is the Parting Year.”

And then there are the two verses by Landor we look at today: “Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher” and “Dirce.” A strict cataloger might argue that these are not precisely epigrams but simply brief poems, lacking the teaching element of an adage. Our sense of poetic brevity, however, has been shaped by centuries of epigrams. We read these verses from Landor in an epigrammatical way, and rightly so, as both have the power to stick in memory, which is the first quality necessary for a well-made epigram. And they have the second necessary quality for a satisfying epigram, which snaps closed like a well-made box.

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: The English Epigram

For Persuasion, I wrote about the recent brouhaha over the Princeton English syllabus. Yes, the syllabus has a lot of socialism, but the real problem, to my rather antiquated mind, is what it doesn’t have. The trend in so many places now is to require English majors to take only a single course pre-1700. So almost everything from Beowulf to Absalom and Achitophel becomes optional.

The problem with the Princeton syllabus is not the individual courses. Fine, study socialism and Sondheim! The problem is the overall balance. These courses are all held in equal regard. The problem is the lack of insistence upon the canonical works of English. The problem is contemporary fiction instead of Shakespeare, dolls instead of George Eliot. Of the twelve courses you take as an English major, none is obliged to be on Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth—authors our grandmothers might have read as school-leavers. Yes, the syllabus is ideological, but it is also just lame.

You will see that I am not making the “classics should be on the syllabus” argument but the slightly more grouchy claim that “the long stretch of English literature should be required.” One counterargument is that the real problem is to do with the administrative structure of the university. Sure. But if it changes, it needs to be changed with an aim in mind. I am arguing for an aim.

My piece is explicitly addressed to students, since the colleges won’t always make the case for the requirements to run from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. So many pieces about the English syllabus don’t address them directly.

You are only young once, and you should make sure by hook or by crook that you spend your youth on the best books, the best writing, the work that is going to be most strongly felt in the blood and the heart. You should not meekly accept the patronizing and ideological manner in which a vast and ancient tradition has been condensed into a series of courses about gender, race, and Theory with no requirement for you to do battle with many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.

And I use Woolf and Derrida to make my case.

There was a time when this was so obvious it didn’t need saying. There was a time when everyone who read Virginia Woolf’s extraordinary essays (she was the best critic of the twentieth century, bar none: you can keep your Empsons, your Trillings, your Vendlers—Woolf is the one) knew that the access she so rightfully demanded was access to the tradition. The author of A Room of One’s Own was a great reader of the tradition: as a teenager she was knocking on her father’s study to borrow Gibbon and Cowper. She wrote for the future, but she read from the past. It would have been unthinkable to her not to have read Chaucer and Browne and Defoe and Keats. To follow her example would be to read with abandon in the old ways.

This is what I want to tell young people now—don’t listen to the discourse, don’t pay attention to the think pieces and the debates. That will all be gone with the wind tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If you really want to read English, read the way Virginia Woolf read. Read, for that matter, the way Derrida read—as deeply as possible in the great works of the past from Plato to Rousseau to Conrad. Don’t accept courses in literary criticism that begin—begin!—with Hegel and pass through Marx and Judith Butler.

This is not just a piece on on side of the debate about “woke” departments or whatever. I also make the case that the scholarship of English departments is better than the critics will admit. No, it is not all Marxist waffle. There’s a great deal of excellent work being produced, but the critics don’t read it, so they don’t know.

Henry Oliver, My plea to English students.

Before I made the long, agonising (!) move into academia I worked as a court transcript editor in London for nine years. I actually trained as a stenographer, on a Kombu-green antique steno machine which stamped letters onto a roll of paper, like a silent miniature typewriter. Stenotype is machine shorthand; each keystroke completes one syllable of a word. Your left fingers, in combination, produce the beginning consonant, your thumbs the middle vowel sound and the fingers of your right hand the ending consonant. So ‘crossfire’ would be two strokes: ‘K R O S’, then, on the line blow, ‘T P AO EU R’. There aren’t enough keys for one per letter, so ‘tp’ represents the ‘f’ sound, whole ‘AO EU’ is a long ‘i’.

Anyway, I switched to editing transcripts because it meant more money in the short term (far less in the long term, but I hadn’t planned to stay on the job quite as long as I did). As an editor, I worked alongside some of the best stenographers in the world — that is, I literally sat next to them in court — and cleaned up the transcript as it emerged on my computer screen, typing in sections that had been missed due to mumbling or over-speaking (of which there is a lot in UK trials and tribunals), sorting out the spellings of names and specialist terms, and keeping a log of anything we would need to ask about or research in order for the transcript to be as accurate as possible. It was surprisingly gruelling work — often upwards of 200 pages a day — and I permanently damaged the nerves in my arms doing it, because most of the courts and rooms we worked in were not designed with ergonomic seating in mind.

I collected dozens of poems about or inspired by aspects of the cases we covered, and published hardly any of them. There’s one about the usefulness of the en-dash that appeared in Asterism: An Anthology of Poems Inspired by Punctuation, edited by Tiffany Anne Tondut and published by Laudanum Books. And then there’s this, which was published in the first (and, thus far, only) issue of Cambridge Poetry, edited by Dan Leighton — which, by the way, is as comprehensive a snapshot of the current Cambridge poetry scene as you’re likely to find in print.

Like many other poems from that era, it’s about 96% collage. All of the questions are questions which were asked in various court cases, and all of the answers are taken from newspaper reports on accidental fires, with the word ‘witness’ or ‘witnesses’ substituted in for ‘fire’ and ‘fires’. ‘Cross’ is short for ‘cross-examination’ in lawyer parlance, so ‘Crossfire’ (with an implied colon between the two parts of the word) would mean cross-examination of fire. The plan is to collect these and other court poems up into a little zine at some point. That zine will be part of a series of zines that collect and organise work from the unpublished book I mentioned back in this post from October.

Jon Stone, POEM / Crossfire

Dear poets and friends. Most of you know that I am still “young” by some standards. Last February I turned 42. My husband and I live together with 2 cats, but no kids. We are childless by choice and this has given us a certain level of freedom that some people give up as they age. For example, a few years ago, we sort of spontaneously left our apartment in Los Angeles to go live in Costa Rica for 3 years.

Still, time and family obligations have caught up with us. Lately I’ve spent a lot of time care-taking for my aging parents, helping them make and keep dr. appointments, do their laundry, and trim back some of the trees in their beautifully overgrown front yard.

This has all gotten me thinking about both my relationship with my parents (naturally) and also my own mortality. I always knew that I was going to get older, in theory. . . but now it’s starting to feel real. I could go on about that (and I will in my own poetry-writing), but for now I just want to say that the 2 poems below really hit me where I live lately. I’m extremely grateful to each poet, Amy Small McKinney and Susan Michele Coronel for giving me a kind of language to use to start addressing these issues.

Tresha Faye Haefner, 2 Poems I Needed To Read Today

To be found as a shiny coordinate in the star-chart for lightning bugs on summer nights.

To be found and saved from the searing screech of sirens.

To be found as an escapee from an oracle hushed into tremble.

To be found sleeping in a calm so deep you can hear the trees breathe.

Rich Ferguson, To be found

[T]his week has been somewhat knocked off kilter by having my phone stolen in Shoreditch on Monday night. It’s partially my own fault for being too trusting, but some cheeky fucker ran off with my phone…And I couldn’t catch them. I don’t know what I’d have been able to do even if I’d caught them, so it was perhaps a pointless pursuit.

Not much more i can do, remind me to take out the phone insurance next time, yeah.

Anyhoo, this week has also been buoyed up by reading my copy of Andrew Jamison’s Swans We Cannot See  (You have sighed up for his newsletter, yeah? Go on. I’ll wait, etc). If I had a phone I’d take a picture of the folded over corners of pages for all the poems to come back to..And look, I’ve rattled through the book a bit quicker than usual this week without my phone being present, so perhaps a digital detox is on the cards, but take my word for it..I’ve turned over a lot of corners in this book. […]

Andrew writes movingly about being a parent, a husband, he writes beautifully about place, and to my mind a bit about being/feeling out of place back where you originate from…perhaps it’s displacement??? Perhaps it’s just me. NB You should also check out his epic potato poem in the book.

Mat Riches, A Drunk Octopus Behind The Pink Doors of Perception

[James] Dickey makes two big choices in the title and the first line. As titles go, “Adultery” is anything but subtle, regardless of where you feel it lands in the pantheon of sins. It’s jarring because it’s unexpected as the subject of a poem, especially if you’re not a wide reader. When I’ve taught this poem in the past, students have occasionally asked why write about this. They’re used to less messy love poems, or at least they think those other poems are less messy, but that’s another conversation.

The second big choice Dickey makes is to implicate the reader in the first lines. “We have all been in rooms / We cannot die in, and they are odd places, and sad.” My first thought when reading those lines, even now, is no we haven’t all been in those rooms. It’s the way he’s so casual about assuming that which carries the force for me, the way he reduces this sin of betrayal to something everyone has done, how he’s so matter-of-fact about it before going into this description of the bland, unchallenging cheap hotel room art that’s there mostly to fill space on the walls.

But it’s in that description where we first get to see some sense of guilt, which is the emotion that will drive the rest of this poem.

Brian Spears, “Adultery” by James Dickey

Do you know the long poems of David W. McFadden? I’ve always loved how they ramble, surprised at how they unfold and where they go. How strange, ironic, intelligent, tongue-in-cheek yet profoundly moving they are. They understand affect and composing with connotation, sentiment, form, narrative, beauty, and surprise. Over the last few days, I somehow felt compelled to write this sad poem about two brothers in a horse costume and I was thinking of David’s long poems.

Gary Barwin, Lament for Horse Costume: Tragic Novel in Two Parts

The Ancient Futures issue of Sage Magazine, a print publication from Yale’s School of the Environment, recently arrived in the mail as a beautiful, stitched book containing my poem, ‘The Woolly Kind,’ following an open call last autumn. The unique formatting in the pages below was done by the graduate students on the magazine’s design team. It’s a bit hard to read on screen, so I’ll include a plain text version at the end.

I wrote this persona poem several years ago after Colossal Biosciences announced it was planning to bring the Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), back from extinction by 2028. In August, the company revised its timeframe, stating it might take until the 2030s. My poem imagines life from the perspective of this future creature.

Jenevieve Carlyn, Ancient Futures, Recent News

My bottle of ‘Glimmers’ pills came the other day and I was truly filled with joy at the sight of this little prescription with its contents of glimmering moments. What an honour to be one of the 26 poets selected to feature in this small but powerful collection.

Each morning for the past week I’ve been tipping out one at random and every single one has been a gorgeous gem (and a super way to start the day!). You can get hold of a bottle of ‘Glimmers’ through The Poetry Pharmacy’s website Here.

And if you’d like to have a little peak at some of the poems you can find out more about the project and read some editors picks in The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press’ Newsletter.

Here’s my Glimmer

Branches raise fingers to sky—ask for a blessing of leaves;
ground is still wet with winter, sun rests her hands on my
shoulders, and a warbler hymns from the silver birch. Dear
Spring: eat me, swallow me whole, a seed into moist earth.

Rachael Hill, A Glimmer

The poems in “The Basement Stacks” have been about memory from the beginning of the series. An image or phrasing or action from one poem leads to the next piece, and so on. Part 10 helped me as a writer make some discoveries about myself, or at least remember things I’d forgotten. Writing, in any form, can have that wonderful outcome.

This new poem grew from my thoughts about the boxes in the stairwell in part 10. In the new piece I was following the imagery as I’ve done with all the pieces. There are many possibilites with each poem that could lead to any number of new pieces, but my process is to follow the first moment in a poem that speaks to me in a direct way, and the next poem find its own way.

“The Basement Stacks” is projected as one section of a manuscript in progress, tentatively titled “Portraits”. That’s an extremely uncreative title, but it does, in its own way, reveal clearly the subject matter of its pages. In the series and ms, most imagery and action originate in reality, but some have worked their way into the pieces by necessity, by a kinship to or a reflection of the truth. Even those few parts that are fictional are connected to the truth in some way. And here I’m thinking of Albert Camus: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

Sam Rasnake, New poem, “The Basement Stacks: 11”

Tradition offers explanations for why this piece of Torah is written in this way. To me what’s striking is the visual prosody — the way the shape of the poem sings a particular kind of song in my consciousness. The open space gives each line a caesura, a pause. I read the words differently, and feel them differently, because of the space between them. So that’s how I wrote this week’s poem: with pauses in each line. More white space / white fire, imbued with silent meaning, holding the words’ black fire.

This one’s kind of in the same vein as the poems in Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda). When I shared my new year’s poem just before Rosh Hashanah, my friend Mary Ann — who has known me since we were in seventh grade — said, “You always could write a hell of a love poem.” The older we get, the more (I think) we become ourselves. It’s funny, and sweet, and a little poignant, for me to see reflected in her eyes the fact that this isn’t new. This is how I am, maybe even more so in my 50s than I was before.

Rachel Barenblat, For Ha’azinu

‘John Rae and the Northern Telegraph’ was part visitation, part rethinking of his expedition. Music was commissioned from Scottish composers Stuart MacRae and Ailie Robertson, Eli Tausen á Lava from the Faroe Islands, and Arnanguaq Gerstrøm from Greenland. We worked independently and were given an open brief. Stuart MacRae considered the conflicting thoughts that might have filled Rae’s mind, a bit older now, leaving his new wife. ‘I imagine the form of the music as a line of communication,’ he said; ‘one idea suggesting another, passing on its energy to a different musical expression, in one direction, always transforming but never returning to the source.’ Ailie Robertson intertwined the ends of the route in a back-and-forth of laments and melodies based on Greenlandic beaded yokes. Arnanguaq Gerstrøm structured her piece around the breathing patterns and ornamented tones of traditional singers, with the mechanical pulse of the telegraph’s clicks and codes rising and fading like static. To prepare to compose, Eli Tausen á Lava walked the Faroese section of the proposed route, south to north. John Rae walked many thousands of miles on foot and in snow shoes : ‘Through this cold, unromantic labour, there comes some kind of understanding of the world’. Eli’s piece became a contemporary meditation on pilgrimage, of undergoing a hard physical journey in order to bring on an inner transformation.

In his substack last week, Don [Paterson] talked about the process of collaboration, in all its nitty gritties: ‘Whatever you may have been told, the music is more important, and your text is going to be used primarily as a way of shaping the air’. On the night of the performance, yes: the poems, at a practical level, created distance, carrying the audience from one deep auditory reverie into the next. In these beautiful pieces I heard skeins of geese and the rattle of swans’ wings, foot crunch, threads of singing, odd strings of Morse. All art aspires to the condition of music, said Walter Pater: there is an immediate intuition of (some kind of) meaning, an immediate impact on the emotions. In between, the words, gleaned from real people and real places, pinned us back to our place on the planet : here, in these north islands, in this old kirk, watching the weather coming. ‘It seems to me,’ said Mann’s Dr Faustus, ‘that despite the logical, moral rigor music may appear to display, it belongs to a world of spirits … I am devoted to it with all my heart’.

But something else happened too. In the St Magnus Cathedral, this continual transformation that Stuart described was vivid, almost tactile. Music in a mediaeval Romanesque/Gothic cathedral was intended to overwhelm, in the best sense of the word. The building’s internal proportions – the high, tiny windows, the placing of its columns, galleries and vaults – were intended to amplify unaccompanied voices, and create a rolling sound that would wash through its spaces like waves in the sea. Standing in the transept below the high central tower, it was as if we were placing the words and music into the air, letting them swell and breathe on their own.

Lesley Harrison, The Northern Telegraph

As part of the UEA Welcome activities last week, I led a “Word Walk” around campus, where we stopped to consider the roots and history of nouns we encountered, guided by Emerson’s observation that “Language is fossil poetry”. The walk zig-zagged interdisciplinarily between architecture (“concrete”), natural history (“butterfly”, “birch”), maths (“extrapolation”), and chemistry (“gas”, “helium”), before ending up at art history, with an Ancient Egyptian carved figurine of a frog in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

Looking up the etymology of “frog” in the Oxford English Dictionary, I learned a new word: “hypocoristic”.

Ultimately related to Old English frosc and its cognates in other Germanic languages, although the nature of the relationship is uncertain; the present word was probably originally an alteration of frosc as a result of association with docga dog n.1 […] in which the geminate consonant perhaps originally had a hypocoristic motivation (< Greek ὑποκόρισμα, ‑κορισμός pet-name, < ὑποκορίζεσθαι to play the child, use terms of endearment)

The OED entry on the mysterious origins of “dog” is a lesson in philology itself. What I understand from the above, though, is that the written words “frogge” and “dogge” (the vowel-shortening double “g” is the “geminate consonant”) began as spoken terms, for which the “hypocoristic motivation” was that of the pet name: the playful diminutive applied to the familiar creature. And “frog” perhaps — though this is my own speculation — was an association formed through the rhyme it makes with “dog”.

For Gertrude Stein, this is the felt life of language and naming that eventually becomes formalised as poetry. In her essay “Poetry and Grammar”, she writes:

Think of how you talk to anything whose name is new to you a lover a baby or a dog or a new land or any part of it. Do you not inevitably repeat what you call out and is that calling out not of necessity in short lines. Think about it and you will see what I mean by what you feel.

So as I say poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of anything.

That’s not exactly how I put it below, in 2005. But it arrives at the same idea via a different route: that to read poetry, you start with the words, and listen for the feeling. To quote the epigraph from Nijinsky’s diary that begins “Friends”, the John Ashbery poem that I discuss here: “I like to speak in rhymes, because I am a rhyme myself.”

Jeremy Noel-Tod, Frog and Dog

I’m editing, editing. What could I do for break? I know…word games. There’s re-w-or-d-a-ble. (Not a sponsorship endorsement but word geek fun.) What else?

What do I like? Let’s see, poetry, remixing, chance operations, corpus studies, Good Omens and making stuff.

I have 5 sets of magnetic poetry. What if I made a Good Omens one? Which words are keyword bingo troped? I brainstormed some.

I have a base set, a gardening set, a CanLit set, a French base set, and some yellowed ones that I’m not sure what they were from. One of the sets came with blanks. And I have a labelmaker. We have a plan. 

So I made a thing. 

Pearl Pirie, Good Omens Magnetic Poetry

On the evening of the day we move I have to teach a step class and Nick has to take a choir rehearsal. So no putting our feet up that evening!  Then waking up the next day, clambering over boxes and hoping the boiler/shower/hob are all working…. wish us luck!

Obviously I don’t have a lot of time to noodle around on the blog. But I did want to mention these literary hoaxes that are doing the rounds. Maybe I’ve come late to this particular party. A few months ago I got an email from someone claiming to have read ‘The Golden Rules of Blogging’ and asking if I was up for any other projects with the publishing house she claimed to represent. I confess I fell for it rather stupidly – I looked up the sender on LinkedIn and she appeared to have a legitimate profile there, but I did think it very odd for her to pick up on a book that’s over ten years old. So I replied, albeit in a cagey manner. That’s when the penny dropped – another gushy email came back right away, and I recognised the purple prose of a crude AI bot. I’m happy to say I’m not the first to fall for it – for example here’s Julie Broad of Book Launchers telling her story. 

A week or so later came another similar email, this time allegedly from a professor at a West Country university who claimed he ran a literary festival and would be honoured to have me featured there! Woohoo! Except the ‘festival’ was starting the very next week, and the professor turned out to be a real person, but actually a professor of engineering. Since then the emails have arrived on a regular basis. It’s the present-day version of those misspelt email scams from twenty years ago. 

Robin Houghton, New beginnings and literary hoaxes

For the uninitiated, here is a quick overview of how publishing a book of poetry works:

Most poets don’t have agents (unless you are Billy Collins or James Franco and already important OR independently wealthy). The vast majority of poetry books are published via Book-Length Contests or Open Reading Periods, and even the biggest poetry press is typically a small indie or university press with only a few people running it and even less money keeping it afloat. Sending in your manuscript may happen in April, with nothing but crickets until Christmas, and the contests aren’t free – most charge $25, with the most expensive running around $35.

What do you get if you win? Maybe a $1000 prize, a few poetry readings, or free copies of the book, distribution to some indie bookstores, some universities inviting you to come give a reading.

No one will stop you on the street for an autograph – even the most famous living poet is not famous outside of poetry circles, and likely your book will be forgotten in a month or, worse, never even heard of. Ever.

Yet, the competition is steep – which makes me love Poets all the more. We are such a ridiculous, starry-eyed set! […]

The numbers can seem daunting, but, as I let my fourth-collection drift around the contest circuit, what all this tells me is that one rejection means basically nothing, that I need to be sending more places, and that I must persist.

Those numbers also remind me that every poetry book I adore came from the efforts of a poet who kept sending out their work despite the tiny odds and minuscule rewards because they believed their poems needed to find their readers.

Renee Emerson, Poetry Manuscript Contests

I remain the sort of poet who doesn’t get asked to do paid gigs, has never been published in reputable literary journals and has no book deal, but now I am the sort of poet who is resigned to that fate, and is enjoying a presence on the internet, and occasional publication in fabulous mags and websites that admittedly might not be quite as reputable as the New Yorker or the London Review of Books. As a consequence of that resignation, I am a lot less worried about reading at open mics. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to get up from time to time, and I still want to make an impact on the occasions when I do. But I have developed some strategies to avoid getting my knickers in a twist about it. Sometimes they actually work. I am not suggesting that they would work for anyone else. But they help me. Here they are.

One. I try hard not to care about how my reading will be received. I’m not going to put myself into that position of worry. When it’s my turn to read, I’m going to get up, say a few words, read my piece and get off.

Two. I’m going to do one, and only one poem, no haggling over a second, third or (God forbid) a forth one. I’ll save those for the rare occasions when I am actually asked to do a set. People haven’t come to see me at an open mic – I should have a bit of humility.

Three. When I am done, I should sit down, still my beating heart and do my best to forget about it. I can save the in depth analysis with Gary Lineker and Ian Wright for when I get home.

Four. I try to listen properly to the other readers. Not using them as yardsticks to compare myself to, but for who they are.

If you are a poet who regularly attends open mics, perhaps you do all of these things naturally. Perhaps you have always approached open mic in this manner. If so, I salute you. It’s hard work for a big headed egotist like myself to cultivate such an attitude. There is also the attendant worry of appearing arrogant, as if open mics are “beneath me” if I don’t get up, or appear too flippant when I do. Perhaps I overthink everything, but I don’t think that I am alone in such mental struggles.

Mike O’Brien, How to Enjoy a Poetry Open Mic

We read our work at the open mics, and this past Saturday I shared “Karaoke for the Die-Hard Fan” for the first time. I didn’t realize how well it would play to a live audience, and I think it may become part of my memorized rotation for readings. After the event, Midge Goldberg and I were trying to describe to Tom the Aussie the tradition of singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” in the middle of 8th innings at Fenway Park.

I remember workshopping this poem during my residency, and someone complained about how many baseball references there were. Now that I’ve read it out loud I think I have regrets about not mentioning something about my mother bringing us home. I see a revision in the future! Good idea? Bad idea? Please be opinionated in comments.

I’ve pulled the poem out of the drawer every so often for over the past year, but 2026 is the 20th anniversary of my father’s death and September would have been my parents’ 53rd wedding anniversary. I decided that it was a good time to fly it out to journals, and it landed on the very first try.

Zina Gomez-Liss, Karaoke for the Die-Hard Fan

The bookshops that impress me have “Short stories” sections. They’re mostly in Dublin, though the Amnesty International shop in Cambridge and Saffron Walden’s Oxfam shop have story sections. The Oxfam bookshop in Islington doesn’t have one, though it has a section for “Literary Magazines” – Acumen, Pennine Platform, etc.

Blackwells in Oxford has a “poetry pamphlets” section.

“Poetry” shelves often have an “Anthologies” section. The Islington bookshop has that, and also has a section I’ve never seen before – “Contemporary Poetry” – which includes pamphlets and many slim volumes. It makes sense to display the spineless pamphlets in boxes – it makes browsing easier, like fingering through LPs in the olden days.

Tim Love, Bookshops – specialist shelves

The CBe edition of Testimony by Charles Reznikoff, all 608 pages of it, has gone to print. A longish piece by me on Reznikoff will be in the imminent new issue of The Little Review (£5 for 176 pages: ridiculously good value). For a reading of the whole of Testimony over three days in a gallery in central London next spring I applied last June for funding (for costs including gallery hire, video-recording, etc.), and I learned this week I didn’t get it. I spent a long time over that application; it was a beautiful application. But the reading will happen.

Charles Boyle, Newsletter September 2026

The neighborhood paper, which has little to report beyond the struggles of the city council, school board, and high school sports teams, informs us of an upcoming event: a tour of the city’s fanciest houses, built by men of wealth and ambition at the turn of the previous century. Why we tour such places—to gawk, to lust, to covet—is a mystery I’ve contemplated more than once. Here is one such contemplation.

[…]

Guidebooks lapse into silence on the sins
that undergird their granite disciplines:

the dark red sandstone brooding on the hill
over the history of a steel-spiked will
that built and built and never had enough—
a public treasure now, it rules the bluff
and makes us marvel at our rush to own
the memory of the men it turned to stone.

Which we preserve, the robber baron’s guilt
being gilded by the loveliness he built.
As for a feast day, every year we come
to hear the engines of our envy hum,
sighing for beauties, knowing what they meant.
Not quite complicit. Not quite innocent.

Maryann Corbett, “to hear the engines of our envy hum . . .”

Had you heard of “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” when you were eleven? I had not. I’m not even sure I had heard of Keats. My main poetry experience was Pam Ayres’ “I wish I’d looked after my teeth” (which I still think is wonderful, whatever the poetry overlords say) and a smattering of Patience Strong. My old and very posh art teacher was astonished at my ignorance. The memory of her astonishment pops into my head as autumn tiptoes in. Light recedes day by day, the air I breathe when I let the cat out (and in and out and in) in the morning has a faint chill, the smells change from sun warmed jasmine and barbecues to damp leaves and bonfires. Mists begin to wrap the morning, and supermarkets proclaim the arrival of “British season apples” which implies mellow fruitfulness exists somewhere. I’ll miss the light of summer but autumn brings the gift of time. The garden takes less attention, people stop having barbecues and other social excitements, trips out are replaced by staying in and watching Ludwig. More than anything, it brings me the time and energy to write. If you’re familiar with Christine Miserandino’s Spoon Theory you’ll know exactly what I mean. […]

Poetry has slipped to one side for a while. I’ve a new Poetry School course starting soon which I know will spark the poetic light again, but overall I’ve found I’m just not as excited as I was. I’ve reached a point of stasis. The giddy excitement of being selected to be one of Nine Arches Press Dynamo poets, learning that I could have work published and actually seeing my words and name in print has moved to one side. I’ve reached all the goals I set myself way back in 2018. I’m published in magazines including my goal of goals which was to be in Under the Radar. I’ve published two books, entered and been shortlisted for various prizes and I’m not sure where poetry will take me next. I’m not putting poetry aside forever; notes are still being made, the mysteries of the sestina still thrill and baffle me and I’m still writing poetry for wedding readings, which brings a joy all of its own.

As well as travel writing I’m dipping back into short fiction. I love creating worlds inspired by a photograph or picture (old postcards are especially exciting) and am acutely aware of the place all those poetry skills have in creating them. It’s a genre I haven’t worked in since my first forays (back) into creative writing and I’m hoping the quiet months of autumn and winter mean I’ll have time and energy to rejuvenate my skills.

Kathryn Anna Marshall, Shine the sun and rain the rain

When I have seen jays before I have often caught of a glimpse of them as they have flown across short spaces within forest areas and I have always felt lucky to catch this rare flash of their distinct feathers. The one this week, in my own garden, caught my attention as I was settling to work at my laptop. On being observed it flew from the wall and thudded to a stop on the roof above me. I went outside to take a closer look, but it had already moved on by the time I got outside. The ginger cat had been watching me one night as I was unloading the tumble dryer in the back porch. I felt that wonderful sense of being lifted from my own world because I was being observed in a kind and curious way. And there studying me was the lovely solid looking cat that has recently been sleeping in a sheltered spot in our garden. We blinked at each other and then, as I smiled at the thought of being noticed whilst doing a boring but necessary job, off he went.

I am sort of making a note to self to notice more things on my daily walk and this brings to mind the fact that it feels like a solid fitness thing to do at this time of year when compared to the lightness of taking the same walk in spring when the daffodils are emerging. Photos at this time of year also seem to be of solid things like tree trunks against the sky or cows so maybe I will look for the light as I stroll out and see where it is that I find it in this new Autumn. I know it was in the sunrise and sunset of Saturday into Sunday, and I know those two studied views gladdened my heart.

Sue Finch, GLANCES, GLIMPSES AND OBSERVATIONS

This is our life, made of small
moments. Hearing the call

of a bird, resonant
as a bell, longing

and desire become
indistinguishable.

Luisa A. Igloria, Occasional

“I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken.” This was Annie Dillard quoting Vincent Van Gogh. Even though VVG said it, I’ll always connect the quotation to her. The way that a person looking at the intricate beauty of the world and interpreting it in the way only they can, is also an act of heartbreak. And for credibility’s sake, there is always bad news right beside the news of the beauty of the world. Thus heartbreak. Thus utterly.

Shawna Lemay, Because it is September

I had just been talking to a friend about how our social habits changed during the pandemic, and how I was so much less social than I used to be. Well not this week! Besides visiting with my farmer friends at the various pumpkin farms, we also had our Bookwalter’s Wine and Book Club, where we discussed Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. People were really taken by it, and I noticed this time around (I hadn’t re-read in a little while) the huge Bowie connection in the poems, and listened to the songs that were referenced. I was aware of Bowie as a kid but I think I mostly remember a couple of his later songs, but of course my main crush was Prince, who wasn’t quite as interested in space. Then the next day we had our poetry group, which was wonderful as usual and we talked about submission opportunities and shared poems and Glenn’s gluten-free red pepper and goat cheese pizza, and pumpkin cheesecake, and I ate more than my share of Witch’s Finger grapes (another seasonal favorite! And we’re even coordinating a pumpkin farm visit and maybe movie get-together. After being so sick back in 2016-17 and then the pandemic, this feels more like my life used to be. Did I mention I have updated my resume and will be job hunting as well?

Good News to Share…Soon

Do you hate when people in the writing world tease good news they can’t share? Me too. That’s why I’m definitely not saying that I got good news that I can share soon, and I have to say that after a period of discouragement with the poetry world, it’s nice to have a little good news in a while, right?

I’ve also been writing more poems and sending out more work. That’s September’s magic – unwrapping new pens, setting up new spreadsheets, a little more motivation to keep going, especially on the days when it’s in the sixties and sunny and the hummingbirds are still busy at the last burst of September blooms.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Happy Fall! And How Many Pumpkin Farms, Social Week, and Good News to Come!

糸瓜忌の紅茶に消ゆる角砂糖　秋元不死男

hechima-ki no kōcha ni kiyuru kakuzatō

            Shiki’s Death Day
            a lump of sugar disappears
            into tea

                                    Fujio Akimoto

from Haiku Dai-Saijiki (Comprehensive Haiku Saijiki), Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 2006

Fay’s Note: Fujio Akimoto (1901-1977). Shiki Masaoka (b 1867) died on September 19, 1902.  Because his death haiku was about ‘hechima (gourd),” his death anniversary is called “hechima-ki.”

Fay Aoyagi, Today’s Haiku (September 19, 2026)

The poet called this morning. My electricity had just gone out and I was plotting my next move in the dark. “Is it a good time to speak?” he said. I ran through a quick itinerary of pressing issues in my head with a rotating leaderboard of the top three items that consisted of: crippling existential loneliness, Chelsea Football Club’s current defensive frailty, whether rhyming ‘apothecary’ with ‘apology’ in a poem I’ve made about Keats was absolutely necessary or just plain clunky.

The poet was waiting for an answer.

“Sure,” I said as my phone pinged a notification from my bank. I’d exceeded my overdraft limit. Again. “It’s a great time,” I said.

I put the poet on loudspeaker and used my phone’s screen to light up the electric meter, to see if I had any emergency credit left. I didn’t. I gave the junction box a gentle tap, the analogue approach, hopeful I may nudge the circuitry back into action. Short of resorting to a hammer or a high kick, blending a lightness of touch with a belief in magic has never yet produced satisfactory results in terms of getting the power back on but this is not to say it wouldn’t work this time. I am not conducting the same experiment expecting different results, I am manifesting forces known only to the practitioners of poetry where subtle fluctuations are at play, creative oscillations that can produce unusual conclusions. We may sit at our desks at the same time of day, open the same note book, use the same pen, the same ink, the same laptop and software but different poems will appear. The outcome is always unique.

I reach out, focus, make a connection, I might, just might, channel enough energy to transfer some Wattage through my fingers and feed the supply. I feel alive. I summon my inner electricity. The spirit of Walt Whitman is here, with me, in a damp subterranean flat in Hackney. But I am all volt and no current. The lights do not come back on. I remain in the dark.

“What’s happening?” I ask the poet, “Talk to me.”

Jan Noble, N°82 How Swan made it to San Francisco

This week: a migraine’s glittering distortions, a woman who is part moth, warty yellow amanitas, a world of random objects, and much more. Enjoy.

Where to begin?

In the again of this daunting question, there is an effort to match fragments and pieces of memory, to make a map of the mind. One might, for example, leave a page from a notebook on the kitchen table, promising to return to it and find a strand. One might walk the dog and return to the table. One might stare at the paper and prevaricate, maybe spin a wheel to see where the urge to narrate lands. One might procrastinate and pace the summer-warmed floor and settle on the place in the Cote d’Azur where the mouth of the wolf meets the beach.

Alina Stefanescu, “…in the branches of ourselves…”

at the beach no one has
heads anymore. there is a new corporation
who will remove your head & replace it
with a pot & fake flowers for
no small fortune. everyone reports it
makes them feel “less stressed.” i think truly
we should probably be more stressed.
an empire is always dissociating.

Robin Gow, vacation mirror

A young fox is sitting on the path in my back garden as a fierce tomcat from over the road tucks into meat my neighbour’s thrown out. The fox is cautious, checks the wall, stands on it to see if the cat’s still there. This tomcat’s legendary. He spent a night and much of the next day at the top of an elm tree before he was rescued. The fox is back now but the food is gone. He’s elegant, his brush full and healthy, no sign of mange. He walks confidently but is wary, sniffs the ground, jumps back on the wall, back down to the garden to sniff again. Nothing left. 

I’ve moved back into this room, once my office until the children became too old to share and it became my daughter’s. She’s grown up hardy – it’s the coldest in the house. 

(The fox has run through my garden with a piece of chicken, off to a shed roof or the graveyard. A dog’s now in the garden sniffing.)

My desk, once a Victorian washstand is back in front of the window, but now only the wooden top survives, held up by four extendable legs. On it, my laptop and sewing machine. […]

The view through this window with its old, distorted glass, often becomes a tunnel. I live in the city and last night coming home late from a friend’s I met a badger on my path. Sometimes the past gathers like a migraine’s glittering distortions and stars around my eyes.

Jackie Wills, Fox summons the past

Crabgrass is lounging across the lawn and embedded in the garden beds, acting as if it had been there all along, which perhaps it was, abiding and biding its August time to stretch and lie languid, ducking its head under my mower, its roots defying my pull. Some tuberous rooted thing has lunged up in several places in the garden. What on earth is it? On earth indeed, in earth, and I can’t be bothered to unearth it, curious to see what it’s flowering into, sure I’ll regret it next year, as it takes over some corner of the yard. Witness the uninvited goldenrod, the drunken little asters propping each other up behind the deck, whatever that would-be bush that inserts itself everywhere. Some plants arrive dropped by bird poop, and I think about the seeds’ adventures: extruded from a root, nipped by a beak, floated through a digestive system, briefly flying through the air as part of a splat, and splat, dirt, rooted again. And again and again. A reminder of what can come of chance meetings, what glory can rise from a small hard thing.

Marilyn McCabe, Untitled

— It’s the delightful deliquescent dregs of August. The golden hour is doing the old razzle-dazzle like its life depended on it. […]

— Well, the idea that it is in writing that we can create ourselves. One of the ways. This is the thing about making, creating. It’s not even the thing that you end up making, but it’s how the making makes you. I’ve always loved that. And so of course we makers despair at the present time when it feels like that is being taken from us, from the futures of those would-be artists and writers, our youth. I spend a lot of time reacting in my mind to the sloppola. But on the ground level, I’m still doing my writing, I’m taking photographs. I’m making this and that.

— What we have is silence, the silence between words and passages of words, as Jenny Erpenbeck says here.

— We also have courage.

“hey, friends, courage,
life is beautiful”
— Adam Zagajewski, from his book Eternal Enemies

— When you have a day where you’re not certain if life is beautiful, I encourage you to take a mirror outside, into the garden, or the forest. Walk around with it and look. Prop it up here or there.

— When Rob is working on a painting he will often check it in a mirror so that he can see it afresh. I sometimes feel like I should be holding a mirror up to pretty much everything these days for a reality check, at least metaphorically. Which is also an old art forgery detection trick, as the reflected image often gives a sense if something is ‘off.’

Shawna Lemay, Courage, Silence, the Deliquescent Dregs

We saw smoke, and the terrible, twisted aftermath of flame. Most of all, we saw – and felt and heard – the dry bogs, the empty streams, the yellowed hills, the heavy air, the crunch of dessicated sphagnum for mile after mile after mile. The tiny velvety bodies of shrews on the hardened, waterless ground.

When I got home, the little bog I keep on my windowsill – a Kilner jar of moss and sundew – was all but dry. I’ve filled it repeatedly today: each time, the moss drinks with a deep thirst and needs more, more, more. I wish i could do the same for our bogs and fens and moors.

A few hours ago, Anna and I met to finalise tomorrow morning’s Writing Bogwise workshop, which will explore how creative writing can support positive ecological practice – and how nature connectedness can restore our health and humanity. When we read from some of the articles and poems we’ll be using – Jane Clarke, Gregory Norminton, Amanda Chester – I felt like some burnt and thirsty part of myself was drinking deeply too. 

Clare Shaw, Restoration: finding hope in a crisis

When the weather is good, I walk. Walking around my neighborhood is the only real exercise I get, so in Minnesota’s climate I’m lucky to be able to do it about half the year. I used to range more widely and see more of it; I also used to be a subscriber to the app NextDoor, a sometimes troubling mix of gripes, grudges, and rants about local issues. The juxtaposition led to the poem I want to share today. This year, my neighbors have proved that they’re better than that, going to great lengths to support the embattled immigrants among us. But in some places one still feels the discomfort, the sense of walling people out, that led to today’s poem, “An Enclosed Garden.”

Maryann Corbett, Walking the Neighborhood

It may be nothing more than the power of the mind and its ability to manifest (or the brain’s love affair with seeking out patterns), and if magic makes you uncomfortable, feel free to set it inside those safer contexts. But as I age and as the material world continues to disappoint, I’m tired of playing it cool. I’m more interested in leaning into spirit and feral female energy. There’s more for me in mushrooms and shells and mist on the lake than in patriarchy, capitalism and the horrors du jour they ask us to accept as par for the course.

I’ve always seen my energy as a force, but I’d characterized it previously by its intensity, chaos, hard edges, ambition, combustibility. This current energy has a different quality. It’s gooey. It breathes from its belly. It smells like salt and rosemary and bread in the oven. It smiles and floats and stirs and digs. It nests. […]

An earlier version of Carolee would’ve been (at least slightly) irritated with so many whirlwind trips to Maine. She would’ve seen them as distractions from the current plot line: finishing her manuscript. Instead, at every turn, including (and especially) the difficult trips, those visits back home opened paths for me to go deeper into the manuscript. Similarly, the naming of magic (and its practice) did not take away from work on the Gertie manuscript. It helped me see writing this book as casting a spell.

Carolee Bennett, Creative Life Lately: Maine, Magic, Manuscript

[…] we are
idle spit dried to salt
on steamy blacktop
withered illusions
screwed up tattoos

we are struggling steel in a hot metal world

This poem was accepted and published in Eunoia Review in 2018 after five other litmags rejected it. When I write something new I always note the date I began, this was begun on 5/17/18.

I was not a fan of Janis [Joplin]. She was a rock star of the 60s and I became a fan of rock music right about the time she died in 1970. Fast forward to 2018 when I discovered the poetry of Dorianne Laux and stumbled on her reading of her poem “Pearl” on PennSound Daily. Here is the direct link to Dorianne talking about and reading the poem. You can also read/hear it on The Slowdown here. Do listen! The power of that poem hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I had never been a fan of Janis, the poem was so visceral and communicated Dorianne’s view of her so purposefully that it made me really see Janis and think of her in a way I never had before. That’s the power of poetry and of writing in general. A really good writer can make you see something in a whole new way, can actually shift your perspective. I love that. Since then, I’ve read articles about Janis and watched a couple of documentaries and now realize what a creative powerhouse she was and how she paved the way for women in rock music, a genre dominated by men.

Anyway, I don’t know what was going on with me on 5/17/18 when I wrote my poem but apparently I was feeling a kinship with “Pearl” in some way at the time.

Charlotte Hamrick, About & Including

I made it through torrential highway storms this week to introduce Arthur Sze at our CWC session on Transient Worlds, his fantastic new anthology exploring poetry in translation. It was a mesmerizing session, and deeply inspiring to hear how the project connects to his work as U.S. Poet Laureate—Sze has made the imaginative and connecting powers of translation his central focus.

In other news, my book’s title poem was published in The Rumpus this week (a huge thank you to Roxane Gay!). If you would like to purchase a signed copy of If You Love That Lady for yourself or someone else, please send me a message—I’ll cover the shipping.

Maya C. Popa, Poems for Your Weekend

These poems were written a little while ago, and I never quite knew what to do with them. Well, it turns out that putting them together as a short, themed sequence (which anyway is how they were written) was just the right thing.

They all loosely speak to my enduring fascination with what I’ll inelegantly call (because I think it is called this) the theory of perception. I’ve talked before about how I think poems function as mini Rube Goldberg machines – well, take another step back and … does the same apply to us humans? We take in sensory input and, through a series of complex and ultimately quite bizarre processes, we come to understand the world around us. At the same time, we are converting inner thoughts and feelings into words and actions we express outwardly, in a way that leaves a mark on the world.

At this stage in proceedings, if you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, you might want to look here, or here, or even here.

So, we’re all Rube Goldberg machines, unwittingly but irreversibly wonkifying anything we come into contact with – converting an egg rolling off a shelf into a squeeze of toothpaste on a brush, or the action of a cuckoo clock into a buttered slice of toast. So, would you like to read eight poems ‘about’ that?

You would? Oh, great. The pamphlet is available to buy directly from Shadow & Sax’s online shop, along with other publications, including Urchin by Sand Letellier, which I’m looking forward to getting my hands on.

Victoria Spires, I suppose I do have something to sell

Every Sunday on his fantastic neonpajamas, Benjamin Niespodziany posts poems by others and then creates a prompt for the readers based on some element of that poem. The selection of poems is always great—tending toward the disjunctive and/or surreal and considering what language and all its strangeness can do. Readers are invited to post their responses to the prompts on the site or else elsewhere and then tag him. It’s a brilliant way to spend some time on a Sunday and I try to whenever I can. Last week, Ben posted a poem by Evan Nicholls whose work is always surprising and fresh. I wrote a response to the poem and the prompt (follow that link for both) though I only sort of followed Ben’s prompt because I was most interested in how Evan ended the poem. A really great twist at the end—funny but somehow revealing about one’s assumptions in the poem and in reading in general. There’s often a desire for a poem (or any text really) to speak to universal truths, it’s a satisfying, filling move. But Evan does an amazing turn in the last lines of his poem.

Gary Barwin, Neon Pajamas, Justice and the Pig

Be warned: if your usual method of reading, like mine, is to carry a book with you in your backpack everywhere you go, digging it out on train journeys and in sandwich queues, you will need to take extra care with #Moth (published by Ethel Zine and Micro Press). It’s a hand-stitched booklet, and as well as gold stitching it sports a delicate cover of silver paper, with thread used to add a textured filigree to the moth’s wing pattern and antennae. This is in keeping with the content of the book, which — at least initially — seems focused on the fragility of the human mind, in that it moves from a bus stop setting to a psyche ward in the first two pages, the transition implicitly triggered by the folding door of the bus, or some other simple act this motion approximates.

Holmes describes #Moth as a ‘hybrid text’, and it is — part poetry, part short fiction (it definitely advances toward an ending), utilising a mixture of clinical and lyrical language. There’s no contents page and it’s not always clear where poems begin and end, as there are a few different styles of heading and subheading. It also features a hybrid character at its centre — a woman who is part-moth, or perceived as part-moth by others:

brazen midriff, miniskirt:
body hair fine copper fuzz.

wings jostle inside his chest

Once it settles in there is a steady alternation between pieces which record fragments of doctor/patient conversation (verso) and miniature monologues by different moth species (recto), these preceded by images of the species in question on semi-transparent pages. It’s something of a power struggle; each monologue acts as a different guise worn by the main character — a response to the attempts of the doctor to categorise and contain her. 

Jon Stone, REVIEW: #Moth by Eleanor Holmes

Helen [Mort] is a poet I’ve been in conversation with poetically ever since I first started writing, although she didn’t know it at the time! I remember reading one of her Tall Lighthouse pamphlets a pint for the ghost, published in 2009 and being absolutely blown away – this was three years before my first pamphlet came out. In fact, I’ve just pulled the pamphlet out from my bookshelf and opened it up to find a poem on page 15 called ‘a dram for all the men I’ve never drank with’ – I can’t help but think that this subliminally must have influenced my second collection All the Men I Never Married, which I eventually published over ten years later.

Back to Helen’s fourth full-length collection Stepmother. I managed to get a copy of this from Helen when we read together at Haworth. For fans of Helen’s work, there is still her trademark playfulness and close attention to the musicality of language, but in many ways this feels like a bold departure from her previous work. It is a poetic investigation into the archetype of the stepmother – drawing on fairy tale, pornography and popular culture to examine how stepmothers play out in the modern family.

There are striking prose sections that sometimes read like lyric essays, sometimes like prose poems. There is something meditative about these pieces – there is ‘On silence’ and ‘On Origins’ and ‘On souls’. Silence is a theme that looms large throughout the book. This complicated relationship with speaking – when to speak up, when to be silent runs throughout the book. In “On Silence” a family photographer mistakenly calls the speaker of the poem ‘mum’ and the piece ends with ‘To speak would have seemed like a disavowal, a distancing. To stay silent meant taking something which was not yours.

‘So of course you said nothing. You took it’

The house as a domestic space is often a dangerous place, sometimes configured as a living being, a body that can swallow people whole – in the poem ‘In every house there is a cupboard’ finishes ‘When you lean into the cupboard, you could pitch yourself right down the house’s throat’.

It feels like a risky, risk-taking book. It made me think a little bit about A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk in its approach to examining the straitjackets that women are written into, or spoken into or moulded into by the forces that govern our lives and the forces that we let run loose inside us.

Kim Moore, July Reading Diary

When I was in Malaysia last year, I read with Beijing-based poet Anthony Tao. We discovered, amongst other things, a shared love of writing about bars: theatres of the absurd, meeting points, places of temporary epiphany.

I’ve been fascinated by pubs as spaces of storytelling since my pamphlet ‘a pint for the ghost’ back in the mid 2000s. When I got back to the UK after my fleeting trip to Penang, Anthony and I started writing a few poems-in-dialogue about bars.

I’m massively excited that Anthony is coming over to the UK at the end of this month and we’re going to be reading together along with Matt Byrne at Sheffield’s very own Over The Yardarm on 31st August.

Ahead of that gig, I thought I’d share a couple of drafts of things I wrote in response to poems by Anthony. Mine are set in Manchester, but the first piece took inspiration from a line in Anthony’s poem ‘Hanoi, Day and Night’.

If you want to see us in dialogue IRL, come to Sheffield on bank holiday Monday, August 31st!

Hope you like these two mini bar poems!

Irwell

‘..not stink, just fragrance gone too far.’ – Anthony Tao

The way Canal Street’s overcome
some nights by sudden river
so as you sit under the rainbow flags
at dusk, in unfit northern weather
you might smell something tar-like,
dankness, shipping’s aftermath,
the smoke-on-clothing reek
of defunct industry, lung-deep
and if you let yourself inhale
you’ll notice how the Irwell
holds the scent of everyone
it ever touched […]

Helen Mort, A poem walks into a bar

Poet, Iris Anne Lewis, has clearly chosen the title of her collection, Amber (Graffiti Books, 2024), with care. Amber, the highly valued, fossilised tree resin, is notable for its capacity to preserve traces of the ancient world, including insects and plants. Lewis’s collection performs a comparable act of preservation. It revisits the human past without sentimentality, often through artefacts and images that have survived across time and uses history as a lens through which contemporary life can be viewed with humanity, precision and perception.

Handprints, one of the strongest poems in the collection, is typical of the poems in the opening section, which focuses on history and prehistory. The first part of the poem, subtitled 30,000 BCE, describes the silhouetted handprints found in the caves of Gargas. Lewis vividly recreates the act of making them: ‘the artist splays hand to rock,/ sucks black pigment into hollow/ bone of swan, blows living breath/ into paint.’ The final phrase recalls the classical motif of gods breathing life into human beings. Here, however, it becomes both a metaphor for artistic mastery and an expression of the connection experienced by the modern viewer. These are not merely handprints; they stand for living people — ‘men/ women, children’ — who, although they lived many thousands of years ago, would have known ‘Disease…mourning…grief.’ In the second section of the poem, subtitled 2000 CE, that connection is extended into the present. Lewis moves us into neonatal units, where nurses help ‘bereaved mothers of still-birthed babies,/ take hand and footprints.’ The grief of early cave dwellers is echoed in a contemporary context: the experience of death, mourning and remembrance remains part of the human condition. Yet Lewis does not linger solely on loss. She then turns to the nursery school, where children make prints of their own hands and ‘Proud parents/ display’ this ‘infant art’ ‘on kitchen walls and fridges.’ This broadens the poem’s emotional range, presenting another enduring aspect of human experience: the impulse to create, to make marks and to assert presence. Lewis makes this universality explicit in the closing question: ‘which of us/ has not pressed hand/ to paper, drawn round our palm/ and fingers? Made this statement?// I am here. I matter.’ The poem therefore connects ancient handprints with the fundamental human need to express identity and affirm existence.

Nigel Kent, Review of ‘Amber’ by Iris Anne Lewis

Julia Webb’s fourth collection focuses on grief after bereavement. Grief can be a tricky topic as the poet can either include the reader, by focusing on exploration and communication or shut out the reader by focusing on the personal and individual response that the reader feels excluded from understanding the relationship or the person(s) behind the grief. Webb invites the reader in by focusing on the nature of unresolved relationships, the parts of connections and conversations of avoidance. There are dashes of colour (other than grey) and one poem turns a mother into an owl. Grief here is for a mother and a brother, without details given, not that the poet is obliged to give details, so readers can probe their own familial relationships through the lens offered. Grief is likened to “I have spent years falling out of each window” and its first line “the tall building of grief gave me”. 

Emma Lee, “Grey Time” Julia Webb (Nine Arches Press) – book review

Path, Chris Torrance, Aquifer, 2026, ISBN: 978-1-0684861-3-5

When I reviewed the Test Centre edition of Chris Torrance’s The Magic Door back in January 2018, I concluded by writing:

In his Afterword, Torrance refers to ‘at least 3 more books, taking The Magic Door into the 21st century’. I can only urge you to buy the current volume so that [Test Centre] might publish these outstanding volumes with the same diligence.

It has taken longer than I hoped, but thanks to Aquifer and editor Phil Maillard, we finally have not three, but nine new sections of Torrance’s major poem published together under the title Path, which is also the title of the first new section. The full list is:

Path
A Garden Book
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writing Tutor
RORI: A Book of the Boundaries
Frinite
Wobbly Chair
Dreamin’ Viv
Aurochs
A Book of Number/Gos Diaries

They vary in length from 9 to 40 pages, but each section, however short, is a self-contained book, albeit with recurring themes, including ones from the earlier volumes, running through. There’s so much going on in this book that I’ve decided to focus this review on just some of the many paths a reader could take to traverse it. There are, of course, other paths I could have taken, music, for instance, but to do full justice to this book, I’d need to write another one.

Billy Mills, Path by Chris Torrance: A Review

So, we have a looking-glass book in a Looking-Glass book, which ought to mean something — perhaps that the obvious parody of the quest tale in “Jabberwocky” can remind us that one way to read Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is as a strange and dreamy quest. That’s suggested, too, by “A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky,” the acrostic poem with which the narrative ends.

And suggested as well by the conversation with Humpty Dumpty:

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”

“Brillig means four o’clock in the afternoon,” Humpty Dumpty tells her, “the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.” And with his learnedly silly explications — “Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?” he asks Alice — we’re warned off the side-quest. And back to the poem’s absurdity, parodic flavor, and bounce.

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: Jabberwocky

2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

My mom bought me a copy of Langston Hughes’ The Dream Keeper–the edition illustrated by Brian Pinkney–shortly before my first day of school in 3rd grade. At one point I had most of those poems memorized. No longer. I was fascinated with the Beats in high school, mainly Burroughs, Welch, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. Those last fellas are few tough heroes to have, I guess, but who doesn’t have those? College was the big sort of aha moment: Lorca, Mayer, Whitman, Dickinson, Baraka, Notley, O’Hara, etc. etc. I did my undergrad at Brooklyn College, so I was reading New Yorkers alongside New Yorkers. It became my world for a long time. I wrote poems with friends in them for friends and with those same friends–we had a big, rollicking, cinematic writing collective. In a lot of ways, I wrote poems so that I could have friends, too.

3 – How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

This latest book took me about three and a half months to write. It’s the shortest bit of complete writing that I’ve ever (and probably will ever) accomplish. I was in and out of hospitals and rehab centers after my dad had fallen very ill. I’d basically alternate between rehab room / waiting room / car / Stewart’s (for those who don’t know, a regional convenience store franchise that sells ice cream, usually with bright orange booths for the newspaper-and-coffee set). The writing quite literally fell out of me. I just had to make sure I was able to catch all of it as it fell out. That type of writing feels blessed. It doesn’t happen too often. 

4 – Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a “book” from the very beginning?

I write every day, usually in the morning. In college I was introduced to the poetry of kari edwards, who I read fervently and obsessively, and who I think is one of our most massively underread late poets. I can’t remember the exact sequence and durations, but Rob Halpern notes, in his introduction to edwards’ succubus in my pocket, that she would wake, meditate for x hours, read philosophy for an hour, fiction for an hour, and poetry for an hour, constantly writing across these various texts, then finally eat breakfast, go back to reading, etc. I am not nearly as regimented or as robust in my mornings, but I drew a lot of inspiration from hir dedication to encounter and thought. Always reading. Always writing. 

For the most part, I am writing into a question or a feeling, or around a question or a feeling. I do a lot of circling and sizing up. Collage work, mosaic work, lots of tinkering in the first half of my process. I do a lot of work up front. Once the book is together, it’s mostly there. I will send it to a few friends to get a sense of sequencing and big picture work. 

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ryan Skrabalak

At the 2022 National Book Awards Finalist Reading, Sharon Olds prefaced her poem “Quarantine” like this: “I just thought that before I read my poem I would show that I rewrote it a little since it was in my book because I read it at a reading and there was something wrong with it. Something in the beginning especially and I fixed—I think I fixed it.” She explains that she removed four adjectives and one adverb from the first version and changed a noun. “So I’m very ha—I’m not afraid.”

A poem can be part of a critically acclaimed collection and also be not quite right, Olds is telling us, though the poem had seemed right to her at one time. And she can’t even be certain she’s completely addressed the problem. She starts to claim to have fixed it, then backtracks. She thinks she’s fixed it, she amends, which implies future changes may be required. And while she begins to say she’s happy with the newer version, she says instead that she’s not afraid. The audience claps and whistles.

I love what Olds offers us here. Isn’t that the task of every writer? To be not afraid? Not afraid to make work and not afraid to let strangers read it and judge it and not afraid to acknowledge the work’s failings and to try to fix those failings, even if the piece was previously declared finished. Even if it’s already been printed in a collection and that collection is up for the National Book Award, for instance.

Which brings me back to the idea that I was issuing corrections while putting together my book. In an interview with Brian Brodeur, Keetje Kuipers was asked how she knows a poem is ready to be published. “I don’t mind the idea that drafts of my poems (good drafts, ones that have had careful attention and revision, but drafts all the same) are appearing in journals and magazines,” she says. “In some ways, it gives me a lot of pleasure to think that I’m sharing that process with a wider audience, and that people may have the opportunity to encounter a single poem in widely varying incarnations by the time it appears in a book.”

I love this as well—this practice of sharing drafts with readers. In rewriting an already-public poem, you admit which parts of your work you found wanting or that you maybe just outgrew. It’s vulnerable and brave to hold your poems with such open hands, allowing observers into your process and accepting that your current creative choices might feel wrong in the future. How comforting to know that even Sharon Olds needs to make corrections. How freeing to think of them as Keetje Kuipers does—not as corrections but as incarnations. Each version of a poem granted its own place in the world. The first version with the plums in it and the second one with pears because plums are trite, aren’t they, and the third iteration with the red plums back in because they are delicious and nearly my favorite fruit, even if William Carlos Williams liked them too, and so it should be plums, I’ve decided. For now.

The Generous Act of Publishing Drafts: Poems as Iterations – guest post by Abbie Kiefer (Trish Hopkinson)

As we close in on the last couple weeks of the open reading period, I am enjoying wading into the submissions pool and have even started accepting some titles for the first couple months of the 2026-27 season (and amazingly am somewhat on schedule getting these last handful of books out for this past season, which is wrapping up as we speak.) I am once again thinking about what makes a manuscript a definite “yes” and what makes me take a pass on the “no”s. Some manuscripts stand out for their strangeness, their innovation. This can be subject matter-wise, language-wise, stylistic, or narrative. It can mean using page space in interesting ways. Using art and graphics mixed in. Using found texts and appropriated forms like glossaries and diagrams. I like books that go for bold in some ways. That aren’t afraid to take risks. I’ve often heard from authors that the book I accepted had been out in submission for a minute and no one was biting. I sometimes am just that weirdo that loves it or sees the potential in it. 

We have recent books that are erasures and black outs. Books that masquerades as other kinds of text–prose, charts, indices. We have books that include original art by the author (which now that we are using a professional  printer, look even more amazing than when I was doing them in house.) This is also true of books that use the page space in interesting ways, which we can now do in differing sizes than the standard paperback dimensions. 

Kristy Bowen, what I look for as an editor, part 2

Independent publishing has always operated on the slimmest of margins. It’s not the oil business. In that business, there’s a vertical marketplace. Shell digs the oil, refines it, carries it on the big boat, and sells it to you at the pump. That’s a lucrative business to start with.

The writer gets a piece of the action.

The distributor gets nearly a third.

The printer gets 10-15%.

The bookstore gets about half.

In the end, the publisher doesn’t have enough to buy tuna.

It’s a business that is run on prayer. If you have wealthy friends, and grants, and a few authors who sell well, and you don’t waste any money, and nothing bad ever happens to you, and you don’t make any mistakes, you might survive. That’s a lot to ask in one life, especially for a nonprofit leader.

I like the phrase “Money should flow toward the writer.” Why stop at money? Why not tequila?

The problem is that in the oil business, there is already money. In the publishing business, unless you are in New York, there isn’t any money flowing.

I talked with an agent the other day who said, “Why did you get into this business?”

I told her the truth: “I was in love with stories that wanted homes. I loved Duras and Colette and Marquez and Calvino and Morrison, and I wanted to climb across the fields, run through the forest, and find what was hanging out there longing for the right editor. What about you?”

She said, “I like money.”

I wanted to write back and suggest she move over to JPMorgan, where she could think about money all the time. Investment banking and tech are the fields where you get to like money. Not publishing.

Kate Gale, Keepers of the Flame: Stepping Up in the Dark

I’ll be interviewing Emily Wilson for Literary Hub next month, so more on this soon. In the meantime, some notes from my reading of her fabulous new essay collection, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature. The book, which will be out September 1st, ranges widely, building toward a dazzling final essay in which she lays out her particular philosophy of translation.

Called “Translating the Odyssey,” the essay had its start in a series of tweets in which she compared and contrasted translations for the first line of the poem, specifically the first adjective Homer attaches to his hero.

Polytropos

Robert Fagles gave us “the man of twists and turns.” And Daniel Mendelsohn translated it as the man “who had so many roundabout ways / To wander.” While Emily Wilson made headlines when she wonderfully used, “A complicated man.”

One critic joked that it sounded more like his relationship status on Facebook but I love the translation!

One word, and already the translators diverge—each hearing something different in the Greek, each also responding to the versions that came before.

My own favorite is the one by Stanley Lombardo. A classics professor and Zen teacher, he rendered the first lines like this:

Speak, Memory—
Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again

As Wilson points out in her essay, Lombardo’s “Speak, Memory” is a Nabokovian wink. His version also takes polytropos apart, distributing its possibilities across “cunning,” “wanderer” and “blown off course.”

Reading them together, Wilson shows us not only how much each translator relies upon the Greek, but how much they also relied on the English versions that came before them. Translation, she reminds us, is not a solitary encounter between a translator and an original.

It is also a conversation, and sometimes an argument, across generations.

Leanne Ogasawara, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea & the Politeness of the Genji Translators

For those of you who don’t know what the GCSE poetry exam looks like, it varies a little between exam boards but essentially, we teach them fifteen poems from the anthology we’ve been using since 2015. One of the poems will be printed on the exam paper and then students have to write an essay comparing it to one of the other fourteen, none of which are printed on the exam paper. They’re comparing something they can see with something they are trying to remember. They are expected to include analysis of language features, poetic structure and the historical context of both poems. Then they do almost the same thing all over again, but with two poems they’ve never seen before, though both of these are printed on the paper this time. These are Sections B and C of a three-section exam (one of two exams) which lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes for most students. If they have a condition which qualifies them for extra time, they’re doing this for the length of The Odyssey movie. Many cope admirably with these demands. Many do not. And whether they cope has almost nothing to do with how many annotations they made, and it definitely doesn’t have much to do with how much they like poetry. Lots of young people love poetry, and say wonderful things about it, and write wonderful poetry themselves. The exam doesn’t necessarily encourage that out of them, that’s all, so what is it testing? If I’m honest, I wish we could assess poetry entirely on unseen responses; take away the stress of the anthology and see what they can really do with a poem.

Even though they can’t take notes into the exam any more (phew), a lot of my students in recent years have become a bit obsessed with them. Annotations are trending, it appears. There are pastel highlighters and insta-style calligraphied headings and colour coded post-its. […]

I think the thing about annotations at this level is that they’re a poor proxy for learning – students feel much happier when they have them and they enjoy making them look beautiful, but ultimately that isn’t the same thing as understanding or genuine insight. This isn’t the kids’ fault. They want to pass, and many have been disempowered by social media, and their self-esteem is often so low that they don’t trust their own ideas. I’ve had intuitive, creative, diligent students, loads of them, sit and wait with poised pens for me to tell them what to write down. It makes me uneasy, that. It’s not the kind of teaching I’m up for. 

Nia Broomhall, Week 23: Hopkins again, and Darren.

At first I thought I would put one object per table, and then I thought it would be more interesting to have several objects.  Some tables had connected objects:  for example, on one table I put Christmas ornaments, a Christmas card, a packet of replacement bulbs for a strand of holiday lights.  On another, I kept the objects from the natural world:  3 feathers, a pine cone, and some shells.  Other tables were more random collections.

I was also pleased with how many tactile experiences they could have.  I had two felted pieces, along with chunks of wood and chunks of asphalt.  The cross made out of palm stalks and the waxy, half-burnt candle gave different sensations.  I put out broken strings of beads and broken pottery.

I told students that they would need paper and something to write with, or they could take laptops to write on.  They all chose paper, and I told them to make sure they had enough paper.

Students sat at a table and had 30 seconds to look at the objects.  Then they wrote for 3 minutes.  They could write about the object or write in the voice of the characters we created in past class sessions or explore their own memories.  I wasn’t looking at their writing, so they had plenty of latitude, as long as they kept writing.

After three minutes, they moved to the next table, a process which went smoothly.  At the end, I had them read all the writing they had done, marking any that had potential.  I reminded them that they could go deeper, but I wasn’t requiring it.  For me, it’s too much policing, having students write for 20-30 minutes.

My students seemed to really like the process.  They talked about how many ideas it generated and how much fun it was to write about random objects.  They also talked about their wonder at what all was waiting to be written about–and I reminded them that we live in a world of random objects, so whenever they feel blocked, they should remember this technique.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Random Objects in the Creative Writing Classroom

I received a lovely message the other day from someone wanting to run a poetry event with their members and looking for some input from a poet, including delivering a talk and a short reading for inspiration alongside some optional involvement further down the line.

I was thrilled, still am really, I don’t often get messages like this.

So I wrote back saying yes I’m interested and asking for some more information, a timeline, and what kind of compensation they’re offering. I received in response:

“I had not anticipated paying for this as I was hoping poets and authors would like to volunteer their time to the next generation of writers.”

Yep. Goodwill and inspiration and yes I probably should have expected that despite them being a national organisation. And that’s ok, I’m not angry so I hope this post doesn’t come across that way, but it raised a familiar (and tired) story.

Why is it so acceptable to ask creatives to work with no offer of payment? In business, ‘time is money’, ‘people’s time is money’, but that doesn’t seem to apply so readily to us. As if we magically don’t need to earn an income from our work.

And yes it’s lovely to inspire the next generation, but you’re contacting me from a multi-institutional organisation that clearly has money (and probably funding), while I’m a singular human living off less than 20k a year. It’s super easy for you to suggest moral reward is enough … would you mind suggesting that to my landlord too?

I feel like there’s this weird dual stereotyping of writers that goes on:

No 1. is that you’re a ‘starving artist’ living hand to mouth and writing furiously till the wee hours every night but somehow at peace with this because you’re ‘creatively fulfilled’ and have ‘chosen’ this life.

No 2. is that because you’re ‘a writer/an author’ with a public profile saying as much you’ve clearly reached the heights of career and financial stability and can volunteer your time any which way.

Realistically the first is bloody hard and frustrating for all of us, and the second, well, maybe if you’ve gone into writing crime fiction or romance and are churning out a book every year…

Either way neither of them seem to amount to many offers of payment for work undertaken. And both of them mean that a huge amount of our time is taken up by either trying to write as much as possible and send as much out on submission as possible alongside actual employment, or trying to write as much as possible and apply for as many grants/residencies/projects as possible to keep the money coming in. Neither of which is great ground for volunteering a bunch of time. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t volunteer, I do think it’s important to volunteer for things when we can.

But when you reduce it down what’s happening is an organisation is asking for a service, one which you can provide and they can’t because you’ve trained and worked hard over a number of years to develop the skills to be able to do it. And then you’re asked to do it for free, regularly. It’s a systemic devaluing of those skills.

Rachael Hill, I was hoping you’d volunteer your time…

Let me preface this with a confession: I’m not great about managing my time. Period. I can get distracted doing laundry—maybe I get a call and walk upstairs to talk—and then I might start emptying the dishwasher, leave that half done because I suddenly remember an email I need to respond to, then get sidetracked responding to emails (or scrolling), then remember I have to pay some bills while I’m online, then wander back into the kitchen for some coffee, only find the dishwater open and half unloaded. Maybe, just maybe, I remember that I was in the middle of doing laundry earlier, and I head back to the basement to finish that.

Whew. If that sounds familiar, I’m sorry, and hello, you’re my people.

That said, someone asked during a Q&A in San Miguel about balancing different parts of the work—writing, of course, but also and other kinds of work, and caregiving, and admin, and social media (if you choose to use it), etc. Despite being a little scatterbrained in my daily life, I had an answer: You get your own best time.

Let me explain. I know that my brain is freshest and most primed to write—to be imaginative, to generate fresh ideas, to find new solutions to old problems—first thing in the morning, before the day has a chance to get at me. Before my phone starts ringing and the emails start piling up, and I get pulled in multiple directions. That’s just me. Maybe your best, freshest time is late at night, when everyone is in bed and the house is finally quiet. Or midday, when you’ve cleared a few things from your plate and can focus on creative work.

But whenever you are sharpest, give yourself and your creative work that time. Don’t devote the best thinking part of your day to emails and errands.

If you’re best in the morning, like me, try to set aside some morning time to write. Maybe that means getting up before your family (I put a quiet Keurig in my bedroom for a reason). I try to devote mornings to anything generative, and save my afternoons, when I feel a little duller, for errands and admin work like emails. I don’t need peak creativity to go to the UPS store or the pharmacy. I don’t need to bring my best sentence-building potential to my inbox.

Maggie Smith, Pep Talk

Here are a few helpful questions I ask myself when I begin a critique:

1. What work is the title doing? Is it a placeholder? Is it forgettable?
2. Are there any moments in the poem where I am confused?
3. What images / lines stay with me when I am done reading the poem?
4. Does the opening line intrigue me and make me want to read more?
5. Is there anywhere in the poem where I begin to lose interest?
6. Could this poem be lineated differently? Are the line breaks doing any work to add meaning or are they distracting?
7. Is this poem in the correct order? Could an idea or stanza be moved elsewhere in the poem to achieve a different effect?
8. What do you notice with the sound – repetition, assonance, consonance, rhyme or slant rhyme?
9. What is this poem leaving out? Could the poet explore an idea further?
10. What is not essential in the poem?

Though they do take time and can be daunting to begin, if you have the opportunity to be involved with critique, you should do it.

It is one of the best ways to grow as a writer, sharpening your “editing eye” – evaluating why a piece is working or why it isn’t, seeing what is missing, what is unnecessary, thinking through how a piece of writing effects the reader.

Renee Emerson, How to Critique a Poem

How much of writing and submitting are just…waiting? Far too much. I write a lot, way more than I publish, and I submit I would say a fair amount (like between a couple and a dozen submissions per month, I’d say). I’m right now trying to find a place that will publish my next book as well as individual poems. But how powerless are writers like me? Unless you’re one of the chosen (ie, you’re friends with the editor of Paris Review, or got an NEA grant when they still existed, or a supergenius grant, etc,) you’re playing a waiting game. Sending out your work, then waiting sometimes over a year for a rejection.

Sometimes the name of the game is empowering yourself by staying proactive in sending out your work or distracting yourself with other hobbies or work. Distraction isn’t a bad idea if you’re worrying about your work and writing something else—an essay or short fiction if you’re a poet or sketching a local scene or taking photos—something else creative—is a good way to help. And sometimes talking to other writers and encouraging them (or listening to their worries) is helpful too.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, A Practically Perfect Summer Day with Goldfinches and Dahlias, Sleepwrecked, and Writing as a Waiting Game

Is it worth all the effort? All the research and rejections that come along with it? A while ago I wrote about the dangers and blessings of the publishing “dance” in an essay that Trish Hopkinson published on her blog. You can read it here: Why You Should Submit Even if You’re Not 100% Sure You’re Done

I still stand by what I said in the article. In hindsight, I do have new and additional thoughts. When I was younger, I thought the point of getting published was to make a name for myself as a poet and build a career. That wasn’t wrong exactly, but over the years I’ve found other reasons that are more meaningful. What has proven to be a lot more real and fun about getting published, is finding my tribe. […]

What do I mean by that? Every time I get something published, I read the work of the poets who were published alongside me. I make note of the poems I particularly enjoy. I earmark those as poems to use in my workshops. Then I social-media stalk them – add them as friends, tell them how much I like their work, invite them to be on The Poetry Saloncast, ask if they’re doing readings in my area.

Over the years these shared poems have led to some seriously meaningful friendships, collaborations, and ongoing artistic support systems. One of the friends I met through mutual publication hosted me at a poetry reading in Colorado when I came out on book tour. Another invited me to the beach in North Carolina to do a reading for her venue. Some have been on retreat with me in Costa Rica. Many have invited me to speak to their classes, submit to their journals, or just stay in touch.

Tresha Faye Haefner, Find Your Poetry Tribe This Saturday at The Poetry Salon

7. The Swan pub by Shakespeare’s Globe

Since Swan, the character in my poem, had his own website, his own social media accounts and was beginning to develop his own identity it felt only right that he’d be on a dating site.

I set up a profile under My Name Is Swan and waited. I got one enquiry, a message that read, “Who are you? What are you?” “I’m a poem,” Swan replied. “Interesting,” came the response, “where can I read you?” “Come to the Swan pub by Shakespeare’s Globe and you can hear me instead,” wrote Swan providing a day and a time.

Swan arrived early and found his ‘date’ already at a table. He sat down opposite and delivered his poem in its entirety. His date listened intently and then when it was done she stood up. “Thank you Mr Swan,” she said. And then she left. And Swan never heard from her again.

Strange rating: 6/10
Danger rating: 1/10
Beauty rating: 7/10

*

6. The Swan and ******

I’m not gonna reveal the full name of this pub, not because I fear any repercussions but because I may give the impression that it’s a bit of a rough house. It’s not. The landlord was great, the staff were lovely and the punters, well, they were a bit lively. Lads in hard hats straight off the building site, hitting the Stella Artois. This was undoubtedly a proper boozer I’d walked into. No frills, no messing, a working man’s taproom and, if I’m honest, quite an intimidating place to read poetry.

The boys were a few pints in and the pool game was getting pretty animated. I picked my moment and, unannounced, launched into My Name Is Swan. You can see how anxious I was – this moment is recorded in the closing seconds of our film of the same name. I just went for it. The lads gathered round, came in close, clutching their pool cues. I kept reading, half expecting to get a pool cue wrapped around me canister at any second. It didn’t happen. When I was done I got one of the most enthusiastic rounds of applause I’ve ever received. It taught me something about peoples’ ability to appreciate poetry, this innate capacity we have for art and also how judgemental we can be about who it’s supposed to be for.

I understand they serve Thai food in this pub now. I may, sadly, be responsible for its gentrification. I do hope not. And so does Swan.

Strange rating: 4/10
Danger rating: 6/10
Beauty rating: 6/10

Jan Noble, Nº78 The top ten strangest, most dangerous and most beautiful places that I’ve read poetry

Highlights of the Telluride Mushroom Festival? What I’ll remember longest, I suspect, is a guided foray at Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan Mountains. The “guided” part came and went. The leader walked too quickly for me, both because I wanted to look around and because, at 10,000 feet, I’m easily winded. I wasn’t the only one in our large group taking it slow, though. There was so much to look at! Coral mushrooms, violet cortinarius, warty yellow amanitas, a billion LBMs (little brown mushrooms, often stymieing even the experts), tall plants I’d never seen before (bear grass, I was told), slightly worrisome elk and bear scat (enormous amounts!). My fellow ramblers were interesting people, sometimes knowledgeable foragers in their own right. Plus we all reconnected at the end, where the guide confirmed that Chris had found king boletes–porcini, essentially. Back at our rental I fried them in olive oil with salt and pepper until the pieces were golden and slightly crisped. They were GLORIOUS.

Also terrific: how much poetry was part of the gathering! The poetry events were organized by poet Art Goodtimes, a festival co-founder, who has a lot more energy than seems possible in a eighty-year-old. An “open myc” at the library had a lovely, inclusive, community vibe, alternating poetry and music. The big evening poetry show at the Sheridan Opera House was a wilder yet tightly choreographed mix that also featured hilariously shroomy raps, parodies, and more–Art presiding, this time, in a red sequined tailcoat. What a trip (although I was sober) to see SO many enthusiastic people desperate to snag seats in the audience! On the last day, Art and I signed a collaborative chapbook, Hyphae, designed for the occasion, which I’ll say more about below.

Lesley Wheeler, Hyphae–and gifts

After the rain, heat and humidity
push up brown clumps of mushrooms

across the yard. Everything in the underground
links hands—from one season to another, unwilling

to let go. In my kitchen I pick up a dragonfruit from a bowl,
the same kind you bought in the market and brought

to my hotel room years ago […]

Luisa A. Igloria, Approaching the Third Anniversary of Your Death

Today, waking to the excitement of no plans, I packed my rucksack, cycled to my allotment via coffee and cake at C’s, unlocked my shed, assembled my hammock stand and slung my hammock.

A few weeks ago, when my sweetcorn crop was at its peak, inbetween hammock-reading and dozing, I used my camping stove to flash-boil cobs, then anointed them with butter, before eating them like an unholy rodent.

Today, in tune with the ripening season, I dug some desirée potatoes then, satisfied with my haul for now, lay in my hammock to read ‘Waterlog’ by Roger Deakin, and drink elderflower cordial. Of course, I dozed. I read more. 

Deakin’s accounts of swimming fit well with the sway and lull of hammocking, with the being held in the same view as when backstroking. 

Liz Lefroy, I Sling My Hammock

I often experience my body as “other.” Culture sets us up for this view, Descartes and all that, but it also makes intuitive sense that we would feel quite separate from our bodies. In meditation, it is the idea of ultimately being an “observer” of my life that is most confusing. How can one experience feelings, and observe them at the same time? As a longtime dissociator, I beg to differ. So here is a poem along these lines; bear with me through the extended metaphor.

Life at Sea

1–

I am born inside a ship.

2–

I am inside my body.
My body is a ship on the sea.

3–

My body is a ship on the sea
sailing unawares
its muscles, rafters, joints
creaking, bending
straight into the storm. […]

Rebecca Cook, Life at Sea

My tomatoes have been going wild this year, with plants 7 feet tall, 8 feet in circumference, all of them loaded with fruit. I should not mind sharing with a few very hungry caterpillars when, after all, I’m loading my friends with tomatoes and making more sauce than Best Beloved and I can possibly consume in a year. And yet, it is rather annoying. So I was scouting the internet when I found this blog from Brie Arthur re hornworms. It’s a nice overview and shows “both sides” of hornworm invaders (though as she is in North Carolina, she has tobacco hornworms on her tomatoes).

Hornworms bring to my mind two very astonishing Stanley Kunitz poems written from the worm’s viewpoint. A tricky task, taking the persona of a non-human and still avoiding the more common issues of anthropomorphism. Kunitz, a master, pulls it off. Here is an excerpt from “Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation.”

All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I’ll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won’t be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

I encourage you to read the entire short poem. So layered. And it gave me new respect for the animals that eat the same things we want to eat, who can blame them?

Ann E. Michael, Hornworms

A day
like today
the air
feels invisible.
Crickets sing
steady songs
while catbirds
riff solos.
Who wants
to think
of darkness?
But look:
the plant
that means
the year
will turn
is blooming.

Rachel Barenblat, Cusp

i mean, death looks more alive than the scholar, right? he is animated, urgent, dynamically beseeching. as if he knows what the doctor has failed to grasp: that mortal life is short, that the ephemeral and embodied joy of music is as real and valuable as the abstract, theoretical weight of learning. so even as the skeleton-maestro leads the doctor on to death, he summons him (and us) to life.

or, read the image another way, and it becomes about resolve: standing fast and holding faith in the face of death’s destructive antics and strange glamour. i’ve needed to keep both these thoughts in mind at different times in my life and what i’ll laughingly call my “career”, which is why i’m sharing this with you now, and why…

i have selected this as the cover image for the department of queer complaint, a collection of poems (finally) forthcoming from the mighty poetry bus press. the collection has been knocking around since my tenure at cambridge ended, but for all sorts of reasons, it now feels like time to shove it up poetry’s peep hole and have done with it. watch this space. or not. it’s going to be wild.

Fran Lock, IT’S TIME

霧吸うてだんだん秋の人  高山れおな

kiri sūte dandan aki no hito  

            inhaling fog
           slowly I become
            an autumnal human

                                                Leona Takayama

from Hyakudai Keiko (100 Waka Theme Practice), a haiku collection of Leona Takayama, Gendai Tanka Sha, Kyoto, 2025

Fay Aoyagi, Today’s Haiku (August 20, 2026)

This week: cotton grass and bracken, craquelure and rust, language plugged into the quantum field, the foraminifera, and much more. Enjoy.

Driving from Manchester to Leicester all the grass in all the fields I pass is dead and brown. Are you not terrified? Do you not wake in the night dripping with dread? Does your heart not burn with grief?

When I saw my friend who I had not seen for many months I was reminded how everything is and isn’t. In the shape of his face I saw was, is, and will be. All our shared memories were in a jar of honey I held in my hands; I considered dipping my fingertip into it but the lid was screwed tightly on.

I always see the same girl in the mirror. Even when I squint, or peer surreptitiously from the corner of my eye. Even when I try my hardest to be quick, unexpected, to catch her off guard, she is there waiting for me with the same hair and nose and eyes and cheeks and chin always so familiar and always so deeply surprising.

At the open mic I held my contributor copy in my hand, read my own words and felt something with no name. Perhaps at that moment some of my atoms had chosen to switch places, or some of my cells ate up some of their neighbours. Perhaps the bird migrating endlessly through my body paused for a short while to wait out a bad weather front, or to enjoy a dappled morning.

Rachael Hill, Some Field Observations

Sitting on a beach in Normandy earlier this month, I admired the seagulls riding various plumes of wind. It was too windy and cold to swim, which left me with words and thoughts and the realization (once again) that the waves of science are jammed by the presence of angels and metaphysical Others. 

I say “once again” because I touched on this in a poem titled “The First Gust of Special Relativity is Weightlessness” (published in My Heresies). Susanna Lang was right: the poet could not stop seeing what the scientist might have seen when imagining the theory of gravity. 

Alina Stefanescu, The metaphysics of others in metaphysical Others.

Last weekend I went on a writers’ retreat with some friends [from] my writing group. Well, writers’ retreat is a loose label. We went to a summer cottage in the Turku archipelago, in the west of Finland. This was our fourth year of having a Helsinki Writers Group retreat since Covid, though we missed the last two years, I think, due to low numbers. It’s hard to organise 6 or more people to do anything together, but totally worth it when we manage. 

We did a few writing things, had writing related talks and did writing prompts. I did a lot of journaling, but mostly we just hung out and did Finnish summer cottage things: picked berries and mushrooms, walked in the woods, sauna’d and jumped in the sea, drank a bit, played some games and ate a lot of food. All in all, a lovely relaxing weekend, except for the long drive. 

One of the presentations from a lovely writer that works in IT was on AI witch hunts for writers: how to recognise AI writing (most of which they have already found ways around) and avoid our writing being mistaken for AI. How is this even a problem?! 

Gerry Stewart, Do I Continue to Feed the Beast?

When I’m told, “Listen to what your body tells you,” I want to respond, “My body tells me never to talk to another human, to stay in the house on my own and smoke, it tells me to hurt myself.” If I listened to my body, I would not be alive. I would certainly not write, or teach, or speak in front of crowds. I would not have conceived and given birth, I would not have known love. My life has been a long exercise in ignoring my body.

Rather, I think, I need a conversation with my body. One in which I listen to its fears and desires, and respond thoughtfully. Today was that day. On the summit of Black Hill, Niamh and I decided that a night’s rough camping at Standedge was not for us, and we booked a room at the Diggle Hotel.

And we walked with Ken and Ali through the day. There was laughter, and we paddled our hot feet in a stream. There was a lizard, and meadow pipits, and skylarks, and a single buzzard. There was cotton grass, and bracken, and bilberries growing fat. Today was a kind day. Purple moors stretched in waves, and the tower blocks of Manchester shimmered on the horizon.

Clare Shaw, Walking the Pennine Way: Day Two

This dead facsimile of person.
This paper doll traveling
hand over hand
as though
descending through hell on a rope
and touching down in this dead room.

This thoroughly dead house.
Even the books lining the shelves
are empty of silverfish,
empty of dust motes,
there is no more light.

Rebecca Cook, The Pain that Writes Poems on the Body

A boring poem no one will want to read is one of those rare ones that come unbidden, in a sudden, overpowering flash, a poem you write as though possessed, that knows itself well and wills itself out on the page and into the world so strongly that you must instantly do its bidding.

Indeed, when I wrote it I felt I was entirely under its influence, as though it were a living entity taking control of my brain and of my dominant hand. I vividly remember when I wrote this poem and what brought it on: one of my dear friends messaged me, on a day seemingly like any other, to let me know that their parent had just passed away. Their parent was living in one country, my friend in another, and I in yet another country. It’s at times like these that the heaviest consequences of migration hit: home becomes fragmented, pieces of ourselves falling forever out of reach in the places we have left behind, or among the people we love whom we couldn’t transplant with us.

I did not know how to reply to my friend’s message. What were they truly feeling in that moment, what did they need, and what could I even have offered from a distance? This brought on a deluge of complicated memories and emotions: being away from my family at key moments with only a smartphone screen to preserve our fragile bond, missed celebrations and funerals, the graves of people I loved that I could now only pay homage to in my thoughts, and the quiet support of chosen family found far away from my place of birth. I also vividly recalled my high-school literature teacher who taught my classmates and I not just how to become ‘professional readers’, like he used to say, but also about the shiftier grounds of power and authority, and how art holds a mirror up to society, often unflatteringly in a harsh light, revealing all its bumps, scars, and pus-filled pustules. That teacher, by the way, died last year. Another funeral I was unable to attend.

In any case, the poem that came to me was, inevitably, a poem about all the boring things – loss, complicated grief, loving people and missing them, the inability to explain the need to leave, lose oneself, and remain lost. All the boring, monotonous things in life are poetry, I remember thinking when I’d finished writing ‘A boring poem…’. A writer’s job is to bring out the deep, complicated emotions enmeshed with the unremarkable; to be brave enough to write, that is, ‘ordinary poems, about unremarkable things.’

Drop-in by Maria Cohut (Nigel Kent)

I’m still in the process of creating the poem.  I used the verb “wrestling,” but this morning’s writing hasn’t been a struggle.  I started the poem not knowing where it would end, which is not how I always write.  In fact, I’m more likely to think and think and think about a poem idea and figure it all out–for some poems, this process results in writing out a finished poem with few surprises, and for some poems, I figure out that it’s not worth the effort of typing it into the computer.

I like the potential for surprise that comes from starting before I figure it all out.  Here are the lines that surprised me this morning:

Jesus knows that first you must
cast out the demons of ungrounded
wires and faulty connections.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Car Inspections and Jesus Rewiring a Fixer-Upper

As some of you may recall, last fall I had the great pleasure of traveling to Japan with my husband and son. The highlight was a six-day walking tour tracing part of the route of 17th century haiku poet Bashō.

I’m thrilled that a major haiku journal has published a haiku sequence inspired by the trip. When my husband Paul saw the piece, laid out over two pages, he joked, “You got the centerfold in Modern Haiku!” I’m happy to share it here, with thanks to editor Paul Miller. […]

three wayfarers
we catch up to Bashō
by bullet train

Narrow Road
everyone driving
on the wrong side

dancing maples
we clap and clap
for bears

Annette Makino, Catching up to Bashō

While driving back from Norfolk last weekend, I idly mused on the idea of poets having roadies. Either to come in and set up our writing desks, fountain pens in racks like guitars back stage..A different pen being brought out to us depending on what poem we’re working on. Maybe free writing is the soundcheck. Maybe I should just stop thinking.

Writing poems is like picking a reel of sellotape. It’s either really easy, or it takes forever to get into it.

Mat Riches, Marvellous: A Page of Bertron

a summer’s car ride, top down,
yelling to the wind, to the night,
to the swollen creek, to the war,
to the empty bed and plate,
to a song of crickets and dogs
barking, to something unseen
in the woods moving, to
the passing train’s whistle,
to the hush in this room,
to eyes seeing what shouldn’t
be seen, to whispers of sleep
that ask and tell, to hands
not willing to stop

Sam Rasnake, New Poem, “From the Basement Stacks: 4”

My week has included some lovely opportunities to send and write anniversary poems. I was very proud to have set aside time to write one for L and O, but had counted too many years so they received a ‘tin’ poem when it should have been pottery. The kettle then went on, and I sharpened my brain to compose the correct kind of poem for their ninth anniversary instead. Pleasingly I managed it just in time. The week also included thirty years of marriage for R and S. I didn’t know until I saw a post on social media, but it felt serendipitous because I had been wanting to write a pearl anniversary poem for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed having the right inspiration to be creative right there and then, and I was delighted when the poem was well-received. It was also the first poem written entirely at my newly restored writing desk. There’s something special about writing in a dedicated space, and although I like the portability of my laptop and the joy of having a notes app on my phone and a good range of notebooks that mean that I can take my writing anywhere, I also love the ritual of desk writing. So all in all it’s been a lovely week of gifting words and of extending the number of poems I have created to celebrate the symbolism of different anniversaries.

Sue Finch, IT’S TIN, IT’S POTTERY, IT’S PEARL

A video setting of Rilke’s poem “Moving Forward” as well as my “Song” (from Moon Baboon Canoe) that I created for an aerial dance performance some time ago. Rilke’s poem was translated by Robert Bly who I once took a class with and he told me—I was 16—that I had a beautiful face. He told me this in the context of consoling a friend who was weeping during the workshop where we had to write about a rock as if it were our father.

Gary Barwin, Moving Forward on Fishes

Hubble site:
impatiently waiting
for a galaxy to load

Tom Clausen, dainty

Dedicating each poem to a poet who has “inspired, surprised, lifted, comforted, and taught [her] how to be a better poet,” [Ellen] Rowland includes in the world she traverses some of the “ancestors” of all the poets who have come after them: Rainer Maria Rilke, for example, Harlem Renaissance poet Angelina Weld Grimke, and T.S. Eliot. Some — William Stafford, Jane Kenyon, Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz, Mahmoud Darwish — have passed from this world but remain well-known and widely studied for their contributions as poets. Others, such as Christian Wiman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove, Jane Hirshfield, Ellen Bass, Ted Kooser, Ross Gay, Donna Hilbert, and Linda Hogan, are among the contemporary names that surface frequently online, among prize winners and poets laureate, and in the pages of many literary journals.

Looking at those names again, you have to acknowledge being in the presence of a discriminating, curious, and avid reader and learner. Moreover, read the poems and you’ll hear how well Rowland knows the voices and has studied the styles of all these poets, their subjects, especially the natural world, and how they use them, the space they occupy in our literary canon and beyond. Indeed, what is clear is that Rowland has cultivated a lifetime of relationships with each, living and not; she could even be said to be these poets’ literary ambassador, her interests and influences global in reach and depth.

Maureen Doallas, Ellen Rowland’s ‘In Search of Lost Birds’

Emotional Dance Music [by Miles Bradley] is a masterclass in paying attention to those subtle shifts in mood that ripple between people, like the moment of shoals of fish, or starling murmurations. The poems are concerned, primarily, with interiority, but the narrator wrongfoots us by switching between interior and exterior action. It is as if we are watching the director’s cut of a movie we may have seen before, layering previously deleted scenes, outtakes, alternate endings onto our former understanding of what the whole thing was about.

Miles writes with the kind of disarming emotional honesty coupled with a simultaneous wry distancing that I think is common of the Tumblr generation. We are in the world of house parties, 5am texts, messy comedowns and conversations in bathtubs. I confess I’ve always found house parties quite stressful (I suspect I’m fundamentally too upright to ever truly ‘let go’ and be in the moment), so there’s something slightly anthropological about seeing them through the eyes of an evident house party veteran. […]

The whole Definitive Publicly Voted Peer Reviewed Expert Assessed Ranking of Locations to Have Night Defining Year Wrecking Life Changing Conversations at House Parties (to give the full title) sequence feels like the beating heart of the collection. What they do really well is explore, through the microcosm of the house party, the expectations we place on external events and on other people, to provide us with excitement, solace, a feeling of belonging.

Victoria Spires, Emotional Dance Music

Reading the sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), in order, one after another, as I have been doing lately, it’s easier than you might think — though it feels blasphemous — to begin to ask yourself why, exactly, these poems needed to exist. What urgency, precisely, is driving them? Aside from the inescapable fact of their technical achievement, the perfect working out of lines of English in iambic pentameter and the structural organization of four quatrains and a couplet — aside from the fact that they’re so paradigmatic that this entire variation on the sonnet form, first devised by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–1547), bears not Surrey’s name but Shakespeare’s, as another word for English — what is it about these sonnets that makes them that worth reading, in order, one after another?

Why, when the poet has written one sonnet about the responsibility of a beautiful young man to procreate and thus perpetuate his beauty, does he need sixteen more to hammer home the same idea? And after seventeen sonnets on that specific theme, why — far from having exhausted it, apparently — does he continue developing the same theme, proposing verse as another mode by which beauty may be perpetuated, reminding the same object of affection of the encroachment of time that renders some means of perpetuation desirable, bemoaning the waste of said fleeting time spent apart, and so on? Looked at this way, the first 126, at least, of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets might be described as about the same thing (admittedly in a relational arc) over and over. Why?

To look at the sonnets this way, as Helen Vendler has suggested, is to regard them as — to appropriate and repurpose Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s phrase — “all dead paper.” It’s to read them as nothing but a collective artifact of words, all reducible to the same basic, eventually predictable message, delivered in an echo chamber. But this is not at all what they are. Just as Barrett Browning’s letters seem, to her hand, “alive and quivering” with all they wish to communicate, so these sonnets, too, are “alive” in some ineffable way that becomes apparent the longer we live with them.

And we live best with them not as we live with inanimate objets d’art, but as our closest way of living with the mind of a person, who more than four hundred years ago took up his pen to write to another person: not simply to declaim to that person, in a series of soliloquies, but to converse with him. Human beings, after all, are made to engage with each other. The urgency that drives these sonnets is, on its deepest level, the urgency of the desire for connectio — even when connection looks like argument.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: Sonnet 116

[T]he most striking thing here is the musical stave on the right hand side. Unfortunately, I know very little about early modern music and its notation so I can’t attempt to play the tune. But, fascinatingly, it does appear to be indicating a tune for the poem itself: the words beneath the stave are the first two lines of the poem.

Epodes 1 is written in iambic distichs: an iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter. This couplet then repeats throughout, so a tune for the first two lines would be enough for the whole poem. The first ten epodes are all in this metre, so in theory the same tune could work for them all, but there is another piece of musical notation at the top of Epodes 3, as you can see below on the right hand side. This is shorter and it looks to me — though I am the opposite of an expert on this — as if it corresponds only to the trimeter, not to the trimeter and the dimeter.

It is relatively common to find neumes (medieval musical notation) alongside the text of Horace in medieval manuscripts, especially in France and Germany, although my understanding is that these are usually odes rather than epodes. Although I have quite often seen scraps of music in early modern English books and manuscripts, I have never seen them attached to the text of Horace in this way, which perhaps suggests that the tradition of singing Horace’s Latin — especially at school — was more of a French and German tradition. It would be really fascinating to know whether the tunes noted here are recognisable, and whether they are anything like the ones recorded in medieval manuscripts.

Victoria Moul, Can you sing the Epodes?

I haven’t had much time for reading lately. Poems and stories I’ve read in the past pop into my head a lot though. Mallarmé’s ‘Brise marine’ is one of those. I find most of his work incomprehensible but that’s a poem I enjoyed as a boy and still do now. It’s obviously very much under the influence of Baudelaire’s dream voyages but gives a completely different sensation to them and I thought I’d try to say something about the difference. […]

Simply murmuring the words aloud gives me an intense, almost sensuous pleasure in the formation of their sounds, both on a phonetic level and in the cadence of the phrases (though of course different readers do pitch these phrases differently). Moreover, though the broad Baudelairean influence is obvious, what’s striking is how original line after line, image after image, statement after statement is in the way it encapsulates the ideas and sensations it expresses.  This is what gives them such imaginative bite. With what stunning sweep ‘La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres’ brings together physical and intellectual malaise to suggest a comprehensive jadedness with what the speaker’s actual life offers. The very hyperbole of ‘tous les livres’ suggests an exacerbating state of nervous exhaustion. Almost every statement seems to me to realise its idea with almost equal precision and penetrating power. What’s really striking, though, is that although the power of these lines depends on the way they suggest ideas through concrete images, these images are so generalised as to hover on the edge of abstraction. Nothing makes us imagine the steamer, the anchor, the alien clime, the waving handkerchiefs, the storm, the fertile islands with any particularity. This is a strength of a very different kind to what we find in Baudelaire’s poems of southern and eastern voyaging. In them there’s a sensual, almost carnal physicality to the imagery[.]

Edmund Prestwich, Baudelaire’s physicality vs Mallarmé’s abstraction

[Graeme] Richardson […] is a warts-and-all poet whose output gets down and dirty with the dark side of life (and death) as well as the light(er). In poems covering his years an Anglican priest, notably in his native Notts., and in others of his childhood and adolescence, he is refreshingly frank and unflinching. Take the octet of his sonnet-of-sorts, ‘Bearings’:

One poor dear – 84, in the hospice,
just a few picked chicken-bones
under the sheets, fists
bulbs of dried garlic,
and a head of dandelion fluff
almost blown –
before she finally gave up
cried out all night for her Mum.

As much as the precision of the three uncompromising comparisons, the cumulative impact of which served to remind me of my mother’s last days, I like that it took me a couple of readings to grasp the syntax. I like the line-endings too – six end with a noun end all of them end with words which are significant in conveying the overall portrait of the elderly woman: here is a poet who knows how to arrange his sentences across and down the page. What should we make of the opening, ‘One poor dear’? Is it condescending, demeaning and/or sexist? Yes, to a degree, I think, but it’s the sort of language which many of us would use. The unnecessary capitalisation of the first em of ‘Mum’ possibly serves to emphasise the woman’s reduced and infantilised state. It’s unsparing writing, and for that reason will be read as either brave or beyond the pale, depending on your viewpoint.

The poem on the facing page, ‘In Holywell Cemetery’, is, for my money, the finest in the book; a beautiful lyric of five ABAB-rhymed quatrains. Here’s the opening stanza:

Swirling iron, craquelure and rust,
shuddering with slowly crawling cars,
Earth absorbs the poison with the dust;
graves await an amaranthine grass.

The trochaic meter, reminiscent of Auden, well suits a poem about a Victorian Oxford cemetery. Those two words ‘craquelure’ (the cracks in a painting) and ‘amaranthine’ (of, or like, plants in the amaranth family) are showy indicators, as clear and bold as the meter, of Richardson’s ability to write in a high, traditional register. The poem isn’t moving solely because of these facets, but they augment the poet’s intention to write a poem with an ambition to say something beyond the superficiality of its concrete subject-matter. The full poem can be read here, in Bad Lilies (edited by Neilson and his wife Kathryn Gray) where it was first published – as you’ll see, it unfolds and circles back quite beautifully. While I knew who Kenneth Grahame and Walter Pater were, I had to look up (Charles Buller) Heberden, a vice-chancellor of Oxford.

While that might sound a bit fusty, crusty and, well, patriarchal, I can assure you that Dirt Rich comprises an array of forms, both classical and contemporary, and subject-matter. It was quite bizarrely overlooked for the Forward Prize longlists for both first and best collection, let alone the shortlists, at the expense of some collections which I’ve read and found much less rewarding. I know that prizes aren’t important, that lists are subjective and, worst of all, that judges appear not to recuse themselves from evaluating collections published by their own publisher and instead seem merrily oblivious to how looks; however, it doesn’t help the poetry landscape of the UK if books as good as Richardson’s don’t get a look-in. Maybe he’s upset too many people with his reviews in the TLS and the Sunday Times – not that I’ve ever read the latter, but I gather that he can be quite trenchant.

Matthew Paul, Some of my July reading

A long single-sentence prose poem pokes fun at the idea this collection could in any way be taken too seriously, an eagerness for the poet to show a lack of pretension. The credits point to “a book that he’d found under a seat, left there by a troubled young woman who had taken it from an ex-lover in an act of petty vengeance, an ex-lover who had never actually read it, having swapped it for another book with a friend who had purchased it directly from the author, who in turn had based the book, their one and only novel, on a stage play that they saw in the back room of a tavern on the eve of its demolition, a play written by a committee of five revolutionary poets, each of whom claimed that their individual contributions were entirely original when, in actual fact, they were variously based on a repressed memory, a half-forgotten nightmare, a drunken post-coital conversation, a feverish hallucination and a meeting with what may or may not have been their future selves.” The inter-connectedness of all things and how inspiration can be thought to be original but is drawn from past encounters, half-remembered ideas and individual interpretation.

[Stefan] Mohamed merges poetry and storytelling to create a fragmentary narrative, influenced by cinematic imagery and sprinkled with moments of cynical humour.

Emma Lee, “The Revelation Tapes” Stefan Mohamed (Broken Sleep Books) – book review

Adriana Oniță is a poet, artist, educator, editor, translator, and researcher with a PhD in arts-based language education. She writes and teaches in English, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Italian. Her debut poetry collection, Descântec For My Split Tongue, is published by Palimpsest Press / Anstruther Books. Her multilingual poems also appear in CBC Books, The Globe and Mail, The Ex-Puritan, Canthius, Tint Journal, and in her chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). As founder of The Polyglot, she is proud to have published more than 250 writers, translators, and artists working in over 60 languages. She is the editorial director at the Griffin Poetry Prize and lives between Edmonton and Italy. Discover her work at adrianaonita.com. […]

3 – How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

These days, it’s so easy not to start a project—I even paused in the middle of writing this sentence to breastfeed—that beginning at all feels miraculous! Once I’ve arrived at the page, I try to protect that momentum and return to it daily, even if only for fifteen minutes. I have so many books asking to be written: children’s books, hybrid books of collage, poetry, and essay, books on language learning, and at least a dozen collaborative projects with friends. My first drafts often come quickly, but I’ve found that I do my best work when there’s some form of sharing. I was most prolific when I brought a new poem each week to my writing coach, Tara Skurtu, or to the Multilingual Art Lab of The Polyglot, where the drafts could be shaped and sharpened in conversation. […]

6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I’m interested in how languages are learned, lost, silenced, reclaimed, and revitalized. I wrote Descântec For My Split Tongue as an incantation to reclaim Romanian, my mother tongue, after years of feeling it slip away. At the same time, I was pursuing a PhD in language education, asking what can be done to creatively support youth heritage language maintenance in our communities. My research drew on poetic inquiry, community arts-based research, multiliteracies, and sociocultural theory (if you’re interested, you can download the dissertation for free here!). I enjoyed exploring how bilingual poetry, as well as other artistic modes like self-portraiture, protest art, illustration, photography, video, animation, and painting, can help us sustain our languages and ways of knowing that are at risk of being lost. I brought a lot of what I learned to my first collection of poems.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

“From the moment you try to impose a path on a poet, you pave the way for dictatorships,” Raúl Zurita recently said in an interview. I don’t have a prescriptive role for a writer, but a task—to pay close attention, especially to the things that are disappearing, ignored, forgotten, or silenced. To notice connections that others might miss and make them visible (for example, the connection between preserving our planet’s biological diversity and linguistic diversity). In a world of speed, distraction, neverending atrocities—a single poem can slow us down. A poem in another language, or in translation, can slow us down, even more. It’s incredible what we learn when we slow down and pay attention.

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Adriana Oniță

Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama
First off, don’t read this one. I listen to this poet host Poetry Unbound (a podcast of poems by various poets), so I was curious what his own work was like. Like most poetry collections, this one is broken up into sections. I liked the Kitchen Hymns sections (there are two), and the “Do you believe in God?” section (every poem in that section had that question as the title, but were wildly different poems – I am fascinated by that idea, using the same title for many poems, like an interrogation or recurring question in one’s life with many different responses), but the rest of the book was meh.

I guess I should define my use of “meh” – most of the book is this back and forth between Jesus and Persephone in a garden after leaving hell. The writing is flat, lacking imagery, and honestly kind of boring. But also, from my perspective as a Christian, I don’t like writing that adds words or actions to Jesus; I feel that it is disrespectful (Prov. 30:5-6, and there are other verses to support this view, if you want more on why I feel this way). So overall I can’t really recommend this book, though there are individual poems of his I liked.

Renee Emerson, The tailor shop at the intersection (and other delights)

‘If you don’t agree with me,’ Richard Hugo tells us in Chapter 1 of The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing, ‘don’t listen. Think about something else.’

I like this as an opening gambit. I’m terrible at being told what to do, generally. Ask my parents. But in the poetry world I quite like a bit of advice. I can’t pretend I always act on it, or take it with good grace (sorry), but I do listen, and I keep it in case I want it later. Very often I do. […]

What I really like about Hugo is his wanton disregard for standard writing advice. He’s refreshing to read. The ‘Triggering Town’ of the title refers to one of his central arguments – that the carved-in-stone received wisdom that is write what you know is nonsense. I KNOW, RIGHT? I can hear you gasping from here. But as he says,

If you feel pressure to say what you know others want to hear and don’t have enough devil in you to surprise them, shut up.

Basically, Hugo tells us, the whole point of a poem has to be the language, the joy and sound of the words, and in order for that to happen we have to reach beyond the known – our imagination must ‘free itself to seek the unknown’. Towns we know, metaphorically speaking, are too bogged down with our memories and associations. We can’t find anything new. We worry about doing the truth justice.

The poem is always in your hometown, but you have a better chance of finding it in another.

So if you create a new place to put a poem in, as long as you can ‘take emotional possession’ of it, the poem can be freed from the ‘triggering subject’. Then it’s just about the words.

The words should not serve the concept. The concept should serve the words. This may mean violating the facts.

Ooh, it’s a seductive idea. As a lifelong style-over-content advocate, I have definitely flirted with it, but as someone who also writes incessantly about what I know, something has (so far) stopped me falling for it hook, line and sinker. That’s OK. I don’t have to. He told me that in Chapter 1. I still love the essay. I love that he wrote it, because it gives us a way to think differently about what we’re doing.

Nia Broomhall, Week 20: The Triggering Town

I’m happy to release these two new chaps together because they both stake out a territory that is (for me) a breath of fresh air after a few years of darker, doom-laden poems. Also, I’ve wanted to make booklets that were interesting as self-contained worlds, not just collections of poems, and I think I’ve (nearly?) achieved that here. I’ll let the Ko-Fi page give you most of the deets, but let me add a couple notes here.

The Other Century is an ambiguous fictional narrative that uses both original and found or appropriated texts, tho they’re heavily altered and woven into the subliminal storyline. I shared one of the collection’s more elaborate poems on here last winter, and if you like that, you will like this collection. Several historical figures live in these poems too: Musidora, Fritz Lang, Andrei Tarkovsky, Kristen Stewart. […]

As for Rat Heart Nebula, I shared a few pieces from it not long ago. It can’t really be summed up, but rest assured: it will eat your face. No narrative, no logic, no persona—nothing but language plugged into the quantum field. Plus, it features an original collage that weaves in some of the text […]

R.M. Haines, Two New Chapbooks, A New Storefront, and More

A reported story in The Open Notebook discusses writing about disability with six different writers. Kate Horowitz, the primary author, writes, “To write about a body is to expose it.” I would also add “the brain” as well. You could argue that writing in itself is exposure—think of the many memoirs that have probably gotten their writers in trouble that aren’t about disability. But there is an extra weight to writing about your disability in a way that is true to you while also avoiding the stigma that keeps you down more than your disability itself.

The piece also highlights the experience of journalist Keah Brown, who writes about her conditions out of necessity and for the pursuit of accurate representation. For so long, I felt that I was the only one who felt this way. After exploring online communities, I knew I wasn’t.

I pursued my narrative as an autobiographical one. After all, Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

Recall earlier how panic attacks and agoraphobia are difficult to accurately describe. You’ll notice in a lot of media that uses agoraphobia in a sensational manner mostly focuses on the “I must stay in the house,” thinking and less of the physical sensations that accompany it. Or it is from another character that is observing the agoraphobic person instead, their annoyance and frustration with them.

I instead started by looking at the photographs directly. If I were in the photo, what would I be thinking about? Would I be panicking or trying to find coping skills? I then untangled my thoughts and wove them into lines, pursued enjambment to mimic the feeling of catching myself mid-panic attack and refocusing. I plucked out precise words from generative sessions and worked until they painted the “right” feeling.

I also focused on the reality of how difficult it is to heal from agoraphobia like this when women and femmes are presented with real dangers of being in the outside world. There is a poem I included of a police officer in an unmarked car following me at night. There is no clean way to separate “there is nothing to fear about the outside world” and the inherent misogyny and violence against women anywhere. In any case of agoraphobia, there is no “just get over it.” There are many layers to deconstruct and trust to rebuild with the world around you.

Finally, after several years and many distractions from a full-time job and other writing assignments in between, I managed to get Agora into the world.

When presenting this book and its backstory at a recent event, a woman raised her voice, smiled with the smile you would give a baby at a restaurant and said, “I’m so proud of you! Look at you! How far you’ve come! In a room full of people! Yay!”

I stayed graceful, smiling and thanking her, despite it being an infantilizing experience. Maybe if she bought a copy, she would have known better. But until then, I have no choice but to keep writing and representing the way my disability looks to me.

Exploring Disability Through Poetry – guest post by Gretchen Gales (Trish Hopkinson)

The poem’s title asks “what do we do when the old monsters die” but the rest of the poem asks “what about before they die but after we’re beyond their reach?” The poem supposes a monster who is facing death and is trying to get right with god.

what do we do when our wishes come true and their poor hearts or lungs or livers fail and they say they’ve found Jesus and cry out Forgive us Forgive us Forgive us (we’re told) but we still won’t answer our phones or open their mail? (Is it true we’re cruel and cold?)

I really like the choice of “us” versus “me” in that line because it seems like it’s never just one. It would be nice for it to be just one, I think. But the real power is in the plea from the monster begging forgiveness and apparently claiming the speaker is cruel and cold for not being willing to engage.

This isn’t a scenario I’ll ever get to deal with. Fortunately, my abuse ended not terribly long after it started. One of my aunts moved in with us for a while and took over the child care duties, and then we moved to Louisiana, far away from Karen. I don’t know if she’s still alive or if she ever thought twice about that time. It’s taken a lot of work for me but I don’t even try to imagine it anymore. I’ve accepted that it’s unknowable. But I can say that in some alternate universe where Karen shows up 50+ years later and demands forgiveness out of the blue that it’s not cruel to deny that. Even when a person who has harmed you has done real work to atone and change, you don’t owe them forgiveness.

But that’s rarely how it happens, isn’t it?

The second section of Rathburn’s poem restates the opening question but moves it back in time from “when the old monsters die” to “when the monsters grow thin / their eyes sunken in, and we cannot stand to join the rest, to pat the jaundiced hands?” and also starts to poke at the social pressure that we can get from, for instance, extended family or members of a community, to let grievances go when it’s clear that the monster is about to die or at least has lost some of the ability they once had to cause direct harm. The next lines talk of the monster being “stripped / of their claws and fangs and look, in the end / like ordinary old women and men” and I think that impulse is understandable, especially for someone who maybe wasn’t the direct recipient of harm, who only heard stories or suspected but never really knew.

Brian Spears, “What Do We Do When the Old Monsters Die” by Chelsea Rathburn

One of the things I love about Red Hen Press, one of many, is that with a long wait from acceptance to publication, it allows me to craft a stronger book. Yes, the title and the themes of the book will remain the same. The size of the book won’t shift much either. However, with Blue Atlas, I traded out at least 1/3 of the book for newer, stronger work. I know that the book I submitted to Red Hen and the book they published were quite different. I need to also mention that Red Hen Press, which is located in Los Angeles, dealt with floods, closed grant options (NEA) and other catastrophes which leads to a much needed Go Fund Me Campaign where no amount is too large or too small.

Kate Gale, the founder, editor and publisher told me when she accepted Blue Atlas that she didn’t expect that she would be publishing the same book she had just taken a couple of years later. She trusted me to keep revising, to keep making the manuscript better. That vote of confidence in me meant the world. Of course the final book went through a rigorous process of review before it was printed. I don’t know if Kate compared the two manuscripts but I did and I know that the book improved over those intervening years. From the first poem written for the book, “Not Monet’s Giverny,” published in the utterly delightful journal, Sweet: A Literary Confection, to the last poem, “Compass,” (v. long scroll down) was a ten year journey. Interestingly, the poems ended up next to each other in the collection. The format of Blue Atlas is intentionally fractured with no easy narrative for the reader to follow. Why? Because as a reader, I find books more interesting when I need to participate in the events and when the book’s organization is a bit like memory—scattered with its own inner logic.

Now as I take apart A Compass or a Companion, I feel a similar instinct. The movement between my early life growing up in a conservative Jewish home, my exposure to Hassidic Judaism in South Africa, my human rights work in Gaza and the West Bank and my current life on the Puget Sound seem linked in important ways. A linear narrative may be “safest” but it is hardly the most interesting. What is often called a braided narrative is what appeals to me most. It’s described in Demystifying the Narrative which Kelli Russell Agodon and I co-edited a couple of years ago—a book I highly recommend for sorting out how you want to put your manuscript together. (Spoiler alert: there are many ways.) In fact, Kelli and I refer to it when putting our own books together.

Are four themes too much for one book to hold? Is Judaism explored in Boston, Massachusetts and Cape Town, South Africa all one idea, then can I add my work in Gaza in the 1990’s (and current horrors) to my life in Seattle? Is the current trend to have books of poems work in a narrative or with a cohesive theme as if we were writing short stories really necessary? Is this simply a marketing ploy?

My mind keeps returning to letters written between William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov. Levertov wrote Williams that she gave her poems to her editor at New Directions and let him order the poems; then on at least one occasion, she took the poems New Directions didn’t want and gave them to an editor at another publishing house. She said “my job is to write the poems” and she honestly couldn’t be bothered with the ordering. Well, Williams admonished her for giving all that power away. Can you imagine both not having to do the messy work of ordering but to also give that power completely away?

Susan Rich, On this Last Day of July, Please Come Flying

My Name is Swan is my first authorised title. It has taken ten years to come into print. It contains just three poems, three long-form poems, carefully typeset over 120 beautifully bound pages. It is, I believe, the publisher’s intention to make the book – not simply this book, but all of their books – an event, an occasion, a celebration. Their mission is an act of rebellion against super-consumerism, a quest for the quiet preservation of poetry.

In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, for it is now Nolan’s and no longer Homer’s, the conversation has, for the most part, focussed on how ‘true’ the film has been to the ‘original’ story and what has been lost or gained by Emily Wilson’s adventurous translation. Little attention has been given to the poetry, to its oral machinery. The sensuality of language is absent entirely. There are no wine-dark seas or rosy-fingered dawns. Even its translator has argued the movie’s spectacle has overwhelmed the poem’s human intimacy. The epic film has superseded the epic poem.

Like the word ‘iconic’ or ‘legendary’, ‘epic’ itself is now used to describe anything from a night out to a breakfast spread. Epic poetry is something we consider largely consigned to the past. T.S. Eliot left it in pieces, offered us fragments with The Waste Land, a poem of remnants recovered from the ruins of world war.

Epic poems have been revisited by contemporary poets who lend a recognisable voice to resurrect ancient tales. Seamus Heaney wrestled with Beowulf and The Aeneid. Current Poet Laureate Simon Armatage breathed new life into Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and this October will see the release of his translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh – a poem with the word epic ridden into its title.

October will also see the release of My Name is Swan which, rather than riding a great wave of public adulation, will glide slowly from the dark creeks, will appear hissing in river tributaries, will come ashore on silent, midnight slipways. I do regard this trilogy of works, taken as a whole, or in parts, particularly Reynard and Body 115 as epic poetry. Or at least an attempt at it.

These are epic times, this, an age of despots and tyranny, of fear and war and division, of rifts and conflict. This, surely, is an age for epic poetry.

Jan Noble, N°75 My Name Is Swan

I had been writing since the fall, which made up most of my income until I started more design-writing work later in the summer. I spent a lot of time writing Greek mythology and theater history related subject matter. As someone who had initially been hired to write strictly about literature as per my academic background, I’d also been permitted to take on myth/folklore, theater history, and because I was a practicing artist myself, visual art topics. Later, I wrote a lot architectural and design lessons, which gave me a solid launch into writing about decorating and design. But that summer, it was a lot of the Greeks, various lessons on The Odyssey, The Illiad, stage tragedies and comedies, myth in general, art in a mythological vein. I was also thinking about the idea of a female epic in the classical vein. Wading around so much in it for paid writing informed my creative writing and artmaking and soon, GRANATA, a series about Persephone and the  Sirens was hatched, along with a series of collages I would complete in the next year. Of course, in 2024-2025, I would follow it up with  CLOVEN, and something began to take shape. Not just these two collections of writing and art, but potential future ones that carried on that epic tradition. About Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Helen. Or Io, Leda, Daphne. (all possibilities for future series.)  And of course, Calypso,the one I planned to work on this summer.  I suppose you could also throw Ariadne/the Minotaur in that list, though TAURUS has always felt like something different. A contemporary retelling that takes a whole lot of liberties.  Over the past week since seeing the film, I’ve been thinking about Penelope and Circe, and potentials down the line for projects centered around them as well, which also have a lot of fertile material.  

At the same time, writing about myth seems really uncool as a subject matter. At least for poets. What do the Greeks offer us now? Maybe the answer is more than we think. Last night, I caught a glimpse of its powering nearly sold-out theater in the middle of downtown Chicago early on a summer evening when they could be doing literatally anything else. Granted, it had been a stormy afternoon and perfect for the cinema. But, turning my head, I saw the rapt faces of a large audience all in their recliners, inside a darkened theatre reliving a story that is thousands of years old. And that even in this anti-intelectual age, maybe the stories will make us okay, Not as a placebo or a distraction, but as a way to touch our shared humanity. To pluck it like Odysseus’ bow. To make it hum. 

Kristy Bowen, the myths that could save us

Despite Emily [Wilson]’s criticism of the food, the story, and the casting, the movie is doing more than fine because the greatness of this story, which has survived across centuries, continues to captivate. And in the ways it does and does not align with our current reality, it keeps us curious.

Being curious keeps your brain afloat; being stuck in your ways ages you. They say middle age is when your narrow waist and broad mind change place, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a surrender, giving in to the idea that the night is eternally dark and full of terror instead of moonlit and full of possibility.

As I find my way through my own story, one that has faced trials fit for an epic, I am moving toward conversations with fellow creatives who believe in the journey and help me understand what we can do next. I like to think that as Odysseus wandered homeward, he needed a plan. I have my own crew. We are learning. I am pivoting in ways that make us healthier.

We all like hero stories, and right now, the Red Hen staff are my heroes, as well as our authors. Indie publishing may be in a difficult spot, but this week, in a moment of celebration, Adela Najarro’s Variation in Blue won the American Book Award, and we all felt the glory. Through misunderstanding, through criticism, through myth, we find our way forward.

Kate Gale, Myth, Meaning & Survival: How Our Legends Shape Us

We recently entered a lovely, small, independent bookshop with our youngest niece (13) and nephew (10), both of whom enjoy reading books. The bookseller had taken wise advantage of the release of Christopher Nolan’s movie “The Odyssey” and, in the poetry section, featured a whole shelf of versions of the Illiad and the Odyssey: different formats, translators, paperback, hardback, illustrated, limited-edition–quite a range! Our nephew’s at the age where paintball and nerf-gun battles, fantasy graphic novels, swords, guns, and fireworks interest him. He’s heard about The Odyssey and was curious about it. “Is that the one where all the gods get together and make more gods?” he asked. *

“No, it’s the one about the man who leaves on a ship at the end of a long war and can’t get home because the gods keep intervening and sometimes he makes questionable decisions,” I said. “It’s the one with the Cyclops.” He knew a little about the Cyclops. He wondered if it was too advanced reading for him. But he has been reading the Harry Potter books on his own, so he is used to unusual names and words for things and persistent enough to keep on with a long book. I said he could probably get through it, though he might need a dictionary sometimes. We chatted a bit there in the store, with me telling him about how old the poem is (and it is a poem, I said, though some translations are written in prose) and how it was told out loud for many years but written down into books (and you know, of course, what books were like back then? “On, like, scrolls, right?”). Twenty-four books!

We looked at the various books…some in prose, some in poetry, some in prose but broken up into lines like poetry for academic reasons, some with footnotes. The proprietor was eavesdropping, amused, I think; he leaned over to show us a copy that had Greek on one page with the English verso, so that my nephew could see what the Greek looked like. He thought it was pretty cool. He chose a modestly-priced copy in flex-cover (see above left) because he liked reading the excerpts on the cover and because this one–the Butler translation from 1900–was written in prose. He thought he would find that more familiar, like reading a novel or a history. I said it might seem a little old-fashioned in style, but he’d probably be fine with it. “Old-fashioned like Shakespeare, or old-fashioned like ‘The Turn of the Screw’?” he asked. Precocious little fellow, no? More like Henry James than Shakespeare, I assured him. So he went home with a new book thousands of years old.

Ann E. Michael, Imaginary travels

When our friend the artist announced she was going to Antarctica with a science research group led by a local scientist for some ridiculously long time, we, her friends, said, um, we want to meet this dude, so we know whether this is a reasonable idea or not. So we made her throw a little party where she introduced us all and he gave us an overview of his research. We liked him, and his research was focused on this odd and interesting single celled creature about which he was weirdly and wonderfully excited, so we gave our general approval to the journey. Reader, she married him. And so began my personal journey with the foraminifera. These single celled organisms live throughout the ocean, some on the ocean floor, have a shifty relationship with oxygen, and have survived any number of earthly cataclysms to live out their little lives, making their little stone shells with their sort-of-arms, and eating whatever it is they eat, procreating in, well, I can’t keep track of what all they do. I’ve written poetry inspired by them, made videopoems. And you know how sometimes when you encounter something randomly and all of a sudden see it everywhere? I now find foraminifera in odd places in my reading journeys. One day I had some time to kill so went to the local library, found myself in the poetry section, randomly pulled out a volume of Wislawa Szymblorska, opened it at random, and, yes. So this post and poem goes out to my friend Sam.

Marilyn McCabe, in layers, since layers,

August has arrived, and unfortunately, with it, wildfires in my state. Spokane is in particular peril, and the smoke from many fires should arrive here tomorrow, along with hotter temperatures. Smoke and heat together are a tough thing for MS people but wildfires are much worse for the people forced to evacuate their homes.

It would be wrong to talk about the problems without some of the beauties – I walked out to my back garden one morning to see a pair of Swallowtail butterflies, and another morning to see a pair of quail calling to their brood of half-grown baby quail. The Buck Moon was particularly beautiful, too – probably due to some level of smoke in the higher atmospheres. The hummingbirds are still busy after the flowers. […]

I love spring, but in the Pacific Northwest, fall might be more welcome because it signals an end to increasingly blistering summers and the mellower beauties of September and October.

It was also announced that AWP was going to be in Portland in 2028, which was very cheering to me, since I have a hard time traveling (or justifying in the expense of flying) to AWP a lot of years, but Portland is just a three-hour drive. This means I feel an increased pressure to get a book out for spring 2028.

It made me think about how much of poetry publishing is out of our control, is a waiting game, where so often, we’re punched in the face with rejection, and only meted out small amounts of success at a trickle at best. When I was younger, I believed in being proactive – not waiting for the right job or person to come to me, but trying to figure out what I wanted and going for it. Have I lost that urge or ability over the years? We wait for a publisher or a journal to say yes, we wait for the poem or book to be published, all the while spinning the dice for – what – a small amount of praise in the form of a review, a small amount of money from a grant or a prize or if we get super lucky, an advance. It’s super frustrating – and I worry that, like some of my friends recently, they run out of time before they run out of poems.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Wildfires in WA State, Farms Opening for Fall and Beauties of Late Summer, AWP in Portland 28, Proactive in Poetry Publishing

I’ve been foraging for mushrooms some, although it’s been super-dry here, so I’m doing much more learning than eating. I’m also revising the poetry ms I put together in spring, which now seems further away from genuinely good than I originally thought, plus I’m now thinking hard about next year’s teaching. Dealing with AI isn’t my focus–the primary question is what I should teach my undergrads and how–but I confess to bolting awake, furious, early the other morning. I’d read the list of “Fall Academy” trainings and panel discussions my college is offering faculty during the last two weeks of August, and a really high proportion of them stress how to use AI in the classroom, without any counterpoint, even as my college touts its commitment to environmental sustainability–hmm. I am NOT curious about prompting Claude better. It seems obvious, as I follow the research, that while AI has valid uses, for example in managing large data sets, beginning writers shouldn’t use it for brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revision, or any of the other writing practices they need to develop to become smart humans with flexible skills and good judgment. Plus I really, really don’t want to spend my one wild and precious life reading any AI-generated text, as a grader or otherwise; I read for a sense of connection with other human beings. A “Fall Academy” session of genuine interest to me right now would focus on how, when, and why to recommit to the analogue. I calmed myself down, that morning, by overhauling my winter term syllabus for the first-year writing seminar. Here’s a draft of the course description:

Being Human: What can literary werewolves, cyborgs, ghosts, and fire-starting bears teach us about personhood? What does it mean to write in a human voice, with human help, for other humans? Why do these questions matter? Students in this class consider the boundaries of the human through stories and poems by Martha Wells, Stephen Graham Jones, Lily Yu, Stephen King, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and others. Note that this class requires physical books and old-school writing implements. [Not in the course description: HA! Take that, you corporation-brainwashed, data-center-building AI shills! I make policy exceptions for accessibility needs, always, because I am a human who wants to meet my human students where they are. Disability and neurodiversity will be course topics–the readings are fairly contemporary, and dehumanization of certain groups is definitely on writers’ minds.]

Added into my whirlwind of interesting preoccupations: I’m also prepping for travel to Colorado for some sightseeing and readings at the Telluride Mushroom Festival (seriously, check out the schedule, the event list is weird and amazing–what’s an “alchemical mushroom sound bath”?!). 

Lesley Wheeler, Curiosity kills the writer

Oh, I know the drill
with thrills; I’ve done my time in choirs, ecstatic,
shaken core-deep with the eternal swirl

of Bach’s Johannes-passion, its Herr,
Herr, Herr, the churn and whirr of winds and strings
that lift a hundred singers into air,

lost to our ordinary selves an hour
or two, the fugue tumbling around our heads.
That’s why I have my doubts about the power

of Art to save. The last few notes alight;
we sift out idly to the brilliant noon
of Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit;

and here we are: blinking at glare, adrift,
the grumpy dailiness of being human
hemming us dully in. 

Maryann Corbett, Gilt Complex

Last week, I mentioned Franz Wright’s book Axe in Blossom. And since then I’ve been playing with the phrase “bouquet of splendour” in my doodles. Remembering Hélène Cixous saying that we have all lived one or two flowers, and thinking about how these days some people have lived a whole bouquet of flowers. And yet, still they shine, they glow, they arrange themselves, they are composed, they are colourful, and refreshing, and their perfume is glorious. So. Please remember you are a bouquet of splendour.

Shawna Lemay, Bouquet of Splendour

The bowl that breaks on the kitchen floor makes

a chime like a bell. We sweep up its fragments and drop it
into the trash, where glistening bones of our fish dinner

lie almost intact. And still we want everything we do,
though the world breaks our hearts every single time.

Luisa A. Igloria, Inventory

This week: jars of feathers, the fifth demon, the darkness of tunnels, the expressive face of a walrus, and much more. Enjoy.

How does it all not crack you, not elicit some kind of fugue state? How can we be expected to stomach this endless nervous system dysregulation? I’ve heard from many writers that they’re feeling the same thing. When I posted about this on FB, some people couldn’t even muster more than a sentence in agreement—a collective “ugh, me too.”

This exhaustion is palpable, especially in communities of us sensitive writers, writers who want to process and create, but who are paralyzed, caught in a schism between the collective suffering and the joy of creation. At some point, the schism collapses, and we realize we are one—one body, one big breathing organ, one endless sigh, one celebration, one dead body, one beating heart—and so how does art translate this?

How do we perpetually live in and reevaluate “Trump’s America” (I say through gritted teeth) and pandemic bodies and genocide reality? How do we manage an endless livestream of terror against the softness of our poetries and the resilience we’re told to endlessly cultivate as artists?

Because certainly my art cannot be divorced from my grief and my exhaustion—from our grief and our exhaustion? And certainly, I cannot write when protective anhedonia sings its songs of total futility. I cannot write with my eyes closed, but I cannot write with my eyes open.

Maybe I get less soft? Maybe I just fucking fall apart more often? Maybe we sit in the limbo and feel the half-feelings and the no-feelings that mask the real feelings. I choose to believe that even the voidstate knows it is temporary; otherwise it wouldn’t be a void. It wouldn’t have a name.

Eventually the body wakes up. Right? Right? We’re rebooting. We just need a holy minute.

I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s poem The Uses of Sorrow. I can’t help but think of the inertia as a container, a strange engine maybe. A horse waiting at the water’s edge before bolting down the shoreline.

Lisa Marie Basile, Summer of anhedonia

I do with courage what I do with grief.
Swipe left. Keep scrolling.
Shush the voices in my ears.
How much of both do I need
to walk up to the image
in the mirror?

Rajani Radhakrishnan, Remember

Coming from the US to France: out of the frying pan, into the fire.  Heat wave – canicule, in French – refers to dog days, which even Homer wrote about in The Iliad: 

Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars
Orion’s Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity.

The landscape is tinder-dry; pine needles are so emaciated, thin, dropping their long sharp nails to soften paths.  Rings of fires rage now along the Atlantic coast, the Mediterranean whistles through its teeth, biding its time. France is facing its fourth canicule. 

You could say that the image of France as a place of alluring summer is done.  (In domino effect, myths of the US is done, Israel is done.)  But France is stubborn.  A town like Aix-en-Provence will get sultry and suffocating. But under the classically elegant platane trees, nothing could look quite so French as those shaded, effortless drinkers. Aix’s golden-hued limestone buildings are centuries old; the cool blue shutters on their windows older than the ages of most friends added together, and taller than four standing on each other’s shoulders.  What are people doing? Eating, drinking and talking.  Eternal stuff. 

Jill Pearlman, Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

I’m not sure where I’m going with this post. The object today is just to put words on the page, thoughts into my brain, and to write.

today’s light breeze
I remember
hearing her laughter

Ann E. Michael, Endeavoring

I just had tea with the lovely poet, person, and letterpress publisher Emily Hancock of St. Brigid Press. She’s planning an ecopoetry event at Stone Soup Books in Waynesboro, Virginia on September 13th, and I’ll be part of it, with Jeanne Larsen, Sarah Ann Winn, and, we hope, a relative of Karenne Wood to discuss that poet’s work. We batted around possible panel questions as well as talking about midlife, meditation, ADHD, children, and fur babies. Two red threads were the topics of attention and connection: how writing and reading as practices help us attend to the human and the more-than-human worlds, as well as forging unlikely but restorative connections among them.

Connection is my “Flood subject,” to use Emily Dickinson’s phrase (hers was immortality). Of my books of traditional poetry scholarship, one focuses on enclosure, the other voice–communication, that is, and the various twisty, indirect, yet resonant ways poems speak or perform silence. Talking about poems in classrooms and criticism has been my livelihood. I love it; my introversion somehow yields, or even becomes an asset, when I’m part of a group passing around, analyzing, and admiring a “machine made of words” (that’s W.C. Williams). But poetry as communication? As I’ve written elsewhere, a poem makes a lousy telephone. The signal is just too delayed and beset by noise. The strongest poems convey urgency, yet if you have a message that’s urgent in the usual sense–“Help, my car broke down!” or even “I love you, please move in with me”–you should probably choose another linguistic medium to make sure it gets through.

Yet I receive poems as communication all the time and am wildly grateful for the mind-to-mind, long-distance, time-machine-style intimacy they enable. I often write, too, as a way to imagine perspectives alien to mine, how a tree might think, or a mountain, or a god. That’s not to claim I get it right, ever. But there’s value in the attempt.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetic circuitry

There’s a part of me that is soft and creative and there’s a part of me that is a work bitch, and I like both parts. I like the design element, the creativity, the build up, the community. I like knowing what is going to happen and when. I like the feeling of hitting goals, making a really good job of it. I like noodling away on Canva; pulling a vibe together for a poster. I like the research, the layering of knowledge into a teachable subject.

But the flip side of that is that everything is then down to me. I wear all the hats. ALL THE HATS: social media, marketing, promotion, design, IT. It means that to run a big course there needs to be a design strategy, a promotion strategy. I need to be online a lot, I need to be pushing a lot and investing in promotional aids to make sure I can reach as many people as I can. All of this, of course, is unpaid work, until the course meets its predetermined number of sign ups that ensures all costs are covered – the platforms I need to use, any paid help with tech stuff, promotion costs, my time, facilitator time, all that sort of stuff. I will run a course if the basics are met and my time is covered and everyone is paid. But I can’t run a course if I come out in the negative.

I am a writer, but I’m also a business. To cancel a course is to strategise. But also, I’m a person with feelings and to cancel anything that I’ve placed in the public eye so prominently is embarrassing. I can feel the gaze of people on me, especially people who think I shouldn’t be where I am. I used to know these people in real life, but I think they exist only in my head now. These nay sayers who creep around the edges of my own self doubt exist in a terrible review I once got (I will write to you about this one day), a snarky Facebook message I once received (seems like anyone can call themselves a writer these days) a few folk who were not brave enough to chase this for themselves and choose to sit idly in the wings with their dreams at their feet waiting for me to fall, as if it would prove to them that they were right not to try.

Look at this, I’m giving myself a pep talk automatically. Pat on the back for Wend.

Because that’s what it is to keep going, isn’t it. You might call it thick skin, but it isn’t, it’s about strategy. 

Wendy Pratt, I hope you are failing well

Occasionally I’m oddly undone by a casual comment. A month ago I ran into an old colleague, someone to whom I feel warmly and always enjoy seeing her. But she said two innocuous things that left my brain whirring around and my pie hole flappin soundlessly. She said, “You look good.” Comments about my looks always throw me. What do I say? I don’t really pay much attention to my looks, don’t think about them much. I mean, I try to look presentable. But beyond that I’m not always sure what I look like. What does “good” mean in the context of an aging chick who glances in the mirror and figures good enough? And do I say, “So do you” right away, or does that seem too…I don’t know…insincere or transactional. So I smiled brightly, I think, and said something like, “Oh.” Then she said, again, perfectly inoccuously and in that way of idle small talk, “Busy summer?” It threw me into this thoughtswirl of, oh yes, I guess it is summer, but it’s really only just started, and it’s not my favorite season so I pretty much just wait for it to be over, and I just got back from a trip so do I tell her that or was that really “spring” not summer and so doesn’t really answer her question and anyway am I going to have a busy summer? do I actually have anything planned… At which point I figured my silence was very awkward so I think I said something like, “Oh…” And then we had to part to find our seats at the performance at which we had run into each other, me feeling like an idiot and her probably wondering what had happened to me. All this to say that the quotidian can seem bizarre, thoughts can go spurting off like a just-burst balloon around the room, and the brain is a funny thing of words, sometimes. Which I guess is why I’m a writer. I love this poem by Victoria Chang for its wrestling with all kinds of little things and big. 

Marilyn McCabe, to my one life, when I will finally be wordless. What

High summer in Herefordshire, and the land is holding its breath. The verges have gone lion-coloured, the fields were cut early and no aftermath has followed, the clay in the gate-gaps has opened into crazy-paving, and the Wye is running so low that it has started to show its bones — gravel shoals where there is usually a river. Eight areas of England are now officially in “prolonged dry weather”, the polite phrase for the stage before drought, and central England is in its longest run of dry days since 1995. It is a hard season to love and an extraordinary one to look at — because a dry year takes things away from the land, and everything it takes away discloses something. All three of this week’s finds know that.

1. A poem to enjoy — Alice Oswald, “Dunt: A Poem for a Dried-up River” — Oswald took as her starting point a small Roman carving of a water nymph found in Gloucestershire, and set her the impossible task the title announces: to summon a river — the little Dunt — out of dry limestone. The poem proceeds by failure; again and again the nymph tries and the instruction comes back to try again, and the river arrives, when it arrives at all, as barely a trickle in a ditch. It won the Forward Prize for best single poem in 2007, and it reads this month like reportage.

Adam Cairns, Three by one

1. Jesus fasted forty days in the desert, and was tempted by Satan. Paradise Regained is John Milton’s re-telling of those temptations, with expansions and inventions. In Milton’s version, Jesus is openly unmoved by the temptations, he is absolutely immune: fitting, theologically, but it makes Paradise Regained a dramatic poem with very little drama. The original, in the Gospel of Luke, is short, curt, more mysterious and more interesting.

2. Two moments do draw attention. First, in Book III, after several failures, Satan turns to praise, attempting an indirect temptation to worldly glory:

I see thou know’st what is of use to know,
What best to say canst say, to do canst do;
Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words
To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart
Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.

Equipped with such goodness, why does Jesus not go and exercise it?

These godlike virtues wherefore dost thou hide?
Affecting private life, or more obscure
In savage wilderness, wherefore deprive
All earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself
The fame and glory…

Jesus’s reply is surprising, for its dim view of those he’s tasked to save:

For what is glory, but the blaze of fame,
The people’s praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar….

Such misanthropy! Where is man made in God’s image? Where is man made a little lower than the angels?

Brad Skow, Paradise Regained Read Blind

Angels have been flitting in and out of [Philip] Gross’s verse from the beginning, often imagined as the most ordinary things: dust in the poem of that name from the 1991 collection The Son of the Duke of Nowhere (Faber & Faber); a stone gargoyle tries to become an angel in ‘Gargangel’ (from The Wasting Game, Bloodaxe, 1998); even water as it passes through a sluice forms momentary angel wings in the striking first poem (‘Sluice Angel’) of The Water Table (Bloodaxe, 2009).

The tall shut doors of the hall
of the world at which the weight of water,
of incipience, does not need to knock:
feel it there like a shudder
of difference, the engine of change.
Now, almost soundless, hinges shift.
With a gradual calibrated rip
like a concord of lathes, with a crypt smell,
two green-grey-brown stiffening blades
of water fold in. They curve, feathering
themselves in free fall: wings
flexed, shuddering, not to soar [. . . ]

Angels imply religion of course, though not any particular one, and that too is typical. Gross’s poetry has been somewhat religious in orientation for a long time, though markedly uncertain; monotheistic in flavour but not really Christian (I can’t recall a single mention of Christ); God always far-off, hard to contact, and not necessarily attentive. If there is revelation to be found, we sense that it is in the everyday and — ironically, for a poet — as much in silence as in speech. (I think, though I’m not sure, that Gross is a Quaker — at least, I noticed years ago that his books were always stocked by the Society of Friends bookshop on the Euston Road — and if so this is no doubt relevant to the importance of silence in his poetry.)

The verse sequence to which the 2022 title alludes, ‘Thirteen Angels’, comes at the end of the book. Its thirteen poems recall Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, but it is headed by a quotation from D. H. Lawrence, a short poem called in the original ‘Song of a Man’ (though that rather aggrandising title is not used here):

What is the knocking
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
Is it someone come to do us harm?
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

This has a quasi-scriptural feel. Lawrence is remembering or half-remembering various different bits of the Bible, including, probably, Luke 11:5-8, a parable about knocking at a friend’s door at midnight to borrow three loaves of bread for an unexpected guest; the calling of Samuel in the night (1 Samuel 3); and the three strangers to whom Abraham offers hospitality in Genesis 18, who turn out to be angels. The way in which Gross uses a quotation of Lawrence’s sub-scriptural fragment to place himself at a further remove from formal religious authority feels representative of his attitude as a whole – although always several uncertain removes away from any specific creed, this is for all that religious poetry of a kind.

The thirteen angels of the sequence are all evocatively vague, both impossible to grasp and touchingly routine – described as breath, ‘A Glassy Thing’, a ‘kind of Music’; ‘flow’; even ‘Inconsistency’ and ‘Emptiness’; they appear ‘at the interfaces [. . .] between us, each and each other / and each and the tumult of things’. One ‘clears its throat / like white noise, like a waterfall, like wind’ (‘Who’d Have Thought’). The thirteenth angel is ‘not so much the uninvited / at the christening as the one / there are no words for in the language’; there’s a suggestion that this angel is the recording angel (‘In fifty years, too late / for you, this will all seem so clear; / the thirteenth angel will have written the page // on which your name’); in the final line of the collection, it is ‘the world itself’. The typical movement of many of Gross’s poem, for which these quotidian angels are a kind of metaphor, is from the precisely observed everyday-made-strange – whether from the natural or domestic world – to a religious sensibility, questions about our place not so much in society or the family but in the universe.

Victoria Moul, One of the lesser order of recording angels

I miss the fifth demon most.
I lost them, and then I lost
him, and now I have only the tomb
of my empty mind.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Poems for the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, and Rupert Brooke, to name three poets whose poems have appeared in this space, as well as Charles Sorley, Julian Grenfell, and Isaac Rosenberg, have in common the fact that they were English poets born sometime between 1875 and 1895 — and they all died between 1915 and 1918, mostly on the French battlefields of World War I. Brooke is a dropped stitch in this pattern, having died in Greece, of blood poisoning from an insect bite, and not in battle.

Still, he belongs, one of the lost World War I poets, a tragic club whose fame and pathos lie chiefly in its members’ unrealized potential. But in their truncated lifetimes, some of them were very good poets. Edward Thomas, for example, achieved a quiet greatness in his “Adlestrop,” possibly the most famous war poem to take peace as its subject. Of many others we might say that a golden age of English poetry lay dead in the trenches. Or it might not. We’ll never know how good they would have been.

But then there’s the other club of war poets: the ones who made it out alive. That list is longer than one might think. It includes the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, who came home but left his sanity in the trodden French mud. It includes Robert Graves, who went on to write the series of “I, Claudius” novels. It includes Edmund Blunden, later Professor of Poetry at Oxford (a post currently held by the American poet A.E. Stallings). It includes the French poet Joseph Seguin, whose war-themed haiku, written under the name Julien Vocance, we featured just last week in Alfred Nicol’s excellent translations. And it includes Siegfried Sassoon, whose 1919 poem “Idyll” appears here today.

This poem, written in the first year after the cessation of horrors, reads like a sigh of relief. In six rhymed pentameter couplets, it sketches a scene of utter peace, Edenic in the unrealized light of a summer morning, before reaching its reason for being. Its speaker, stepping into this garden to await a lover, does so in the awareness that his life and future have been handed back to him.

This landscape signals, for him, in the wake of the cacophony of battle and the utter destruction of beauty that it wreaks, a restoration of order and quietness. In this landscape to which he has returned whole, he is reborn, brought back from death, alive to watch the inchoate day sharpen into focus and become what it will become. And if what that day became, for Sassoon the poet, was never quite the glorious dream our imaginations grant the fallen, still it’s something to have lived to see that day.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: Idyll

Dividing Rivers, by Ivy Schweitzer:

When I vow never to watch the play again
where loving to death is the only resistance,
they turn their backs,
mount their seats and
ride off—together.

The play in question in this poem, “Death in Stratford,” is Shakespeare’s Othello, which I haven’t read in many, many years. The poem’s occasion is a meeting between Schweitzer’s speaker and the actors who play Othello and Desdemona in a production that the speaker just saw. The speaker tells us she’d forgotten that Othello actually kills Desdemona twice, once by smothering, when he “swear[s] he will love her/‘after,” and the second time by strangling her “with her own sheets,/forgiveness staining her lips.” When the speaker asks the actors how they “act it over and over”—Schweitzer relies on the verb “croak” to render how the question is asked, allowing us to decide precisely what emotion is behind it—the woman who plays Desdemona, whom we know is white because we know the play and not because the poem mentions race at all, explains that they get their motivation from the need to make sure that the audience “get[s] it:”

“[T]hey are both victims of white patriarchy
but resist it
by loving, dying, Othello killing her and them himself out of a world
they cannot survive in—”

That statement elicits the vow I quoted above which also how the poem ends, but the tension between what the vow implies—that the speaker is committing herself to a search for a form of resistance rooted in a life-affirming love—and the way in which the actors turn their backs on that implication is in many ways the tension that animates Dividing Rivers as a whole. The book begins with poems that confront the antisemitism Schweitzer has experienced, allowing that confrontation to allude to the history of Jewish oppression, and then moves into poems that explore the relationship between Jewishness and the whiteness into which Jews who can pass as white have been allowed. The poems that dominate in the third of the book’s three sections explore Schweitzer’s not-always-successful but always contingent attempts to move back and forth across the “dividing river” that gives the book its title. That crossing, the willingness to attempt it, to take responsibility for the attempt, and to be held accountable for it is where this book locates its moral center, the life-affirming resistance I wrote about above.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, Four by Four #57

Across the language of [Kevin] Davies’ impossibly-long threaded lines, a mélange of words pushed in against each other to splatter, purposefully disrupt and undermine, and eventually rebuild, meaning. All of this, also, while including what seem a uniquely scattered list of references, such as the American Revolution, playing catch in the dark, ancient Rome, paradise and old debt, Shakespeare’s Caliban and discipline, snowfall and swaths of crossed-out text. Davies’ language swirls gymnastically around and through critiques of capitalism and culture, an evolving poetics that evolved out of early engagement with and through The Kootenay School of Writing into something more expansive and even evasive […]

As part of that same Jacket2 interview, Inniss references [… Philadelphia poet Ron] Silliman’s review of [Davies’] The Golden Age of Paraphernalia from his blog, where he writes, ‘Davies appears to have found a spot exactly halfway between language poetry and flarf.’” Nearly a decade earlier, Joshua Clover offered this about Davies’ work in Boston Review: “This is how I think about Kevin Davies’s poems, for which few if any of the possible metaphors seem even close: weather, the fractured encyclopedia, disobedience. His poetry is not especially metaphorical in the first place; it is more a kind of realism, for a real world that seems all too often not just too awful, but too incalculable and messy to look at in its full unfolding.”

When two words are placed side by side, of course, they can’t help but sit in relation, and thus, a narrative sense of meaning, from left to right (or up to down, or however words are placed against each other). And yet, there’s almost a similar kind of overarcing floating narrative created across these short bursts to the prose work of Toronto writer Ken Sparling, how the present and the surreal offer steps across a complex grid, and composed of sections that may or may not connect to the larger narrative. “Anyway that’s my tale and now it’s done. / The young woman took my chair when I stood / briefly to wash my beak. / And then would not move her legs to // allow me to retrieve my bundle / from beneath the chair,” he writes, near the end of the collection, as part of the rather lengthy section sixty-eight, “and that is when I felt myself / turning into pressed wool and about to go haywire.”

rob mclennan, Kevin Davies, Transfer Portal

Wearing the odd cycle-clip and drinking a pint of beer or two doesn’t stop you from writing great poetry […] I hereby proclaim Larkin’s “Love Songs in Age” as the century’s greatest poem.

These are the words of the UK’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, writing to the Guardian newspaper in October 1991. They were reported in a Guardian profile of the Labour politician earlier this month, which noted that he sent the letter while living at home in Warrington after finishing his degree in English Literature at Cambridge.

You don’t get to be Prime Minister without being a political creature from an early age. Soon, Burnham was living in London, working as a Labour parliamentary assistant in the run-up to Tony Blair’s 1997 general election victory, and then as a special adviser to culture secretary, Chris Smith, in 1998 — which presumably means he was in the meetings where Andrew Motion (Larkin’s official biographer) emerged as the New Labour choice for Poet Laureate after the death of Ted Hughes.

Burnham’s fan letter is written with the light good humour favoured by newspaper letters pages (“wearing the odd cycle-clip” nods to Larkin’s ironic self-portrait in “Church Going”: “Hatless, I take off / My cycle-clips in awkward reverence”). But it’s not an unpolitical document. In the days before social media, writing a letter to a newspaper was one of the best ways to make your opinions a matter of public record. Burnham’s successful strategy to become Prime Minister — by first becoming the down-to-earth, music-loving Mayor of Greater Manchester — has been a long game of affirming popular opinions. It might seem a stretch to say that this down-to-earth, poetry-loving letter represents his first step on the road to power. But bear with me as we browse the Guardian in 1991 to establish exactly what it meant to tell the readers of Britain’s only left-wing broadsheet newspaper that you were a Larkin fan — because it turns out that it almost literally put you on the same page as the Labour leadership.

Jeremy Noel-Tod, “Little Englandism of the Left”

A walk in Cardiff “On the esplanade” prompts the poem’s speaker to observe a row of Edwardian villas once inhabited by people with money after working up to managerial level,

and like many who come into money
I imagine a new life

amongst my cohort of coined bohemians
secure academics

no thought of history
I’m too dazzled by possibility

that one day
I shall own such a property

paint my front door red
then close it tightly, ‘gainst the world outside

Here the poem’s speaker imagines his neighbours would be like him, bohemian and academic rather than bland managerial classes keeping up appearances. The poem’s speaker sets up a contradiction: he wants to paint the door a colour that stands out and marks his house as his but also wants to shut it against the world. It’s his private retreat where he doesn’t have to share.

“Memento Mori” is a thoughtful, crafted series of poems that look at how small moments in navigating the world can provoke memories, some welcome some not so welcome, that enhance understanding of relationships with others and the world at large. The moments of wry humour and self-deprecation lift this from nostalgia and self-focus into poem which challenge and question what makes us.

Emma Lee, “Memento Mori” Gareth Writer-Davies (Yaffle Press) – book review

Elizabeth Osmond is a neonatal consultant and a poet who has twice won prizes in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Her work has been published in The Aftershock Review, The Alchemy Spoon, Dust Poetry, Atrium, Ink, Sweat and Tears and The Craft of Care Anthology (Black Pear 2026).

Beth kindly sent me a review copy of Hatchery, but it had already been on my radar since she launched it. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her read at several online open mics, and already knew her to be a poet of great skill and sensitivity. As a medic, she has access to a rich vein of language that in other hands may be overly dry or technical, but Beth is able to draw the poetic out of it. She has a keen eye for the curios and the artefacts of medical history, turning them over for us in her poems so we can see them in all their strangeness. However, these aren’t simply presented for curiosity’s sake, but to highlight the imaginative leaps that have been necessary to even slightly increase the survival rates of very premature babies. Here is the Kinderbrutanstalt, the child hatchery, with its jars of feathers, its early incubators, and Ward Rounds with Queen Victoria.

This is one of my favourite poems in the collection, bringing Queen Victoria onto a modern day neonatal unit, her own experiences as a mother in contrast with those of today, yet connected through some ghostly residue of feeling that must transcend eras and technologies;

“ … She delivered Leopold after the blessed chloroform / enclosed in his nursery / playmates forbidden / lest he fall and bruise”

Present in all these poems is a prevailing sense of the dignity and humanity with which Beth treats her subjects. She handles field observations with real care and feeling. Although poetry frequently moves me, it rarely makes me physically well up in the way some of these poems do. When she writes “Here you are, my impatient little friend” in I wish I could write you a prescription for time, I find in this moment such care and tenderness, and it is the perfect pivot to end a poem about trying to negotiate more time for a baby who is already on the way. You get the impression that these conversations are ones Beth the consultant and her colleagues are always having, as they move about the ward, perhaps as much to reassure themselves as the tiny lives in their care. In Conversation, her “heart is wanting to be fearless / but it is a colander with little holes / through which doubt seeps in”. To feel this very human doubt and vulnerability and daily find a way to move past this is a special thing.

Victoria Spires, Hatchery

Homer Haunted is a swift, lively, and informative book about the way English poets have translated Homer. It begins with George Chapman and ends with three living writers. Henry Power, an English professor at Exeter, is especially compelling about Alexander Pope and Christopher Logue, two great Homer translators. Indeed, I loved how much this book loves Pope, whose phenomenal accomplishments and influence on later poets are as inescapable as they ought to be. Anyone who wishes to understand how Homer has been understood by the English poets will learn from and enjoy this book.

There are wonderful accounts of writers like Matthew Arnold and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Power is a keen explicator of Logue’s techniques not just of “imagism” but of his use of camera language, quotations from popular culture, instructions, the addition of words like “consider” and “imagine” to Homeric images. He quotes very nicely, and has a knack for telling a story without letting the book get dragged under by the modern impulse for all narrative non-fiction to become a chain of anecdotes that cannot bear the weight of their conclusions.

The most surprising part of this book, for me, was discovering the sheer weird variety of translations undertaken by Victorians, who produced: an Anglo-Saxon-style Homer, one in Spenserian stanzas, one as an Icelandic saga, and a version that was cast in the language of the King James Bible.

Henry Oliver, Homer Haunted, by Henry Power

My previous post on the subject of bad poetry prompted some thoughtful responses, and I felt my own responses to these were worth gathering in a follow-up essay. So I drafted one – back at the end of March, in fact, on a train to Southampton. Since then I’ve only had time to think on it in short gasps, but that process has, oddly enough, resulted in much more of a complete thesis than I’d originally envisaged – more cheery too, if you’ll bear with me till the end.

I said previously that bad poems need to be invented, and to vastly outnumber good ones, in order for the poetry critic to have a function. But there’s another, simpler reason why bad poetry must be willed into existence. Suppose for a moment that every published poem – or the vast majority of them – were unquestionably skilfully written, greatly rewarding reader attention. There would still be far, far too many of them for any one person to attend to. We would need to come up with a way of deciding which poems to spend our limited time investigating.

That need, really, is the root of literary taste. Whatever system or standard we put into place, it operates as a means of dismissing from our mind much that exists – or, at least, sending it to the very periphery of conscience – so that we can focus on a more manageable portion. And since it’s easier to dismiss something if we come up with reasons to regard it as ‘bad’, or nurture an ingrained distaste for it, this is what we do. […]

I should add that literary taste also exists, like many things, for the purpose of forming social bonds. To put it crudely: convincing yourself you find a certain kind of poem to be very fine and another sort very drab is sometimes a precondition of being accepted within certain social circles. I will address this as I go on — partly because I think it bears repeating that most of those who claim to be solely interested in ‘the quality of the poem itself’ are not being honest with themselves.

But I’m mostly concerned with the core function of taste and the role criticism has to play in it. We need taste to direct us to the poems that are of most use in enriching and improving our lives. If we do not cultivate taste of some kind, then we don’t know where to start or how to sort through the mass of poetry available, and so can hardly benefit from the artform at all — which is, in fact, the position of those millions who never read or think about it.

Jon Stone, ESSAY: What is a bad poem exactly? (Part 2)

The idea that poetry must rhyme is not unusual. In fact views about what is and isn’t poetry abound not just amongst non-poets but amongst poets too. The poetry world has its fair share of people who will tell you that what you have written isn’t proper poetry, or if it does qualify, that it is somehow unworthy. Fans of formal structure may look down their noses at those who favour free verse. Those who write in blank verse have been known to sneer at rhyme enthusiasts, who are divided between those who see no harm in using a rhyming dictionary, and those who would never admit to stooping so low as to use one, even though they have rhymezone bookmarked on their browsers. People who write from prompts run the risk of being derided for lacking sufficient imagination to create ideas of their own. People who announce that they wrote a piece at a workshop are sniggered at in some quarters by poets who proclaim that nothing of quality can be produced without being closeted within the silent confines of a writing den. Others swear that you should never draft in anything other than pencil in a physical notebook, scowl at those who draft on a computer and have no time at all for those who use their phones, whilst many of those who swear by their computers and phones are prone to think of the notebook and pencil brigade as primitive poets stuck in the past.

Of course, sensible poets such as you and I know that a good poem is a good poem whatever form it takes and whatever the circumstances of its creation. It is what the piece says that counts, and if it says something that makes a connection with originality and style, then, at least in my book, it is a good poem.

It is my heartfelt belief that the vast majority of human beings on this planet are capable of writing good poetry, but unfortunately very few do. I believe that the reason for this has a lot to do with what people perceive good poetry to be. Anyone who feels that good poetry has to follow a set of rules around rhyme, structure, form, syntax etc is denying themselves the possibility of stumbling upon different ways of working and expressing themselves.

I think that we are all capable of writing good poetry because we all have a unique perspective on the world. We all have a different ideas and experiences, different associations in our minds, different perspectives and different personalities. Maybe the fact that we all have different DNA plays a part too. Maybe all of these things add up to some sort of poetic DNA which can leave its fingerprint on the things that we write. By trying to stick to some perceived rules of poetry for no better reason than we believe that poetry has to be dome in a certain way, we are distorting that fingerprint, and allowing less of our poetic DNA to shine through.

This is why AI produced poetry is ultimately unsatisfying. AI poetry is completely constructed of rules. By definition it can never be present a unique human perspective as every perspective, methodology and idea within it has to come from databases and sorted mathematically from a list of probabilities. Only a human can be surprising, original, and fabulous.

Mike O’Brien, Forget the Rules of Poetry

Everywhere I walk,
it seems there’s a thread I can pull on, attached
to a picture hiding in plain sight. I know I want
to be addressed, to feel some kind of touch
which I might find reassuring. But the dark,
glossy sheen of bird feathers, the speckled
rind on fruit and the sugar beginning to foam
out of its pores can be presence enough. Not
certainty, just the briefest mark of grounding.

Luisa A. Igloria, Making Meaning

— I picked up Derek Beaulieu’s book from the library: Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet in the Twenty-First Century. And it’s for poets, but anyone creating art will find it useful. As most of my readers here are non-Canadians, Derek Beaulieu is sort of our version of Austin Kleon, for context. He’s weirder, edgier, and probably wears a tuque more often, than his American counterpart. He tells Canadian artists to stop comparing ourselves to American ones. “Cut the fantasies and the bullshit: the grass isn’t greener elsewhere. The only way forward is through cultural action, working together, and creating artwork that imagines and advocates for a bigger, weirder future, no matter what side of the boarder you find yourself on.”

— “Imagine a book,” says Beaulieu, “you don’t know you want to read. Write to discover that book, to expand your idea of what is possible and what you can imagine yourself writing”

— He also reminded me of this from Virginia Woolf: “What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?”

— Which then reminded me of my favourite line from Phyllis Webb, “The proper response to a poem is another poem.” This is not in the Beaulieu book (unless I missed it) but could be. Perhaps his next. Anyway, such a good book for new writers and old crotchety ones such as meself.

Shawna Lemay, The Axe, My Writing Into the Desk Era, and Other Bouquets

The poem in the video below was inspired by Langston Hughes’ Island. It was developed by running it thorugh a series of Google Translate operations and also an N+7 operation. Then editing. I think this is an example computer-aided composition without using AI (though I suspect—OK, I know—there is AI in Google Translate.) There is a difference between LLM-using generative AI and computer-assisted work. For me, the process “makes things strange” and offers up some textual materials to explore, all of which is infused with the aura of the original. How I respond to the materials and the aura is part of my poetic process. For me, these aura-filled texts often confound and inspire and my work as a poet is to someone work with the material to arrive at some genuine “poesis” —the sense that the text is more than the sum of its parts. I don’t know that it is that much different than writing after being inspired by a poet or poetic tradition, other than generating some related material to respond to. I should say that the poem that I settled on it very traditional and doesn’t confront the norms of conventional poetry except in its mode of composition. I’ve been using computer-aided operations since the 80s, though definitely not exclusively. I don’t see this as much different than rolling up one’s sleeves and addressing the affordances of a sonnet or villanelle or Frank O’Haraian “It’s 12:15 and this and then that” convention.

Gary Barwin, You Know Whose Mouth This Is: AI, not-AI, sincerity and invention.

The word is
one-room apartment reef
or mingling octopuses,
licking salt from punctuation
one goosebump at a time.

On land, they call it
love.

Kati Mohr, Even this …

Ten years ago I read my long, narrative poem My Name is Swan at a literary festival. It was a curated evening around the theme of ‘The City’. I appeared halfway up (or halfway down) the programme along with a number of well established and highly regarded authors whose work I greatly admired. I was pretty chuffed to have such a billing as a relatively obscure artist among such prestigious writers. I was, in the contemporary vernacular, ‘a minor poet’. I don’t mind being a minor poet, I prefer to sing in minor keys not in a major ones. Most good art is made in minor keys. Hits are written in major keys because they emotionally resonate more immediately. The songs that stay with us though contain shadows, minor chords, modal turns, notes of regret. What makes a song endure is not happiness but happiness corrupted by the knowledge of loss.

None of the other authors came to my reading. They were not disinterested or deliberately shunning me, much as the voices in my head would like to tell me. No, they were simply elsewhere, doing what authors are supposed to do, trying to earn a living from their work. They were meeting their public, standing behind their merchandise stalls, selling their books. I didn’t have a book. I didn’t have anything to sell. I had a poem. And while I read it, it was alive and after I’d finished it went to the place that poems go, where the wind lives, where midnight sighs arrive, where love hides.

The modern book, as we know it, printed with bound pages, has only been with us for around five hundred years. Writing itself emerged around five thousand years ago but the origins of poetry are ancient, perhaps stretching back into pre-history. 50,000 years ago humans were almost certainly using rhythm and repetition, chanting and song and formulaic language came into existence long before any of it was written down. The availability of cheaper paper made from wood pulp and the advent of industrial printing, meant that by the 1800s the book had become a mass-market object. With the arrival of the 20th century paperback, books were ubiquitous. The international best seller was upon us.

The introduction of the book meant we no longer needed to listen to our tribal elders, to hear their stories. We lost, perhaps a little of the ability to even listen to each other. Everything was written down for us, to be studied or stacked on high shelves, hidden away in academy libraries. Books became power. A new kind of truth had arrived. One that was absolute because, as you know, if it’s in a book then, well, it must be true.

I left the authors with their stalls, with their sales, with their transactions and I took my poem home wondering where I might go with it next. A book didn’t feel like the right fit for My Name is Swan somehow. It was a poem that needed to feel the wind in its feathers, have air under its wings, it needed an adventure. It needed to live. Back then I believed books were where poems went to die. Don’t get me wrong. I love books. If you’ve written one I might even have it on my shelves. If I haven’t then send me copy because honestly I do really love books. I just felt that this poem, and the other long form works that I’d made, had a life beyond the page.

Jan Noble, N°74 Books are where poems go to die

I recently joined poet and podcast host Nathan Hassall on The Poetry Vessel, a multimedia poetry project he creates with his wife, Rachael. Their show blends poetry, conversation, and visual interpretation, creating a space where language becomes a shared exploration. It was a joy to be a guest and talk about submission strategies, poetry communities, creative advocacy, and the work we do to support poets.

Nathan and I talk about the origins of my work, the role of literary citizenship, and how poets can navigate the publishing world with intention. We also explore the imaginative engine behind poetry — the alter egos we write through, the personas that surface on the page, and how imagination becomes a tool for both discovery and protection.

I read a poem from my collection A Godless Ascends, which opened up a conversation about writing through personal history, mythic framing, and the emotional architecture of a poem. Nathan’s questions invite a kind of reflection that feels both intimate and expansive, and the episode captures that dynamic beautifully.

Trish Hopkinson, How I Got My Poetry Published in 2026 (ft. Trish Hopkinson) + submission call via The Poetry Vessel

He cautions himself against memories
their cheat, their fumbling feet moving
across the arc of time.

Still.

The soft twilights,
the bob white whistling,
the hundred ways
the sun would lift itself
over the ridge.

Rebecca Cook, Upon Returning to the Father’s House

I have two pieces of poetry news to share, both involving poems finding their way back into the world.

First, my collection Rotura is included in Black Lawrence Press’s Sealey Challenge sale. Thirty-one full-length poetry collections are currently available for $12 each through the Black Lawrence Press sale page.

Published in 2022, Rotura moves through questions of family, longing, language, borders, and the different forms rupture can take within a life. For anyone curious about the book, three poems from the collection (“Certain Rivers,” “Conditioning (City Study),” and “Four Dirges”) can be read together at Poetry Is Currency.

*

I’m also glad to share the publication of Summer, Still, a new anthology from Lily Poetry Review featuring poetry and prose by faculty and alumni of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. The anthology celebrates the program’s twentieth anniversary and the community of writers that has gathered around it over the years.

My poem “Night Matter” is included in the anthology. The poem considers writing as an act of persistence: what it means to continue making words when light is scarce and the night around us feels both material and immense. It first appeared as part of my January 2018 feature at A Dozen Nothing, where you can read “Night Matter” online.

There is something meaningful to me about these two announcements arriving together. One points back toward a collection and the poems gathered within it; the other allows an earlier poem to enter a new gathering, this time alongside the work of writers connected through Solstice.

I’m grateful for both occasions, for the continued life of these poems, and for anyone who spends time with them.

José Angel Araguz, Two Poetry Notes: Rotura and Summer, Still

I am not a summer girl—I haven’t been sleeping well with the heat (up to 95 degrees this week) and the wildfire smoke that lingered a few days—and lack of sleep has taken a toll on my brain and body. Maybe I’ve felt a little depression and anxiety, more than usual.

I had some good poetry news this week (which I can’t share yet) and also some book rejections from places that had made it a finalist the last time they saw the same manuscript which makes me worry I shouldn’t send it out anymore (when is it time to shelve something? I’ve been messing with this MS for over five years!)

I find myself looking forward to fall already—cooler temperatures, pumpkin and apples, the sunsets happening a little earlier, the light a little more golden. My mood feels more stable in fall and my productivity as a writer definitely goes up. Is this true for you as well? I am wishing you all good sleep and no anxiety in this world that continually seems to ratchet up—at least in America—reasons to have so much anxiety.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Safety in Seattle, Is it Fall Yet, Lack of Sleep, and Poetry Ups and Downs

The natural world always strikes a note of wonder in me, whether it is the sight of a polar bear ambling across the pack ice or the expressive face of a walrus. Or the universe of lichens and tiny flowers on the tundra. Or the chevrons of feathers on the back of an eagle.

Perhaps this is why I rely too much on the natural world for the imagery in my poems. It is all around me, such a rich and never-ending catalog of weirdness and beauty. So I forget that there are other ways to make meaning, so many other options in the world to feed my poems. Machines, small and large. Music. Films. Pop culture, in general. Science. Medicine. Everyday objects. Abstractions. Speculations. Conversations. (The list could go on, but you get the idea.)

Maybe this is also why I don’t often write about my travel experiences, though peple always say, “Oh, I’ll bet you’re going to write a lot of poems about this!” First, capturing the wonder feels like an insurmountable task. But also, I realize that it could seem like I am flaunting experiences I know I am privileged and lucky to have. (I even second-guessed writing about them in this post…). So I’ve tried to turn my wonder onto things I have not experienced.

To that point, a few things I have researched lately in the service of a draft:

• the vastness of space /features of the planets/elements of black holes
• the Marianas Trench
• the whale graveyard in the Indian Ocean
• how a television works (I honestly still think magic is the easiest answer)

I am trying to broaden my internal horizons, fill up my image bank. Not to shut out the natural world, but to have a different mirror to hold beside it, to juxtapose other pieces of life with it to make the page come alive.

Some collections I’ve read that do this well:

Soft Science and The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On by Frannie Choi

Karaoke at the End of World by Genevieve DeGuzman (Jackleg Press)

Who Will Cradle Your Head? by Jared Beloff (ELJ Editions)

Frame Inside a Frame by Daniel Lassell (Texas Review Press)

Yeet! by jason b crawford (Omnidawn/University of Chicago Press)

These collections all imagine worlds where nature is in concert with so many other things—cryptids, robots, apocalypse, hell and religion, Afro-futurism. They are ambitious and collections that have been teaching me some things about leaning into any and all of the world available to me, real or imagined. 

Donna Vorreyer, Hello, It’s Me…

I floated on my back,
the pool water muffling
all their hells.
I breathed in a forest
and it dried in my hair.

Instead of sun,
I saw mosaic.
Instead of
the machinery
of clouds,
smoke.

Sarah Lada, Smoke Screen

I went to a residential course at Ty Newydd many years ago and it changed my life. The kindness of the tutors – not the kindness that puffs you up and says you are a genius, but the kindness of someone telling you to keep on writing, that what you are doing matters. And it was the setting with the library and the strange acoustic that makes it feel sometimes as if someone is whispering in your ear, and the garden that stretches down to the sea, and the beautiful food. And for me it was the people on the course that I met as well – poets I’m still friends with all these years later.

Every time I teach a residential course and I arrive and meet the participants for the first time, I remember what I felt like. How much it meant to me – how I’d nearly turned my car round and driven home because I was so anxious. How I paid monthly to spread the cost – what a big deal it was for me financially to commit to it. I hope I never forget those things and I always try and bring as much energy and commitment to the teaching as the poets we work with have brought. It’s hard to carve a week out of your life to come and write poetry – harder for some more than others.

The group we worked with this week were wonderful – apparently all of them knew at least one other person in the group so the first night there was little awkwardness – they started chatting without Clare or I having to do anything! They were hugely supportive of each other throughout the week which was really lovely to see.

On Thursday I went for an illegal run – illegal as I’m not really meant to be running at the moment, because of my still dodgy ankle. But I REALLY needed to clear my head and it was so worth it – I found a really beautiful loop through the woods and having left Clare with the energy of Eyore I came back like Tigger, full of bounce again.

Clare and I were our usual quarrelsome selves – here we are on the final night of the course – when we were treated to a reading from everyone of the new work they’d been writing and working on during the week – an evening that was as good as any poetry reading I’ve paid money to see – which indicates the quality of the writers we were working with!

Kim Moore, A week at Moniack Mhor

As we crest the midpoint of summer submissions entering the inbox in consideration for next years series of books, I’ve been thinking a little again about what makes a book stand out in the queue and what gets passed on to the second read pile. I’ve already accepted a handful of things for August into September, and pickings are beautifully lush. I typically have three piles when sorting–the absolute yes, the maybes, and the no-thanks. The last pile is the easiest to send responses immediately. The others I tend to hold onto for a minute as I evaluate how much room I have in the schedule. This year, I do have a little more room (not making the books by hand is more expensive, but does free up time I normally would have spend folding, stapling, and trimming. While I still do all these things for pre-April 2026 titles, everything since is a matter of placing an order in just a few minutes, making the hard part the layout and design instead of the assembly, which can take a little longer with more complicated layouts, but not always. We’ve also been able to open subs up to longer projects and full-length manuscripts. This is especially welcome since many of our chaps before perfect-binding were running about 40 pages and weren’t always easy to trim. 

This spring, I fleshed out a little more guidance on what we’re looking for, including a broad definition of what is “poetry” which can mean prose, essays, vispo, plays, and any variety of hybrid works that tongue the edges of other genres. I love the unclassifiable books most. I also have my biases in terms of loving horror and gothic projects, so we readily welcome those in particular, but tend to choose a wide selection of styles and topics overall. 

But beyond these, one of the chief important things I am looking for is cohesion. Whether its a 100 page book or under 20 pages, tightness in subject matter or theme will always stand out, as will projects that have a narrative spine. So many times when encountering book manuscripts, it feels like a poet just threw everything in with the kitchen sink. But having things that tie and bind and link individual poems and parts together is important. Some intention in which poems are included and how they are arranged.  This is especially true of full-length books, especially first books, which usually tend to assemble from many disparate pieces, even if the poet eventually writes more project-related books down the line. There are a few ways, however, to bring disparate pieces together to make a sound chapbook or book of poems. 

Kristy Bowen, what I look for as an editor, part #1

I want extravagance.
Peonies. A five-layer cake.
Drones making dragons
in the sky. Flamenco.
Percussion. Not a band,
a symphony throwing its joy
over the city. A herd
of wild horses. Something,
anything bright & unearned.

Sharon Brogan, Grace

None of this feels instinctual. When we panic, we want to follow our gut. But the non-profit starvation cycle is our own graveyard loop. We cannot just trust our guts; we have to build a strategy so that the work we do moves us in the right direction. We need effort that keeps us on a straight course. Working harder, pushing through the spiral, leads to burnout. What needs to happen—our current focus—is re-aligning the organization with our mission and building a more sustainable foundation.

A couple of days ago, I was talking with someone who thought nonprofit staff shouldn’t be paid much. Often, people who have never worked in community building think that staff can live on squash and passion alone. Those who live in large houses with good cars don’t always have the perspective to understand how we march through crisis, how we face our emergencies, what motivates us to keep flying.

We clowns, acrobats, and artists who build culture live on sand and rice, and find all sorts of destructive ways to pass the time. And together, we build and rebuild. Together, we walk through the fire.

May we find joy in all the destruction and fly well into the sunrise.

Kate Gale, The Graveyard Spiral: On Breaking the Cycle of Emergency

I am descended from smugglers.
I hold the darkness of tunnels inside me;
hushed voices, past midnight, alert my ears.
I am descended from strong-armed men,
the readers of the sea.

I am descended from those who roam.
I hold the restlessness of wild words […]

Sue Finch, HUMANNESS

生命線短き手もて薔薇を剪る　篠原広子

seimeisen mijikaki te mote bara o kiru

a short lifeline
on my palm
I cut roses
                                               Hiroko Shinohara

from Haiku Shiki (Haiku Four Seasons), August 2025 Issue, Tokyo Shiki Shuppan, Tokyo

Fay Aoyagi, Today’s Haiku (July 22, 2026)

This week: a few scrappy bones, a murderous sandfly, trills that might remind us of birds, subversive puppets, and much more. Enjoy.

There is a quality to the heat this summer that I have started, against my better judgement, to read as mood. It isn’t the heat of a good July — the kind that dries the hay and fills the orchard with wasps and sends everyone, sensibly, into the shade by two. It is a heavier thing than that. It sits on the fields the way a bird sits on a clutch of eggs: close, patient, unwilling to be moved. My garden is barely a garden yet — a square of new turf laid last autumn, the soil under it still builder’s soil, a blank green canvas I have not begun to make anything of. But it looks out onto fields, and between the lawn and the farmland there is a strip of wildflower meadow, and even in this heat the meadow is doing what the meadow does: oxeye daisies gone slightly papery at the edges, vetch scrambling through the grass, a dozen things I am still learning the names of, all of it loud with something at every hour of the day. Beyond it the ground under the far hedge has gone the colour of ash. The buzzards still work the field margins in the long evenings, but low, and without much conviction, as if even they can feel the thermals have turned against them.

To brood is to sit on eggs and keep them warm until something living comes out of them. It is also what we do with a worry that will not leave — we brood on it, we turn it over, we let it heat. The word carries both, and I have caught myself this summer thinking the two meanings have quietly fused. The planet is brooding. It is warmer than it should be, held at a temperature it did not choose, by us; and what is incubating under all that patient heat is not, any longer, only life. It is something closer to grief.

I am wary of writing sentences like that. The register of the ruined planet is a register I distrust, in myself most of all — it flatters the writer, it makes weather into portent, it borrows a grandeur that belongs to the thing and not to the person describing it. So let me stay with the particular, which is the only ground I trust. The papery daisies. The vetch. A blackbird panting in the shade of the fence with its beak open, doing the only thing it knows to do about a heat it has no name for. These are small facts, and they are true, and they are connected to each other and to a hundred thousand things I cannot see, by a web so fine and so total that we have only lately, and only partially, learned to notice it is there at all.

Adam Cairns, The ground has begun to brood

The roses are in full bloom and I accidentally disturbed a fat bumble bee that I think may have been sleeping in the nectar. It was a bit too windy for the insects to be making spectacles of themselves. But I know the solitary mason wasps are hunting caterpillars in the dark spaces between the flowers, under the leaves.

While I was writing this morning a wasp came in the library and buzzed around my head a while. I took a few deep breaths and told myself that she wasn’t likely to bother me. Me, with my unsweetened tea and fennel seeds. It wasn’t long before she got bored of this little room, with the sound of my tapping on the keys, and she left. No need for anyone to dance around with an insect swatter mumbling expletives. I’ve done that.

I don’t know if there is any truth to the saying familiarity breeds contempt. I think that is only true when we want something from the other; we expect something we don’t get; when we see more than we anticipated, or more than we are comfortable with. Familiarity without expectation… I don’t know. Maybe it leads to curiosity. It puts fears in perspective.

The ocean is terrifying. And the cormorants, ghosts of drowned sailors, always pull my rising joy back to the earth. One hand clutching the roses, and the other grasping for the dark and darker blue of the north sea. There is a depth and a width and an understanding that makes an all-too-pure joy seem thin.

Ren Powell, Summer, after its fullness

Will there be, this year, young housemates warring,
screen doors that whomp, wheels grinding gravel?
In this heat, wake us.

Send us street theater, at three in the morning,
mad lovers battling over jealousies, bills,
the whole grand opera.

Watch now in mercy those others, mum
in the iced quiet of their central air,
their curtained sorrows.

Maryann Corbett, On the power of open windows

Summer has started summering, whether we are fully on board with it or not. I’ve spent the past couple days in 90 degree plus Chicago tucked in front of the window AC unit working on some poetry critiques and my own writing, in addition to a couple upcoming dgp books. In between, there are frosty coconut-heavy drinks whipped in the blender, iced tea, and summer treats like strawberries and watermelon. I always feel like summer gets away from me. Or more that it seems like it takes forever to get here, but then slides very quickly away, especially once you hit the 4th of July.

Kristy Bowen, June Paper Boat

I am grateful to have been blogging for so long, grateful for many reasons.  I often go back to re-read old blog posts–by often, I mean at least two or three times a week.  I go back to see what I was thinking/doing, to find recipes, to find rough draft ideas and inspirations, to spark my brain when I feel I have nothing new to blog about.  This morning I found this blog post about a poem idea I forgot I had for a poem called “The Holy Spirit Takes a Holiday”; I haven’t finished the poem, now, a year later, but I still have the rough draft.

This meandering made me think about a summer project, making a rough draft into a finished draft each week.  And yes, that’s one of my new year’s aspirations that has fallen apart as the year progressed (this January blog post has details about my specific intentions for 2026).  But that’s the joy of early July–there’s still time to adjust my trajectory.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Midway Points: Inspirations and Revelations

This week has seen a number of poems flying back to me from various places they had been sent. I am good now at seeing this as a chance to read the poems afresh to work out what needs changing in order to enhance them. One particular poem had a clunky line in the middle where I definitely knew what I meant, but that didn’t necessarily mean other readers would. I enjoyed smoothing that one. I have also started to change my metaphor so I will set poems to sail now rather than fly. This is more in keeping with my desire to do things slightly more slowly and use my time wisely instead of rushing.

I sat in a sold-out lecture theatre this week to hear Ele Fountain speak and to find out who had won the Cheshire Prize for Literature. I love good speeches and was delighted to listen to Ele’s talk. I admire people who can tell their story well and add value to the audience and Ele certainly did that. I then had a quiet revelation when it came to the announcement of the prize winners – I would have loved to have won. That might sound a little obvious as a thing to say, but what I mean is I would have loved to walk down the steps after being announced as a winner. Gone were the feelings of nerves of being on show and here was a feeling of wouldn’t it be purely lovely to win. I used to sit in audiences and want to be invisible and suddenly here I was fully in the moment. I didn’t win, but I did love this new feeling. It felt like an acknowledgement of having grown into myself, and I rather liked that way of looking at it. Here I give a gentle nod to liking my silvered “really surprised hair” and to the difference coaching, and a change of direction have made.

Sue Finch, A BANDSTAND HAT TRICK FOR A SKYLARKER

Quiet days. Not much coming in or going out (the lady at the post office today says she’s missed me, and I’m looking thin). But we had a terrific party for Mike Bradwell’s Axholme at the Bush Theatre in mid-June, and there’s Penelope Curtis’s The Fall to look forward to in September. So this newsletter occupies a holding place.

Humming along in the background is Reznikoff. His major work, Testimony – originally published in sequential books in the 1960s and 70s, following an early version in 1934 – is a masterpiece of 20th-century modernist literature. Fact. It also happens to be a political book. Charles Simic: ‘It should not be surprising that Testimony is rarely assigned at our colleges and universities these days; it causes too much discomfort to those who prefer to know nothing about what goes on in the world.’ Jena Osman: ‘To shine a light from a different angle, to make you think about what’s there in a different way – that’s the best political work that poetry can do.’ August Kleinzahler: ‘J’accuse . . . Crystalline, documental vignettes – dispatches, really, from the front of American capitalism’s assault on the poor, dispossessed and vulnerable.’ Never previously published in the UK, Testimony will be published by CBe early next year – by far its biggest book to date: large format, 608 pages.

Reznikoff – born in Brooklyn in 1894 to immigrant parents, died in 1976 – was one of the Objectivist poets who first published in the 1930s; in the 1960s and 70s they were inspirational figures for a number of British poets working outside the mainstream. While his work has been translated into Polish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Swedish, not a single book by Reznikoff is currently available in the UK.

Around publication time there’ll be a live reading of the whole text of Testimony over three days in a gallery in central London, with anyone who comes through the door welcome to take part. Alongside Testimony, Redstone Press will publish The Sound of the Street, selected poems by Reznikoff presented alongside photographs of early 20th-century New York by Berenice Abbott and others. Much of Reznikoff’s work was not just self-published but printed by himself; both CBe and Redstone are one-person outfits; the publication of these two books is a statement, of sorts.

Charles Boyle, Newsletter July 2026: Reznikoff

I am sick of being enraged. So often I find myself enraged at the way we have fucked ourselves over. After all those years of creative evolution, from the first hand print on a cave wall, all the way up to this brilliant, beautiful ability to share our experiences through art, through literature, and what do we do? We hand it over to people who want to use a set of algorithms dressed up as a robot with a cute name to plagiarise it and spew out something that has the pattern of art, but no human intuition. If it looks like art it’ll do. Pack it, price it, stick it on Amazon, make some content, sell sell sell.

We’ve devalued the act of creativity, we’ve made creativity look too easy. To be creative is to make mistakes, more and more until you grow into it. It is so uniquely human. It is hard wok, hard won.

Alongside the robbing of our own creativity we have created a system in which we spend a great deal of time in pain, and I feel like it’s getting worse. We’ve slowly moved towards a place where the norm of social media – and the media in general – is rage bait and anger and unkindness. The news now isn’t really news, social media isn’t really social.

The incentives all point in the same direction: create conflict, generate anger, feed resentment.

The London Economic

We’ve become so entwined with social media, with subscription plans, with stuff we can’t own, that I feel used. I feel helpless. I feel puppeted by a handful of very rich men with no concept of the actual world, no regard for it, no need for human creation, human beauty. I am sick of the rage bait. I am sick of the grifting and greed.

Yesterday, driving home from taking mum to an emergency GP appointment, I saw a big fat wood pigeon in the road. It was carrying an ambitiously long twig and was struggling with it. A woman driving in the opposite direction didn’t slow down. Perhaps she wasn’t aware that birds at this time of year are still focussed on nesting and aren’t as quick to get out of the way. She sped towards it, glaring at it. Get out of my way, get out of my way I am important, you are insignificant. It felt like all that rage bait and anger and the dreariness of being forced through this awful machine we’ve made for ourselves had condensed down to this point, the point at which a person cannot slow down, can’t bear to add one or two seconds to their journey to allow another being trying to live its life, to get out of the way safely.

I don’t want live like that. I want to live with more kindness, more beauty, more joy. I can only start where I am, look at what I am doing, how I am doing it.

Wendy Pratt, I am sick of being enraged.

I am very serious and ambitious about writing the best poetry and prose I can, by my own standards. Creating appealing posts and the occasional newsletter? My confidence fails and I can’t consistently fake otherwise. When I submit work for publication, that’s a way of saying, “This is worth your attention.” Social media is a version of the same–not a bad message for a writer to put out there–yet ambivalence plagues me. It’s laziness, embarrassment, a preference other kinds of work, a long to-do list, a sense of being undeserving, disliking the necessary selfies and performance of cheer, frustration in advance at the difficulty of attracting eyeballs, and, as I’m occasionally wise enough to realize, avoidance of what fragments attention.

Studying and teaching the poetry of a century ago hasn’t resolved my mixed feelings. Those poets’ success in their own era had everything to do with connections forged in big cities and at prestigious universities–still primary venues to success, obviously. Glamor, charisma, and good looks helped some modernists, too, even without social media to amplify those assets. Having a big readership or critical acclaim has never been entirely rooted in the quality of the work. Time remedies some of that unfairness, but it’s a slow, imperfect process, never mind the unforeseeable ways some writing ages better than others. Modernists taught us how to read their poetry, after all, and exerted a huge influence on literary values for decades after, shaping what people thought was good. It takes heroic effort just to find the strong work that escaped notice in its day, not to mention figuring out how to argue on its behalf.

Popularity influences what gets written in the first place, too. Artists need varying degrees of contemporary encouragement and support to keep making art. One of my favorite Harlem Renaissance poets, Helene Johnson, won some awards but stopped playing the poetry career game before publishing a book, and only produced a slim volume’s worth of verse in her long lifetime–published posthumously. Social media might have helped her sustain literary connections once she left Harlem. I think it’s helped me, living in a small southern town. The internet generally has benefited me, too–what a gift to read literary magazines or samples of them freely online, compared to hunting out print copies in the occasional bookstore that carried them! But it can also demoralize me to insert myself into social media’s comparison machine. Not posting costs me; so does posting.

Lesley Wheeler, Aiming vs. wandering

It is not the process of making the work – that is a labyrinth you must navigate yourself – it is the task of delivering the work, of having it platformed, of getting it before an audience, that I find so unbearably maddening. This is when the exit signs start flashing.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

James Baldwin

If I had advice to offer a young creative it would be: prepare yourself for dead ends, for unhelpful suggestions, for vacuous promises and above all for silence. Expect excruciating, agonising silence. If you do ever receive a reply to a speculative email, a response to an application, a reaction to a submission then get ready for seemingly endless meetings with an infinite number of Steves and Hannahs who will all mostly have their cameras off.

Jan Noble, Nº71 Is it suitable for children?

I searched files of poem drafts for July, and found an underwhelming poem in July 2021. Aha. A basic, I-am-bored-and-nothing-is-happening interstitial self-indulgent poem. […]

It’s been a while since I did homophonic translation. Machine translation is too good and too AI to be useful for adding the chaos factor but I can work more from ear.

So I then subject it to pretending what I’m hearing and transcribing sound by sound is a muffled French. See if I can “overhear” anything vivid. […]

Then I translate back to English and see if I can take this randomness and reassemble towards sense. […]

So now although it is language-as-material-based content, it feels more distinctive and alive than the original. We have multiple people and interactions instead of poet-in-solitude trope. We have particulars and actions. We have relationships to the world and to each other. It is less predictable. You don’t know where the poem is going when you start any given line. It travels. It is more of a wake up exercise but it pleases me now.

Pearl Pirie, Revision

My “Self Portrait as Sandfly” is nowhere near finished. The sandfly in question lives in a particular valley in Lima, and is only active after dark. Its bite is deadly to humans. It took researchers a long time to understand why people could walk through this valley in the day time but not after dark.

The poem isn’t finished because I don’t really know why I want to speak in the voice of this death-dealing, invisible to the eye insect. What do I have in common with a murderous sandfly, that only lives because of the particular climatic conditions of that valley? I don’t know yet – I’m hoping that is what will become apparent in the drafting/editing process.

Kim Moore or Clare Shaw, Self Portrait As Gold Dust, As Glitter Ball, As Magic Carpet…

I tend to believe passionately in any collection right up to the point when the proofs are sent off to the printers. Then I decide it’s the worst mistake I’ve ever made, want to change or retract everything, contemplate running away to the rhubarb patch at the bottom of the garden where I used to hide as a kid. This gnawing anxiety eats away at me until – come publication day – there are only a few scrappy bones left.

On that note…. happy publication day to my fourth collection with Chatto & Windus, STEPMOTHER!!

For me, the best part of any new literary project is when it exists as concept, unsullied by my attempts to put it into words. I first started thinking about the figure that animates my new book -The Wicked Stepmother – around 2021, and I lived inside the stories I was researching, imagining the lives of real and fictional stepmothers around the world.

When the writing process begins, there’s the daunting thrill of grappling with form and shape and order, trying to structure your ideas in a way that flows. You’re alive and intent, often frustrated but excited too. You’re building something. When I’m at this stage, I feel the kind of absorption I get on a single pitch rock climb.

Then the editing: a mix of doubt and euphoria. There’s always a point in the pruning and reshaping and expanding of a collection where the whole thing feels destined to collapse. That is when the real work starts. When you think the book won’t work, you’re usually closer than you imagine to finding a solution: creating ‘sections’ only to take them out again, revising your starting point, moving towards a different concluding mood.

Helen Mort, ‘Smile’, says the photographer

There are often times that poems occur that might not fit into the current project, and live on their own, however briefly. My book-length projects are so often held within such particular structures or shared tonal elements, anything beyond those boundaries simply can’t be incorporated, and require alternate housing. When my dear spouse headed to Banff Writing Studios in January 2023 to attend a rare writing space beyond the house, I began the sequence of daily poems that became “edgeless : letters.” She was away for two weeks, but I think this sequence took me nearly a month to craft, sharpen, hone. At that point, I was already a couple of weeks into the composition of the poems that became the collection Autobiography, which itself took a little more than a year from start to finish. But here, this particular lyric stretch didn’t fit with those poems, that project, therefore the opening salvo of an entirely different, albeit related, extended lyric structure. With the poems I was building into “Autobiography” I was attempting a further, third, suite of shorter, stand-alone poems, but this sequence required more space, and more time. Much like the title poem of Snow day, this piece required a new manuscript within which to contain it.

The epistolary form has always intrigued, seeing examples over the years by John Newlove and Lea Graham, among so many others, although this sequence was specifically prompted by Robert Kroetsch’s Letters to Salonika (Grand Union Press, 1983), during which Kroetsch wrote daily and dated epistolary offerings around his then-partner, Smaro Kamboureli, visiting her mother in Greece. She journaled her own travels, later published as In the second person (Longspoon Press, 1985), a title I sorely wish could have been followed by more literary writing (however brilliant Kamboureli’s critical prose). Kamboureli wrote about going home, and Kroetsch wrote about her being away. Across those two weeks, Christine cemented what would become her third published book, Toxemia (Book*hug Press, 2024) [see my essay on such here], as I remained home with our young ladies. Every morning I looked west, and wrote to her, there. Otherwise, I let her be, attempting not to distract her from work. It was all I worked on for a month, setting all else aside, akin to those six weeks I spent composing the title sequence of Snow day, a couple of years prior (a sequence also begun during the month of January, which suggests a kind of renewal, I suppose).

Daily missives, but composed not as the prose poem as Kroetsch had worked, but something pulled apart, allowing the visual elements of the lyric to breathe. One step, and then another.

rob mclennan, edgeless

I guess holding down what have been essentially two full-time jobs for the past six and a half years hasn’t left me much time to send out newsletters or even to write poetry. But here I am again.

Just three days ago, I finally handed the mantle of director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference to the amazing Mercedes O’Leary Harness. She’s going to do such a great job making the conference even better. I really enjoyed my time at the helm, but starting last fall, I began to really feel the weight of being responsible for two large literary community undertakings. I’ll still be holding down the fort at Storyknife Writers Retreat, and I consider it a real privilege to be able to facilitate incredible women writers having the time and space to devote to their work.

I’m hoping that the gap that giving something up has opened will be filled with my own writing. It’s going to take a bit of recovery time, but I feel the generative urge trickling around under the surface these day and that makes me so hopeful.

I’ve always found that teaching has really lit a fire under my own work, so when I had a chance to teach an online class in poetry for Orion Magazine Workshops, I accepted. I’ve subscribed to Orion FOREVER, so it’s a real honor to be part of their family.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Hello Again!

One of my goals this year has been to send out my work. (Why does “submit my work to the editorial process” sound like a dodgy thing to do? “Send out” sounds more assertive.)

So I belong to a small send-out group, and when our attempt to meet once a month and report our progress seemed a complete disaster, we decided to meet once a week and for one hour hang out on Zoom together and instead of talking or moaning or whatever, to work on our send-out.

This did the trick. I’ve now managed 21 submissions of poems, reviews, stories, and essays. Not a lot, but it’s something. And I’ve had a few things accepted.

First, the on-line journal Eclectica took my poem, “Windfall Apples,” which you can find here (and which I should have mentioned some months ago).

More recently, Bracken took my poem, “Her Honeyed Mask.” Their new issue is fresh off the presses and available here. (And it’s gorgeous.)

Bethany Reid, Where you’ll find me…

I’ve taken a break from submitting my work, to try to break the cycle of anticipation/dejection, to break the spell of maybe. And I’ve been on vacation, so freer to consider myself from afar, and think, okay, what are you, and let’s do something else with that. Or do the same thing differently. Or do a different thing samely. Or quit all together or start something completely new. Or something. The writing game wearies. Yes, I have that new book out, the “One Poet’s Writing Manual,” which is fun, and people have told me they’ve enjoyed it, and those I know well have said it’s like I’m right there talking to them. And I’ve done some presentations and workshops, and have a couple more scheduled. And it’s my fifth book, if you count the two chapbooks. But. I don’t know. I just thought somehow things would be different. At the same time, I’m utterly astonished at what has transpired, what I’ve stumbled into. And at what I’ve done, conjured up, gave a whirl. It’s all very strange, looking back, looking forward, and just looking around. What the hell, man? What the hell?

Marilyn McCabe, strong, but anxious and discontented amid all that messy beauty

 I’ve been writing a lot, and I’ve also been sending the poems out to various journals. I did that last year, too, and I’ve also got some cool self-pubbed stuff planned this summer. At present, I am 99% sure that these three books will show up before August is out:

• The Other Century: A long-awaited (in my mind) chapbook of poems. This is unlike anything I’ve published before, and I’m excited to share it. It comes close to fiction, but it’s also a kind of collage of found material alongside original poetry.
• A reissue of Travis: A lightly revised but physically redesigned version of my chapbook from last June, marking the 50th anniversary of Taxi Driver (on which the book is based).
• A reissue of Interrogation Days (it’s the last time, I swear!): A revised, reorganized, and physically redesigned book marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the 250th anniversary of the US.

These will be priced very cheaply and will be bundled with cool bonuses (miniature collages, bookmarks, free pamphlets, etc.). The books will come out on my Ko-Fi page, which seems a better way of doing this than trying to fashion a “bookstore” page here on substack. 

RM Haines, Summer of Salvage (no. 1)

I’ve spent time recently typesetting my own, next poetry book – having decided to go rogue and try this out for myself. 

I realised how blank and bleak I was feeling, facing the prospect of submitting my emerging manuscript into the current poetry publishing landscape. Not that I have anything against any of it, it was just flattening my spirits contemplating the long waits and inevitable rejections. And quite spontaneously, as is often the way with me, I found I’d decided to try something different and (not uncharacteristically!) go it alone.

I’ve anyway always been employed – when I’ve been employed – as an editor. Not of books, of magazines. But typesetting is a familiar and loved process for me. And I found that part of this endeavour delicious. 

I set myself up in one of my sons’ currently vacant rooms, and turned up there for a week, each morning, to work. I felt happy, sitting in that sunshiny window at his desk and large monitor and familiarising myself with my chosen publishing software, Atticus. I also designed a simple cover in Canva. And, eventually, pulled both together into a proof book printed by Bookvault. 

I’m delighted with this experiment, and though have nervousness about shunting the book out into the world, it’s no more so than I’ve had with all my other (published by others) poetry publications. 

Charlotte Gann, A new era?

Mark Melnick offers an insightful essay on book cover design and marketing as the July contributor to Marsh Hawk’s “Chapter One” series. You can see his entire article HERE, but I present this excerpt because his experienced insight can be helpful to many authors:

“It is also important for authors to understand that ‘graphic design’ is very different from ‘art.’ I have worked with many authors — especially poets — who suggest a painting for their book’s cover. Often, that painting is very dense and complex (think Hieronymus Bosch), and the author will send me a lengthy explanation of their reasoning for using it, the meanings and resonances they see embedded in it, and how it reflects the text. Yet this misunderstands the purpose of a cover. A cover is not meant to be an analog to the text. A cover is not art, which is meant to invite introspection and contemplation, slowly over time. A cover is graphic design, which needs to do its job almost instantly — literally in one second. It is emotional, not intellectual.”

To illustrate his points, Mark comments on my and Daniel Morris’ recent and forthcoming Marsh Hawk books. My COLLATERAL DAMAGE BLUES is forthcoming in 2027.

Eileen Tabios, MARK MELNICK ON BRILLIANT AND EFFECTIVE BOOK COVERS

Rajani Radhakrishnan’s moving, intense No Way Home tells us what to expect from its opening ‘Prologue’ poem, sub-titled ‘the poet as storyteller’: It is supposed to be a story, a journal/ a confession, a tirade –/ but I will start/ with a poem instead.// There’s something about weaving/ through shadow and light.

Later in the poem she writes that the story or series of poems over more than 100 pages will be About a time that wasn’t supposed/ to mean anything, but did./ About big things remembered,/ about tiny details that remain/ in an empty frame/like disconnected parts.

What follows is an examination of disconnection, of a restless journey, both physical and psychological that has drawn me into it, allowed me to absorb the sense of the struggle, poem by poem. Unusually for me, but perhaps appropriately, I read it in order from first to last. It didn’t feel like a book that would give up its elusive secrets if I just dipped into it, reading a poem here and there. She tells us repeatedly that this is an ordinary story but of course it is anything but. It’s filled with the anxiety and doubt, energy and curiosity that we inherit or develop as our lives take their course. It is a courageous exploration, a mapping of where and how we travel as human beings, and in this case why we sometimes have an urge to return, to relive parts of our lives that a piece of us is saying ‘Don’t go there, don’t look back, it’s too dangerous’.

Bob Mee, NO WAY HOME – RAJANI RADHAKRISHNAN

If all goes well, Contubernales Press will soon bring forth my new book, Shield of Mnemosyne : a poem-sequence, a daybook reply to the Trumpist attack on the Constitutional order of our democracy. I began writing it in May 2024, and the first three chapters were published by Contubernales in my book Parmenides in Minneapolis. (Irish poet-critic Billy Mills reviewed Parmenides here.) The Shield volume assembles the concluding nine chapters; the whole poem was finished in February of 2026.

This work did not emerge from a vacuum. My focus on making large-scale poetic sequences began many years ago. And this 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of US nationhood, got me thinking back to an earlier long poem – a trilogy, finished on May 28, 2000 – called Forth of July.

The book’s title is a bit of a double pun. “Forth”, here, means not just “the 4th”, but the “coming-forth”. And “July”, here means (to me) not just the month, but alludes to my cousin Juliet, Julie – who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge at the age of 19, in the fall of 1971. On one weirdly playful level, the plot of this humongous poem enacts a kind of Orphic search for my vanished Julie (we were born a few days apart, in 1952). But is it also a kind of spiritual emblem : the “coming-forth of Julie” pushes back against the global spirit of Caesarism and militarism (“Julius” vs. Julie), as the sing-along poet sheds his skin, in the American interior, to commune with William Blackstone, “the man who went to live with Indians” (per the Consul, Geoffrey Firmin – protagonist of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano) – and with Black Elk, and with MLK (Martin Luther King).

Henry Gould, On the Forth of July

The next pamphlet from Headless Poet is in the works and indeed really quite imminent. I’m away next week, but I’ll be typesetting it the week after, at which point it gets a series of thorough proofs before going to the printers. The urgency is entirely self-imposed, and has felt a little perverse at times (life is busy), but it’s good to have a schedule if you’re going to get things done, just as it’s always slightly alarming, to someone of my temperament, just how effective a ‘to-do’ list is.

In Snow Bees, Jeremy Noel-Tod re-introduces the poetry of Lilian Bowes Lyon (1895-1949). Jeremy has been making the case for a re-evaluation of Bowes Lyon’s poetry for some time and it’s been both a pleasure and a privilege to help bring this selection into print: the first to draw on the full range of her work since the Collected Poems (1948).1 The more time I spend with these twenty poems, the more that fact amazes me.

To give you a sense of what I mean, and in lieu of something more considered to come, here is “Starlings: 1938”, from Bowes Lyon’s third collection Morning is a Revealing (1941). One of the striking things about Bowes Lyon’s work is the way in which she brings the same “concentrated skilfulness” to isolated, rural Northumberland and wartime London. In “Starlings”, these two worlds begin to come together. It is a remarkable, densely-packed poem, moving in an unsettling (and, I think, entirely convincing) fashion between the flock of birds and images of destruction without flattening the one into the other. And it does this precisely through a series of unlikely combinations: “glib roar”, “tinsel garrison”, “rose-crazed debate”.

Jeremy Wikeley, Dark news on the breeze

I’ve spent three days working on my LINKS page. When I began blogging (22 years ago) we all had extensive links to other blogs, and to various sites of interest. That seems less common now, but I’m still in the old mindset. This is a problem. 

There are a variety of components to this problem. The main one is that I can be interested in too many things. Being online can be like being on YouTube (Hank Green). So many topics! So many interesting topics! I think I want to see / watch / learn more about … all of them. I want more of this writer, this journalist, this presenter. Lately, this physicist (Carlo Rovelli). 

I want to read all the blogs, especially the poetry blogs. Especially the blogs I used to read. I want to find, again, the friends I discovered online years ago. Now I discover Substack, with all its controversies and all those excellent writers I want to follow. This seems to be close to what the blogging community used to be, with comment threads and interconnections. 

There are lots of blog-like “publications” on Substack. There, you subscribe, not follow. Reasonably enough, some writers request payment for their work. Even some poets! Mostly, though, I find more than enough to read without straining my budget. I can also read about philosophy and politics and artificial intelligence and physics and consciousness till I become . .. unconscious. 

Sharon Brogan, LINKS & reading

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that I am now aware of three poets at work. I think it was Andrew Neilson that put us in touch (and I\m annoyed I couldn’t make it to Andrew’s do in town a couple of weeks ago. Blame the silly running thing).

Over the course of a few internal messages I’ve been speaking to Adrian Masters. Adrian’s day job is as Political Editor for ITV Cymru, but it was pleasing to discover that he’s also a fine poet. His latest poem in Bad Lillies *is well worth checking out (as are the previous other two). I’ve already told him how much I like the lines

at the sandpaper sound
of a cockerel crowing from an allotment,

at the synthesiser pulse
of fledgling jackdaws.

I especially like the “synthesiser pulse / of fledgling jackdaws”.

And it feels even more relevant as I type, having not long come back from our first go at taming our new allotment space. There is much to dig, much more to do, but I’m glad to have broken some ground on it, and to have not broken ourselves in the process. […]

We nearly didn’t go today. It’s been a long week for both R and me, and I had an attack of the insomnias last night between 12 and about 3am. Why, oh why couldn’t it have been tonight so I would be up when the England game starts?? Oh well. Anyhoo, the point of this is that we did go and we pushed on, but it also makes the poem that follows make more sense to me. I’d asked Adrian for permission to publish a poem form his pamphlet, Accretion, and he said to pick any, so I don’t feel bad about choosing one I don’t think I asked about originally. […]

The whole pamphlet is quite focused on time and gathering perspective. There is very much a long view at play in Adrian’s work that I like and admire. I know and recognise most of what is being described above, the disorinetation of darkness and the early hours, but the clinchers here are the last line of stanza 3 and the final stanza. The way they turn the very human experience into something that adds perspective, provides distance and if nothing else, it adds context

We can’t rail at the night when we’re amongst it in an unintended way. We just named time’s parts, but we didn’t invent it, we don’t own it. I like that. It reminds me that I need to go back to Samantha Harvey’s excellent work of non-fiction (with some fiction in it too), A Shapeless Unease: My Year In Search of Sleep

And on that note, I think I need a nap if I’m going to make it to the football later.

Mat Riches, Nightwithstanding

An attractive quality of these poems is the outsider’s constant searching for self and form. “Mirror” is not only the title of one of Zhang Zao’s most famous poems but also a recurring trope in his oeuvre. Thoroughly grounded in both Chinese and European literature, he seeks “a new tension and melting point,” as Bei Dao wrote in his personal recollection of the author, included in this book. How successful are his sonnet sequences, “Kafka to Felice” and “Dialogue with Tsvetaeva”? The Chinese originals strike as too full of words and ideas, and so lack the pressure cooker of the sonnet form. The free-verse experiments are more interesting, often ranging and strange. One has the great title “Song a Wall Driller and the Ultimate Ear,” but the poem, in fact, pages 179 to 186, are missing from my edition. 

The poem I like best is called “Fly.” It has something of John Donne’s playful eroticism, but also the concision I associate with Chinese verse.

Jee Leong Koh, Zhang Zao’s MIRROR

chaun webster is a poet and graphic designer whose work contends with the spatial, temporal, and interpretive limitations of writing and of the English language with its incapacity to represent blackness outside of regimes of death and dying. He is the author of the hybrid creative nonfiction collection Without Terminus: untraining an archive (2026), and the poetry collections Wail Song: wading in the water at the end of the world (2023) and Gentry!fication: or the scene of the crime (2018), both of which received the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. Webster’s work has also appeared in numerous journals, including Obsidian, Brink Literary Journal,  LitHub, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Angel City Review, Tilted House, and Social Text. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1 – How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I don’t know that I would say that my first book changed my life.  It was a book of poetry that was thinking about black place and black placelessness, the organized dispossession of material and memory.  I think my perspective changed as and after writing it, specifically, I think I became more critical of the limits of the discursive as a response to material force.  My most recent work definitely has the mark of that first book and the strategies I was using, I’d just say that almost a decade later I am now more sure of myself and methods, especially my use of ambiguity, and abstraction.

2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry by way of the black pentecostal church.  The passionate oratory of the sermons, the repetition within the music, the hum and moan all moved me deeply and marked me in the way I consider sound and breath and return in my own writing.

3 – How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
The length of a project depends, oftentimes I am not always even sure of if what I am doing IS a project.  I am just trying to be present and attentive with the questions that vibrate for me, I’m trying to stay with them, I’m trying to see how they bloom.  Sometimes this becomes a project, sometimes that takes years as it did with Without Terminus.  I’d definitely say that writing is a slow process for me, but the gathering by way of note taking is very much a part of that writing process. […]

6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
There are definitely theoretical concerns behind my writing.  How, as Frank B. Wilderson III asks, “does one narrate the loss of loss?” He asks this with regard to black people, the way our loss exceeds a linear teleology, does not have a resolution as might be conceived in narrative.  So how do I approach this problem as a writer? when many times the impulse is to make something known or visible through language, to bring it into coherence.  This also ties to questions I have about the archive, about how we make claims about the past, what we understand to be evidence.  I don’t have many answers, much of my process is just being attentive to the questions.  

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’m not sure what the role of the writer is in larger culture.  I think the way we may have looked at the public intellectual a generation ago has shifted, and I’m less interested in what it might mean for my work to ascend and speak to truth to power, than to echo horizontally from below.  

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with chaun webster

Yvette Nicole Kolodji is a poet, artist, and former scientist from the greater Los Angeles area. She has published over 100 poems (including haiga) in various journals and anthologies since her debut in 2014 and exhibited artwork in many locations since 2019. Her poetry has won and been recognized by poetry competitions and organizations such as the Haiku Society of America, Haiku Poets of Northern California, and The Haiku Foundation. […]

Your mother, Deborah P Kolodji, was a brilliant poet and editor. Did your mother introduce you to poetry and haiku? How did your relationship with your mother inform and inspire your life and creative work as a child and as an adult?

Shel Silverstein was my introduction to poetry. To this day, I can remember how sad I was in kindergarten when I smeared my peanut butter sandwich on my favorite book, The Giving Tree. Most of my early experiences with poetry were through Silverstein’s books or school. My first experience with haiku was a lesson about syllable counting in second grade. I don’t recall them mentioning seasons or a cut (kireji). It was a lesson to learn syllable counting with a rigid 5-7-5 structure. Unfortunately, this view of haiku overshadowed my view of this form for years.

Of course, I learned to write and analyze poetry in school, but my creativity towards poetry started with an audition. In high school, I reimagined Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 as a marriage counselor discussing what love is to her patients. This was the first time I deeply analyzed and dissected a poem. In high school, I was focused on various theater productions, bands (I played clarinet), and a robotics team. I loved working with the metalworking machinery. Perhaps this was a precursor hint of my fondness towards sculpture. I also sketched often in my notebooks. After my high school art history teacher introduced me to scratchboard, I was hooked. I was mainly focused on theatre, sciences, and dabbling with my visual art in high school and college.

However, in high school, I was introduced to non-5-7-5 haiku by my mother, Deborah P Kolodji, whose interest in haiku began around that time. We would often play a back-and-forth haiku game. Although I enjoyed playing those haiku games and writing collaborative haiku forms with her and haiku friends, I didn’t take my haiku seriously back then. I would often mention how wonderful haiku was at perfecting long form poetry, since it showed me the weight of each word. One day, I came across this haiku by Kaisanjin, which had a profound impact on me:

one umbrella—
the person more in love
gets wet

Kaisanjin

Until this day, this poem is my favorite haiku. In college, I went to a Haiku Poets of Northern California (HPNC) Two Autumn’s reading and stopped by the Yuki Teikei Society’s Asilomar conference. It was not until after college when I started going to the Southern California Haiku Study Group meetings, readings, and assisted in the bookfair at the 2013 Haiku North America conference. I knew I was hooked on haiku when I started dreaming haiku. It began percolating into everyday life. I composed haiku as I drove. I composed haiku when I walked. It would keep me up at night. Haiku seeped into my essence. After I created a haibun for my sculptural floats, I began to create more haiga. Around this time, I started seriously focusing on my visual arts. I began working with more unconventional materials and created sculptures. I expanded my artistic practice to many different mediums and my writing practice to other haiku-related forms and styles of poetry.

Jacob D. Salzer, Yvette Nicole Kolodji

If the conclusion doesn’t seem to provide us with an epiphany — “I pass,” as a last line, feels at first glance obvious and unsurprising; was “the sentinel of space” really going to stop him? — still, the way the poem gets there is full of interest. Its form, abab quatrains of three pentameter lines that drop to dimeter (and to monometer in that final line), enacts a sonic drama, in which momentum juxtaposes itself with stillness. Everything about the poem’s atmosphere is like the image of those ships in the first stanza: riding at anchor, yet somehow, even in their stasis, “Home-bound.”

The progression of images throughout the poem, in fact, makes its own level of drama. Every particular manages to be simultaneously impressionistic, if not actually self-contradicting, and precise. It’s the reflection of the moon in the water, not the literal moon itself, that wavers and contains the slipping fish. Via metonymy, the thing and its image become imaginatively conjoined, providing a setup for the imagistic paradox that follows, in which the water “makes a quietness of sound.”

“Quietness” and “sound” are seeming opposites, yet we know the true thing the phrase implies. What we know as quiet is not the same as silence, which connotes emptiness and absence or, as in those spider webs on which the second stanza ends, entrapment. A quiet night may be full of small sounds and movements — “strange tunnelers in the dark and whirs / Of wings” — that don’t disrupt the quiet, but are part of its enormous, mysterious fabric. A silent night, by contrast, is the night of your padded cell, the night of the grave.

This imagistic progression, then, after all, earns the poem’s abrupt and initially unsatisfying ending.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: Home-Bound

The error that Richard Dawkins made in The Selfish Gene and has continued to make over the 50 years since it was first published, is an error of poetry.  

It’s a poetic error in the sense that poetry is the art form of the metaphor and the mistake that Dawkins makes is one of metaphorical choice. 

The problem is with the book’s central metaphor of humans as survival machines. The idea that we are nothing but automaton shells, vessels for our genes, who are the real survivors. […]

As I said earlier, this error of metaphor has been made by a multitude of scientists and philosophers (from Hobbes and de la Mettrie to Skinner and Turing, and more recently Daniel Dennett and Dawkins himself). But to my knowledge it has not been made by any whose field of expertise the use of metaphor is: poets. 

They, by contrast, have tended over the years to emphasise the dissimilarities between humans and machines, and warned of the dehumanising effects of an over-mechanistic world.  

And in the famous case of John Keats, his argument – taken on in full throat by Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow, was against the rationalist, scientific explorations that came with the Enlightenment, and the way they deadened, as he saw it, the joy to be found in the mysteries of the universe. 

His conception of negative capability was a profoundly wise expression of why trying to pin everything down (to box it in) cuts off at the root a sense of wonder in the unknown and the mysterious. And in some cases, the truths hidden but inherent in the illusory. 

His most famous poetic expression of this comes towards the end of Lamia, when the cold, rational, surface-truth of Old Apollonius, reveals Lamia’s identity and thereby destroys both her and her lover Lycias: 

                                               Do not all charms fly 
At the mere touch of cold philosophy? 
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: 
We know her woof, her texture; she is given 
In the dull catalogue of common things. 
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, 
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, 
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— 
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made 
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade. 

Dawkins was able to argue against this view very successfully in Unweaving the Rainbow because he focused on the wonder that is engendered by scientific discoveries in the natural world. But in making this argument, he was missing a central point of negative capability: that there are truths which science is not capable of getting at. There is no reason not to feel a sense of wonder at the truths science can reveal (my view, Keats may have disagreed) and Dawkins’s description of what is happening in the realm of physics and biology when an individual sees a rainbow is a point well made. He considered Keats to be advocating for self-deception when bewailing the gaze of science on natural beauty, but he ignored the possibility that there are truths in the human experience of natural beauty that science can impede. Keats was receptive, and unusually sensitive perhaps, to such truths, and he found the strict rationality of a scientific worldview restricting in his search for them. Poetry, which allows language to dance around its own limitations, enables rather than restricts this search.

Chris Edgoose, Richard Dawkins’s Big Poetic Mistake

Rhetorical
question: why do I find the foods of my first
colonizer delicious? Ordinary fare: steamed
swamp spinach, fried scad, rice. Delicious,
especially eaten without silverware, but not
served to guests or at parties. Our tongues,
taught to swerve from the language of our
origins. Taught to soften the trills
that might remind us of birds.

Luisa A. Igloria, Tapas

Written in the late 11^th or early 12th century, Le Chanson de Roland (‘The Song of Roland’) is the story of an 8th-century Frankish knight, nephew of Charlemagne, who died in 778 C.E. while leading the army’s rear-guard through a narrow pass in the Pyrenees on the way home to France, following a military campaign on the Iberian peninsula.

Considered the oldest known surviving work of French literature, the poem is a chanson de geste (‘song of deeds’), a legendary account of the ‘heroic’ actions and martyrdom of Charlemagne’s knights. The form emerged around the time of the first Crusade, when Christians sought to retake control of the Holy Land, and it continued to flourish throughout the 16^th century.

In contrast with actual events, the poem describes an epic battle against paien (pagans) and ‘Saracens,’ a broad term used by medieval Christians to refer to Muslims. In reality, the Battle at Roncevaux Pass involved an ambush by the Basques, a people indigenous to the Pyrenees, who were retaliating after Charlemagne’s army ransacked their villages and destroyed their capital at Pamplona.

According to the poem, however, the ambush was part of a plot against Roland, orchestrated by his stepfather in league with the enemy. Roland is slain, but his pious devotion to god and king, and his willingness to martyr himself in battle, earns him a place among the angels.

Adam Miyashiro, Professor of Medieval Literature at Stockton University, has described Le Chanson de Roland as “a product of both European nationalist and colonial aspirations.” In his translation, Roland’s war-cry during the battle is full of religious zeal and alarming certitude:

“Paien unt tort, e chrestiens unt dreit!”
(‘Pagans are wrong, Christians are in the right!’)

Roland the crusading evangelist may have been proud to die a martyr for his faith and for his king, but was he merely a pawn in the game? A paladin, or a puppet?

In the 19^th century, Sicilian Opera de Pupi began reinventing these medieval epic poems to explore powerful themes of honor, justice, loyalty, oppression, and resistance, as shaped by Sicily’s own struggle against invasions by foreign armies and imperial powers. Their version of the stories reflected a blend of linguistic and cultural influences, including Byzantine, Norman-French, Spanish, Arabic, and Italian.

Opera de Pupi transformed and subverted the old epic poems into stories of everyday heroes and unexpected victories, in which women could be knights, noble bandits prevailed, and clever peasants became advisors to kings. ‘Pagans’ and ‘Saracens’ were no longer the enemy, and Christians and Muslims both faced obstacles to overcome. Just as the handcrafted puppets reflected a distinctive Sicilian identity, the puppeteers also became artisans of their craft of storytelling and performance.

Jenevieve Carlyn, In the House of Puppets

What makes Marston Moor the best of [Payne] Fisher’s poems […] is its unresolved ambiguity. Fisher fought himself at Marston Moor, on the losing royalist side, and was imprisoned afterwards. The earliest drafts of the poem are straightforwardly royalist laments for the horror of the siege and the disaster of the defeat, in which Oliver Cromwell, who was Manchester’s second-in-command, takes the role of the devil. The revised and massively expanded poem published in 1650, which won such success with Cromwell that it secured Fisher a paid job as his poet for the next eight years, shifted momentum to acknowledge the glory and power of the Parliamentarian success, but Fisher by no means forgot about the suffering of the other side. Long passages describe the miserable conditions of the besieged people in York, their joy at being relieved, and the terrible royalist losses on the battlefield.

It is interesting that Cromwell was so impressed by a poem that is essentially so even-handed.

Victoria Moul, Like a patient Angler e’re he strook

I recently wrote a review of the book Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War.

Here’s a short excerpt:

It’s significant that as I began writing this review about Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War, a collection of poems reacting to the devastating ecological consequence of war, that our nation was again engaged in a new one. Rockets and drones were taking thousands of human lives, but also leaving lasting damage to land, water, and atmosphere. It will likely be decades until we understand the full extent of this war’s human, political, and environmental cost on our world.

You can read the whole review at Consequence Forum Substack here.

Grant Clauser, Review of Ecopoetics War Anthology: Convergence

Thinking of John Berger and his thoughts on the male gaze (I’m sure he thought we’d be well past bringing him up on this subject by now), I took And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, off the shelf. What a lovely thoughtful book that has been. Poems are nearer to prayers, he says. And, “Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been.” He says, “The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.”

Shawna Lemay, Art’s Power to Change You

Stars curl
and spiral

this night

O the sight
of all that

blue
and red
and white

all that
bursting

all that
fire

all that
might

Maureen Doallas, The Flag on the Fourth of July

A couple of weeks ago I encountered this poem by “Alabama-born, Appalachian and Palestinian” poet Mandy Shunnarah thanks to a Facebook group called Read A Little Poetry. The poem has stayed with me, and I’ve been thinking about why that is and why it speaks to me. […]

“It’s not Palestine / like old buddy, old pal” is a great line. The choice to end two lines with “Palestine” and “Falastin” — almost the same word but not, which is the point. I’ve had Mo Husseini’s extraordinary essay A letter from the margins on my mind since I read it, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the name Palestine and the diaspora experience he describes.

The second stanza is where the poem really tugs at my heart. My grandparents were immigrants too, and I remember my grandfather’s struggle with certain English words that never emerged the way he wanted. (“Sheet” was a particular bugbear.) My grandfather spoke seven languages, which was amazing! but he knew his English was accented.

I think of how my mother, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Prague in 1936, chose short, simple, all-American names for her kids, especially for the three sons who were born to her first. I think about the tensions between assimilation and remembrance, about the old-fashioned or “foreign” Jewish names that I see now mostly in cemeteries.

The poem asserts that “only an American” would choose an aspirational name, one they themselves can’t easily say. I recognize that sense of leaning toward the future even at the cost of generational disconnect. My family’s immigrant story is different than this one, but they rhyme, as it were. There’s something tender for me about that. […]

Against all of these backdrops this week I encountered this beautiful essay by Jennifer Elise Foerester, a member of the Mvskoke people, shared on FB via the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

She begins:

What if we listened to each other in the language of poetry?
Poetry is a language of deep listening.
Listening to each other in this way would be a listening that does not demand an answer, a translation, or defense; it would be a listening that acknowledges not knowing, that does not preclude the possibility of new perspectives.

Jennifer Elise Foerester, Beyond The Obvious

I love the idea that when we listen to each other as to a poem, we cultivate a spirit of radical welcome. I love the idea of poetry as a language of deep listening — an increasingly lost art in these polarized and angry times. The FB conversation I saw about Shunnarah’s poem was pretty polarized and angry. I didn’t experience much readiness to listen there.

I get the anger. (I really do. I’ve shared a few very angry poems of my own, of late.) But I want us to be able to listen in a way that both upholds our own truths and keeps us open to the truths of others. I don’t want to respond to poems with defensiveness; I want to cultivate openness. In poetry, as in spiritual life, multiple things can be true at the same time.

Rachel Barenblat, Two poems and a dream of America

You wouldn’t have bet on it, the frail famous poet teaching at Harvard as a visiting professor and the athletic secretary of the campus residence half her age. But every great love exists against probability, belongs to that region of the universe where the wildest bet may be the winning bet.

When she met Alice Methfessel, Elizabeth Bishop had served as Poet Laureate of the United States, had won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, had spent the better part of her youth in solitude and the better part of her middle age in South America with the woman she loved for seventeen years, who had taken her own life three years earlier.

Across their stations, across their age difference, across the abyss of possibility between their era’s parameters of permission, Elizabeth and Alice fell deeply and enduringly in love — a love that comes abloom on the pages of Megan Marshall’s delicious biography Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast (public library).

Soon, they were beginning each day with a ritual refrain: “Good-morning I love you.” The “blue blue blue” of Alice’s eyes became the sky of a new world shimmering with new life. More poems poured out in a spring than had in a decade. They swam together in the Galápagos, admiring the flamboyance of flamingos, and in the Greek Isles, admiring the poppies and their thousand shades of red. Whenever they were separated by Elizabeth’s itinerant life as a public poet, she sent Alice “love — housefulls, churchfulls, airportsfull” and carried her photograph in her breast pocket. She revised her will to leave everything except her books to Alice.

After five years together — years of extraordinary creative vitality for the poet, but also years of savage struggle with alcohol — Alice, exhausted by Elizabeth’s increasingly out-of-control drinking to the point of collapse, met a young man who soon proposed.

“I want you to be happy and good and loved,” Elizabeth told her in a touching reminder that the deepest measure of love is wanting the best possible life for the other person. But she was heartbroken.

She coped the way all artists do.

What began as mostly prose became, seventeen drafts and several titles later — “How to Lose Things,” “The Gift of Losing Things,” “The Art of Losing Things” — one of the greatest poems ever written […]

When she learned that Alice had decided to accept the proposal, Elizabeth was devastated. With the helpless vulnerability of love laid bare, which neither pride nor prejudice can touch, she wrote to her:

I DO want you to be free, darling — that wouldn’t ever make me stop loving you… You can always have me back if ever you should want me… truly.

And then she sent her the poem.

Nobody knows what beckoned Alice back — the poem, the way a badly sprained ankle signaled Elizabeth’s fragility and made Alice shudder at the thought of losing her, or simply the inexplicable gravitational pull of love that eludes, always eludes, theory.

“I like being with you more than anyone else in the world,” Alice wrote to Elizabeth that summer.

They remained together until death did them part — one awful October evening, a cerebral aneurysm left Elizabeth’s body for Alice to find on their bedroom floor.

Maria Popova, The Art of Losing and the Art of Beckoning Love Back: The Story Behind One of the Greatest Poems Ever Written

Whatever else we might do in our lives, death is the thing we all will do. Most of us would rather not think about that. Here, then, is where the poets step in. Our readers may recall, for example, Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” which takes death’s inevitability as its subject. Tennyson, the laureate, speaking for a country and a culture, asks the very question nobody wants to ask: “How will we die?” For her own part, Emily Dickinson takes the question closer to the bone. She considers not how a culture, a generalized entity, might think about mortality, but instead, how she herself, an unrepeatable human I, will die. What, she repeatedly wonders, will that actually be like? […]

In sequence she describes the “Funeral in my Brain” as an entirely auditory experience, nightmarish perhaps particularly for the claustrophobic among us whose recurring bad dream of live burial the poem encapsulates. The speaker, confined in her viewless coffin but entirely awake, hears the tramping feet of mourners, the monotone drumroll of the church service, the creaking of boots as her coffin is lifted and carried to some solitary place, where she finds herself abandoned — “Wrecked, solitary, here” — for eternity. “Here” all sound stops; here ends the poem, presumably.

But at this point we should stop and remind ourselves that the public-domain version of the poem we’re reading is the one that appears in Poems: Third Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and published in 1896, ten years after Dickinson’s death. Todd and Higginson clearly agreed that dear Emily could not possibly have meant all those em-dashes, but also that she could not possibly have meant the poem as it appears in her manuscripts, with a final stanza beyond the one given here — a stanza that changes everything:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down —
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing — then —

In this original and necessary final stanza, the speaker, like a person being hanged, feels the “Plank in Reason” break beneath her. As the poem ends, on an inconclusive em-dash, its thoughts cut short, its speaker drops utterly out of “knowing” into the unimaginable, timeless, silent mystery beyond. It’s a terrifying prospect, that moment when “knowing” ends: the moment when the self stops being the self, or at least stops being sure of being the self, or of anything at all.

Yet as a restoration of the poem in its wholeness, this true ending offers a corrective to the nightmarish sense of being buried alive, on which the expurgated version of the poem ends. Death in Dickinson’s vision is not a desert island, a solitary shipwrecking, but something far stranger, outside the bounds of human knowing. If it’s a terror, it’s also a liberation and a darker, wilder hope, for which human language, in all its knowing, has no word.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: I Felt a Funeral in My Brain

if you whisper your truths,

they’ll disappear, he’d say, so he never whispers them –
and when he does speak, his voice is the wild thud
of trees falling oceans from here in cool shimmers

of rain, in the hot curl of asphalt, in all the time needed
though there’s so little now to do, and he’s prayed deep
into the hole of his aching, but that’s not how it ends –

Sam Rasnake, Some Last Things

Thus week: Tranströmer’s ten thousand insect wings, the high shriek of a nightjar, moving at summer’s pace, an animal made of departure, and much more. Enjoy.

I can’t let the longest day of the year pass by unmarked. In the winter, I like to bake something citrusy and light a candle, trying to summon back the sun, but I spent the last solstice in the emergency room, tethered to a heparin drip while souls in assorted types of agony cried out—literally—all around me. Talk about the longest night of the year. This morning I walked under the midsummer trees, listening to chickadees and catbirds and great crested flycatchers and Tranströmer’s ten thousand insect wings, so maybe I’m ready to call it even with the universe. It’s good, you know, to be here.

Vanessa Stauffer, “Every Riven Thing” by Christian Wiman

Salmonberry bubbles
of sweet red light
break on our tongues.
Shooting stars
in the flowerbeds,
pollen in our sheets.

Sharon Brogan, Summer Solstice

We’ll stay up
late, light lingering
the first day
of summer,
til fireflies flash the seconds
before bedtime’s hour.

*
Notes

A shadorma is a poetic form of one or more 6-line stanzas, each of which comprises 3 / 5 / 3 / 3 / 7 / 5 syllables per line, respectively.

Maureen Doallas, Solstice

longest day
a fly through the front door
exits the back door

Jim Young [no title]

Watching the 1971 movie of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my children recently – a VHS favourite of my own childhood and far better than the clangorous Depp/Burton remake – I was struck by something in the dialogue I somehow hadn’t properly noticed before. Interesting to note that although Roald Dahl is credited with writing the screenplay for the film based on his own story, apparently he didn’t come up with the goods promptly enough and the American screenwriter David Seltzer was called in to complete the script, including much of the dialogue. […]

It’s in Gene Wilder’s ludic, ambivalent portrayal of Willy Wonka that Selzer’s dialogue really shines through. The element which surprised me in my recent viewing was the sheer number of literary references the film contains: Wonka’s exchanges with the children and their families are studded with lines of English poetry which invariably operate as puzzling non sequiturs, flummoxing the nosey vulgarity of the parents. I won’t list all the allusions here but, for example, there are half a dozen allusions to Shakespeare, including “Springtime, the only pretty ring time” from As You Like It, “Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?” from The Merchant of Venice and, in the remarkable final scene, “So shines a good deed in a weary world” (slightly twisted from “naughty world”, again from Merchant of Venice).

There’s also Keats’ “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” (the opening line of Endymion); a line from the anthology piece Sea Fever by John Masefield, “All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by” and even an Oscar Wilde bon mot from The Importance of Being Earnest, “The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.” Also in keeping with the film’s comic bravura is a line from Ogden Nash, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker” (in fact this is a whole four-line poem entitled ‘Reflections on Ice-Breaking’).

In the strange levity the film left me with, I began to see Willy Wonka in a different light. Rather than just the playful, eccentric ringmaster of the Chocolate Factory, the fanciful inventor of his own enclosed world and its fantastical confectionery, (even the trickster and conjuror emphasised in the recent Timothee Chalamet off-shoot Wonka), could he be read as a poet-figure in himself, a Wildean dandy as his velvet purple suit and frilly cravat might suggest? Suddenly the song which Wonka croons when the children and their parents first enter the Chocolate Room – “Come with me, and you’ll be/In a world of Pure Imagination” – took on a new resonance. It seemed to link back to the Romantics and their worship of the Imagination and its transformative power, set against the mercantile, avaricious cynicism of the outside world. Wonka’s song is ushering his guests into a sphere of imaginative liberty and sensory blurring such as we discover in poetry, a polymorphic zone in which the harmful impacts of contemporary life on the children might be tested and challenged.

Could Wonka even be seen as a Virgilian guide escorting Charlie and the others through an underworld whose circles embody four (if not Seven) of the Deadly Sins, with each child receiving the “poetic justice” appropriate to their vice – Gluttony (Augustus Gloop), Pride (Violet Beauregarde), Greed (Veruca Salt), Sloth/Wrath (Mike Teavee). The nightmarish ‘Boat Ride’ sequence sees the hallucinogenic magic of the Chocolate Room suddenly veer into a bad trip, perhaps prefigured by the earlier song ‘Candy Man’ with its familiar 70’s drug hint. The speeded-up boat ride seems like a spiralling catabasis, that descent into the underworld which was a recurrent trope in ancient mythology, notably in the myth of the archetypal poet Orpheus when he ventures into Hades. The lyrics of the song creepily intoned by Wilder hint at this interpretation – “Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?/ Is the grisly reaper mowing?”

Some further lines of poetry recited by Willy a little later not only seemed remarkably familiar to me, they also reinforced this sense of the narrative momentum of the film revolving around counterbalancing forces of, on the one hand, poetry and imagination, and on the other, moral transgression and penitence. “We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams”. Where did I know this from, was it Wilde again – surely something from the 19th century?

Oliver Dixon, The Music Makers

Almost every night, I walk. The darkness and I are familiar with each other; I meet it on my own terms. With my headtorch on, the world is reduced to a circle of light. Sometimes I fall and no-one sees, no-one cares, though green eyes shine in the forest. Gate posts greet me like friends; sheep scatter as I walk. In the darkness, yarrow and ox-eye daisies shine. The wild ponies feed through the night; they barely glance in my direction. A curlew is sleepless; over the sound of my podcast, an owl. There are foxgloves lining my path to home.

Exercise:

What taste is Monday? Which tree has the kindest personality? What shape is your anxiety? What texture is thunder?

Clare Shaw, Neurodivergent in Nature

It was the flapping
of loose shingles and the high shriek of a nightjar
from dusk to dawn. A tangle of sweet potato vines
crept toward your feet as if to say You think
your grief is original but what do you really know
of how things learn to sweeten in the dark?

Luisa A. Igloria, It was

In the last few days, I MC’d a reading at J. Bookwalter in Woodinville for their Wine and Poetry series, with poets Catherine Broadwall and Deirdre Lockwood, a local oceanographer. It was warm and sunny (you can tell I’m wearing sunglasses because there was so much glare inside!), but it was a good night AND Glenn did his first ever open mic performance, which I wish I had recorded, where he recited John Berryman’s Dream Song 14. I realized he is a better public speaker than I am, lol.

We also tried a real birdwatching trek because someone had posted about seeing a Lazuli Bunting at a local park. So, forgetting I don’t do well in heat, or sun, or, let’s face it, outdoors with hills and a lot of brush and non-paved pathways, we went on an adventure to a well-known birding trail at Marymoor Park. Despite wearing long sleeves, long pants, shoes and socks, plus sunscreen and two kinds of insect repellent, I still got attacked by a tick on my wrist while I was taking a shot (brushed it off within ten seconds, but still managed to leave a bite behind that required a doctor visit) and a black fly (which I am allergic to), so after an hour, I had to call it quits. It felt like nature had personally attacked me and told me I was an indoor cat, and keep to my own space, lol. On the birdwatching side, we saw about forty Great Blue Herons fly right over our heads, I saw Purple Martins and Tree Swallows and Yellowthroats, and multiple pairs of Lazuli Buntings (which is my first time ever seeing this dream bird). Oh, and did I mention my three-year-old Sony camera’s motherboard went out WHILE we were taking pictures? I didn’t get as many good ones, but it was still fun to see those birds.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Happy Solstice! A New Poem in Crab Creek Review, Reading at J. Bookwalter’s, Birdwatching as Contact Sport, Cyclical Economic Misery

Turkey became the second team to be eliminated from the World Cup this week after registering a record sixty two shots on goal without scoring any of them. This, I regard, as a spectacular achievement, for it represents the endeavour of the poet. The very best of us do not concern ourselves with hitting targets or clocking up points or reeling away to an adoring crowd after sending a sonnet sweetly into the top corner. Some of us try overhead kicks and fall flat on our arses, others fail even with a simple tap-in, can’t manage, in endless attempts, to slot that last line home. We miss the wide open goal, don’t know where or sometimes even what the goal is. So bravo Turkey, bravo for shooting and missing and shooting again. Bravo for those sixty two attempts without finding the net. Bravo for not being the first but the second team to exit. We poets are not in the results business, we are in the business of scuffing the turf, of hoofing long balls up the park, we are in the business of vague and hopeful shots in the dark because there is more to poetry, much, much more to poetry than just winning cups.

Jan Noble, N°69 Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie

Worlds collide all the time.  This past weekend, it was Jewish poets at the Yetzirah Poetry Conference in the Blue Ridge Mountains doing their poetry hootenanny alongside hundreds of ROTC kids shouting theirs. It was Jesus Freak! JC rocks!, a Christian camp retreat with snaking lines of African-American kids in identical T-shirts.  

It was bears with their hulking, early-morning shadows at the garbage. It was yes, ma’am and no ma’am.  It was the delicate mourning of one poet’s lines about her single plate and single egg while one single syllable (Rah! Go! Sir! Shun!) uttered by hundreds of thundering voices.  It was the war machine alongside the poet machine.  It was a twilight shriek that brought me to the ill-fitting screen window to witness the violence of a hyena and a dog, a raven and a mouse, what turned out to be the other animal in their rituals of lethal bloodletting.  It was Jewish poets wrestling with unholy bloodletting. 

It was poets on a mission to speak through and in the context of ancient values, in the poetry of Song of Songs, of humanism, of universal values. A tradition that bases itself on multiple points of view, on those voices arguing, dialoging, constantly confronting and refining each other is a tradition we must put forward.  It was our own scratching itches. It was a world where a sweet Asian intern at the YMCA’s coffee bar asked, “You one of the Jewish people? What do you say? – oh yes, Shalom!” It was an easy Shabbat Shalom, y’all.  

Jill Pearlman, Yetzirah, ROTC & Jesus Camp

It’s done. I have completed running. Yesterday saw me tick off the last stage (I think) of my midlife crisis (sort of wish I’d got into affairs and motorbikes) by running 53K across some hills as part of the Race To The King Ultramarathon. I am in awe of anyone that started and/or finished any of the races happening yesterday. Some absolute loons were doing 100K. […]

[L]ast night after we’d got home (and thanks to my beloved wife for coming to pick me up from Chichester), I was continuing my read of Tobias Hill’s Collected Poems while sitting in bed waiting for my legs to stop throbbing and for the painkillers to kick in.

I must confess to struggling with the book so far..I’m not sure if it’s the onslaught of a collected works that’s a bit much, some of if I’m just not connecting to, or if I’ve been distracted this week while reading it. I do intend to go back to some of it, but when I have connected I’ve really liked it.

Mat Riches, Running Up the (Tobias) Hills

Leave it to a sunny day to turn a boring chord progression into a bright war against imperialism.

A day that shimmers you pearl-promised, tranced in rays of purple unhazed, unfazed by the boom of doomsday’s drums.

Leave it to a sunny day to steam your third eye clean, to make you feel so far out you can hear the stars sneeze.

Rich Ferguson, An Eraser Big Enough for Misspelled Skywriting

I’ve just finally gotten around to reading Salman Rushdie’s memoir Knife, in which he writes:

…[A]rt challenges orthodoxy. To reject or vilify that art because it does that is to fail to understand its nature. Art sets the artist’s passionate personal vision against the received ideas of its time. Art knows that received ideas are the enemies of art…clichés are received ideas and so are ideologies…without art, our ability to think, to see freshly, and to renew our world would wither and die.

Art is not a luxury. It stands at the essence of our humanity, and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist. It accepts argument, criticism, even rejection. It does not accept violence. [Salman Rushdie]

There are others who’ve said this. I think immediately of Audre Lorde:

Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

What makes a person really a writer, really an artist, is–in my mind–this quality of necessity. And of the right to exist, regardless of whether the nation, state, government, religion, or other ideology suggests that one ought to shut up. For many years, I questioned whether I was, or would ever be, “really a writer.” Now, I feel that I am. Regardless of what the academy, the current aesthetic, the powers that be might say. There’s a deep contentment that accompanies this feeling: somehow or other, I got here; it has little to do with publication or public acknowledgment, and even less to do with remuneration.

Maybe it’s age. (Crone wisdom, anyone?) So, for any of my readers who are younger people, by which I mean under 55, who feel like impostors or dilettantes or who question whether they deserve the title of “a serious writer,” I’m going to suggest that you keep writing and endure. And maybe stop asking yourself so many questions about your worth. You don’t have to be famous or acknowledged to be a writer, you just have to be dedicated to writing and to learning about writing. There’s value even in that, in looking hard at the “rock experiences” of your daily life and endeavoring to make something of those experiences. Stay curious, stay unorthodox.

Ann E. Michael, Not a luxury

Realistically I’m still very, very far away from the idealised life with its little house in the countryside and several books of published poetry and an income from writing that means I can choose when and how much I undertake socially demanding work (and yes there’s a whole other conversation here about how the journey is the destination, but I’m not going to get into that now). But where did me of a few years ago want to be?

She wanted a job, any job that meant she could pay the bills; she wanted to work in a climbing wall because she thought it would be fun and didn’t know then that she’s AuDHD and a socially demanding role would take it’s toll; she wanted to get into route-setting; she wanted to publish more poems; to get a first in her undergrad and get on to an MFA; to move out of a terrible, terrible house-share that made her miserable; she wanted a car; she was lonely socially and romantically; she wanted to be able to climb 7b; she wanted to get out into the poetry scene and start building a career…

I work at a wall, I route set, I climb 7b, I’ve had a few more poems published, I got a first in my undergrad, I’m doing an MFA, I live in a friendly house-share in a better part of town, I have some great friends who I see here and there, I have a wonderful and supportive partner who’s caring and kind and aware of my capacities and boundaries and meets me where I’m at, I go walking and birdwatching when I can and those things fill me with joy, I run this Stack and over 100 people find enough value in what I do here to subscribe to it, I host The Space Poetic and The Poetry Book Club and a series of workshops and clubs and there’s joy and community in all of them…

I am living exactly the life a previous me wanted so badly.

Rachael Hill, Opening up the timeline

Hard to build anything 
these days but golden calves and temples 
to avarice. Like Lot’s wife, I’m tempted 
to look back, but ahead is a small rabbit,
crouched, ears low, still as stone.

Sarah Russell, February 2026

All in all the week was gentle and quiet. Joys included delivering copies of the group poem to the residents at the housing association, feeling physically better after a recent hysteroscopy, drafting poems about said procedure so that it is set down out of my head, finding out during a conversation with a friend that there might be an audience for said poems even though I thought they were possibly a bit niche, getting back out into the garden. […]

There has also been time for reflection and I have taken time to reflect on the same experience through two different lenses … the lens of poetry and the coaching lens. When I write confessional poetry I love the cathartic nature of the setting down and the rawness. I hear the words reflected back and see the human experience of the moment. When I think about the coaching lens I think about the helpfulness of the forward-thinking nature of coaching. How saying things out loud to a thinking partner can be far more productive than listening to the repeated thoughts of an internal voice. Saying things out loud in a coaching space helps with a more efficient and proactive untangling of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It was the coaching lens that enabled me to swap months of dithering for minutes of action. And it’s the poetic lens that lets me set down the experience for others to read.

Sue Finch, A SLIGHTLY BLURRED MIDSUMMER RONNIE

I’m teaching a three-hour virtual workshop on underworld poetry next week, preparing in bits and pieces as I carve out time for new writing, news-reading, and visiting loved ones who are struggling through their own purgatories (and in some cases exiting triumphant–my sister has successfully divorced the toxic narcissist, and there are celebrations throughout the land). My hope is for real connection with other poets across the abysses that strand us. I love a seminar-style conversation about poetry: no small talk, just digging into what matters, which can range from the subjects themselves that engage us to poetic strategies that might carry a reader along. Whether what comes to mind is death and decay or transformation and emergence, underground spaces have weird power and potential.

Below (hah!) are a few of the poems I’ll share in the workshop–the ones that are readily available online, because living writers ought to be able to drive you to their books for satisfaction. Poets go to dark places, deliver treasures, and don’t get much love or money for that labor. I strongly recommend Deborah A. Miranda‘s books–her poems, such as “Mnemonic,” can be fiercely geological–and there are compelling caves and cenotes in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s new Night Owl. Here’s another good one in Amethyst Review: “Cloacina” by J. C. Scharl, whose work I don’t know at all otherwise, but it’s an appealingly filthy poem. I’d love to hear about the ditches and basements, bomb shelters and swimming pools that haunt you, if you’re able to join us on June 28th.

Even if not, enjoy the following subways, scuba dives, and bog archaeology of influential 20th century lyric spelunking.

Lesley Wheeler, Sneak preview of Poetry from the Underworld

I was fortunate to get my hands on an advance copy of Catherine Balaq’s new pamphlet, Some Dark God, which will be published by V Press on 3rd July.

As the title suggests, these poems are dark and chthonic – they get their hands mucky in the soil, pulling out all the blind, wriggling things to show us. Darkness here is a thing that attracts, intrigues and repels in one breath. It is the “very dark God who is watching you”, the “soul-thin drapes” of a widow’s kimono, the “kitchen sulk at parties”.

“A darkness lifting itself above, / leaving a darkness in its wake” (Ceridwen)

Catherine draws on Ceridwen and other mythological figures such as Persephone and Lilith to subvert notions of power, shame and propriety. You do not need to know the full stories of these myths to understand that the speakers of these poems are speaking back, reclaiming narratives that have through history been denied to them.

I was interested in the pervasive feeling of unsettled-ness running through the work. Catherine knows how to work the darkness into us, like a splinter we worry at, while we read. There is an ambivalence to poems such as Witch Fingers that resists a neat interpretation;

broodish with thumb buckles, tucks of knuckles.
Touch me, neat-scratch me in ticking stripes,
pull me and push me down on my knees.

The sonic patterning is fidgety, jumpy, and the reference to “ticking stripes” has that kind of (dark) cottagecore feeling. Pretty things but with an undercurrent. Elsewhere, a “ditsy Liberty’s hanky” is used to pocket a rather frightening toad.

Victoria Spires, Seeing in the dark

Bennett’s book […] opens with a page of “acknowledgements & process notes” and a three-page list of “influences, references, & sources,” material usually held for the back of any collection. As Bennett’s “acknowledgments & process notes” includes:

Many of these are ‘found’ poems using text from various sources. We had originally set out to write about the divine shadow feminine but She will not be intellectualized, only embodied. As various illnesses took away my ability to use electronic devices & think & speak & write with coherency, She invited me to turn inward, dance deeper into Madness, & to use unconscious analog art-making methods such as cut-up, collage, & chance operations. &—although I don’t love this term, it smacks of the hospital, preferring instead to be divinely guided rather than operated upon—as adaptation.

The result is this rough beast before you.

Thank you for reading.

Assembled across three sections, each of which are constructed as extended lyric sequences that interconnect—“The Oxford Dodo vs. The Anatomical Venus,” “The New Bodily Ethos” and “Excavation of the Colossal Mother”—there is something interesting in how one might see Bennett’s prior engagement with the sonnet as attempting to find order within a particular kind of chaos. Through the use of found material set in collage, a different kind of order, Bennett works a lyric structure more overtly chaotic, or, more likely, one that allows for a coherence through the chaos itself. Working with, and not against, what Bennett’s own possibilities provide. And in which Bennett’s compositional approach evolves from composing a poem with one’s own material, to being able to discern where the poem might already exist, within that same material. The pastiche provides Bennett a way to think through their improvisations to achieve something entirely fresh. Or, as Bennett themlseves write, towards the end of the second section:

      I rise & become one
in new shapes

rob mclennan, Roxanna Bennett, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us

It’s hard to think of a less fashionable English text than More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies (except, I suppose, possibly Jonson’s Ars Poetica). More’s Dialogue endorses the most dreadful form of execution for unremitting heresy, and it’s written in a conversational form of English as it was spoken in the 1520s — there is no punctuation in the original apart from the virgule (/), which is more like a breath mark than modern punctuation. More than anything else, the dialogue is about speech — the power and danger and beauty of talking to one another — and about language as it is spoken, in the mouth and on the tongue, as it is chammed (‘chewed’, one of his favourite words) and corrupted and turned to wit or wisdom. It is one of the great love poems to the English language.

As he turns to consider the risks of translation into the vernacular, More makes a remarkable comparison between translation and the divine venture of the incarnation:

Whereof I would not, for my mind, withhold the profit that one good, devout unlearned layman might take by the reading [of scripture] — not for the harm that a hundred heretics would fall in by their own willful abusion; no more than our Saviour letted [refused] for the weal [benefit] of such as would be, with his grace, of his little chosen flock, to come into this world and be lapis offensionis, et petra scandali (1 Peter 2), ‘the stone of stumbling, and the stone of falling’ – and ruin to all the wilful wretches in the world beside.

Translating is risky and difficult; it never works perfectly and something is always lost. How far off it is! that state of grace. But on those rare occasions when a translation really works, how close to us it seems.

Victoria Moul, What is translation for?

Bill Lavender’s city of god is a kind of serial epic of our times that takes the form of a dialogue with St Augustine’s book of the same name in the translation of the Rev. Marcus Dods, M.A. In a Foreword, Lavender tells us that he started the work as a ‘spiritual exercise’, expecting City of God to be similar in nature to the saint’s Confessions. He was, however, to discover that it’s an entirely different kind of beast, ‘a viscous polemic delivered in a tone of cynical derision and condescending parody, reminiscent of the radical right-wing polemics we see in popular media today, like the (ostensibly) new movement of Christian Nationalism’.

To add to the effect, Lavender began the work on the 6th of January, 2021, with images of riot and pillage on the streets of Washington overlapping with similar scenes on the streets of 5th century Rome and the fact that Augustine was writing in Hippo, a city on the cusp of destruction. Unsurprisingly, the work that emerged folds a good deal of politics, current and historical, into its weave.

Billy Mills, city of god by Bill Lavender: A Review

In the six years I have been writing reviews, I have rarely encountered a collection of such epic ambition as Hadley-Jones Hoyles’ A Ministry of Light (The Candyman’s Trumpet, 2025). The collection focuses on three periods in the history of the ancient British territories we would now recognise as Northern England and Southern Scotland: 350 AD, 525 AD and 700 AD. These are eras of turmoil, upheaval and instability, in which competing tribes contest ownership and control of the land. Hoyles renders this world through anonymous period voices, in poems whose cadence, alliteration and use of kennings recall early medieval verse and lend those voices a persuasive sense of authenticity. Although the collection is rooted in the distant past, it offers a resonant meditation on colonisation and its effects on communities, making it a work with considerable relevance for contemporary readers.

The subjugation of any community is a violent act, and this is vividly realised in Hoyles’ visceral verse. This is not a world shaped by diplomacy or mediation: relationships between competing tribes are determined by unchecked violence. In Eel at the deli counter, the poet presents a landscape strewn with the bodies of the fallen: ‘Breastplates scattered/ like shards of crab/ some tasty meats are clinging/ though them crows it seems/ have had first dibs/ I still have the option/ of Roman cheek/ or sun-dried Thracian liver.’ The image of the eel relishing the prospect of feeding on human flesh is arrestingly horrific, recalling the traditional ballad The Twa Corbies, with its bleak meditation on death, abandonment and the indifference of nature. The eel becomes a recurring presence in the collection: an immortal, detached consciousness that comments on centuries of change while moving between river, sea and land, and between different historical moments. In this poem, Hoyles uses the eel to symbolise nature’s indifference to human conflict. Violence becomes little more than a local disturbance within a larger, enduring natural order; the eel’s appetite gives that indifference a memorably brutal form.

Nigel Kent, Review of ‘A Ministry of Light’ by Hadley-James Hoyles

Decades of film noir explain
how he dreamed himself—

pure Forties Bogart,
dinner-jacket suave, a cool
hand gesturing smoke,

a smolder censing
rooms thick with urbanity.
Struck from the film script:

his wife, his daughters
cleaning bathrooms, tasting ash.

Maryann Corbett, For Father’s Day . . .

“Eating Air” is a celebration of food and loving family connections. Du Bois has deliberately chosen a conversational, colloquial vocabulary that mixes Malay words and customs with English as a reflection of the poems’ messages. The use of food is not to separate but to combine and explore the possibility of new flavours and new traditions. A successful blend of mixed heritages.

Emma Lee, “Eating Air” Suyin du Bois (Emma Press) – book review

Zoë Walkington’s Missing Person (smith | doorstop, available here) was my reading matter of choice on trains to and from Leeds on Saturday. It’s ground-breaking: a mash-up of poetry pamphlet and police procedural detective fiction, in which we encounter suspects, and police investigators in a case of child abduction from an underpass in York. The reader is invited to read the poems and solve the case. I’m glad to report that yours truly did indeed crack the case. (No wonder I bought a copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes in the book sale at the Leeds Library.) The richness of Missing Person lies, though, in the details – I have to say ‘gritty’ details. ‘Black Gloves’ opens thus:

How much for these? I ask the bloke
behind the trestle, who looks like
he has just eaten his own young.
And he looks me up and down
and says Seven quid to you, and I say
I’ll give you three and he shakes his head
as though I’m asking him which of his
Alsatians he wants to have put down.

The (black) humour here will be recognisable to anyone who read Zoë’s marvellous I Hate to Be the One to Tell You This (smith | doorstop, 2023). I won’t spoil the surprise and cleverness of Missing Person any further.

Matthew Paul, Recent reading and an imminent reading

I have been saddened to learn of the death, early in May, of philosopher, writer, and professor at Penn State University — and a frequent contributor to this blog —  Emily Rolfe Grosholz.  (Here is a link to her informative obituary.)

In remembrance of Emily, here is the opening stanza of her poem “In Praise of Fractals” — posted in this blog at this link back in November, 2014.

Euclid’s geometry cannot describe,
nor Apollonius’, the shape of mountains,
puddles, clouds, peninsulas or trees.
Clouds are never spheres, 
nor mountains cones, nor Ponderosa pines;
bark is not smooth; and where the land and sea
so variously lie about each other
and lightly kiss, is no hyperbola.

from “In Praise of Fractals” by Emily Grosholz

This link leads to a list of citations of Emily Grosholz and her work in this blog.

JoAnne Growney, Sadness — Math Poet Emily Grosholz has passed . . .

In hindsight, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) appears as literary runner-up in the Great American Poetry Pageant of the 19th century. The crown, of course, belongs to Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), with whom Hunt, exactly the same age, had played as a child and became reacquainted late in both their lives. But although Hunt’s reputation has waned, as it might have done even absent the overshadowing fact of Dickinson’s genius, her poems, with their quiet innovations on received forms and their complicated interest in perception, continue to reward a reader’s attention.

Like the late sonnet “February,” from her posthumously published Calendar of Sonnets, Today’s Poem concerns itself with the natural world, but also with the human impulse to impose meaning on that world and then to read the world through that meaning. “Poppies on the Wheat,” which appears in Jackson’s first collection, the 1870 Verses, gives us an Italian landscape, in which poppies grow among the summer-burnished wheat, but its real subject is human perception.

The farmer, with his prosaically “heavy feet,” looks at the growing wheat and sees his harvest. The present holds no particular beauty for him, except as it foretells the prosperous future. The poet-speaker, by contrast, envisions a future in which, stripped of all other nourishment, she may sustain herself on the remembered beauty of the poppies, which promise no outcome except the memory of their beauty.

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: Poppies on the Wheat

Like all good poems, […] ‘The Trees’ [by Philip Larkin] grows richer when it’s read in relation to other poems. Those relationships, in turn, makes the ‘horror’ both easier to recognise and to digest. In the original piece, I talked about Tennyson, because I was reading Tennyson. Henry spots T. S. Eliot, and as Victoria Moul points out, that grief / leaf rhyme is everywhere in English poetry. There are, as so often in High Windows, ‘“furtive memories of once having enjoyed some French symbolist poetry” (for which see Jeremy Noel-Tod here).

Then again, we don’t even need to look outside of the book. Perhaps the most obvious companion poem to ‘The Trees’, is ‘Cut Grass’, which is placed towards the end of High Windows. Both poems are made up of three four line stanzas. Both are about the seasons: ‘Cut Grass’ picks up in ‘young-leafed’ June where ‘The Trees’ left off in May).

In other respects, as David Rees notes, they couldn’t be more different. ‘The Trees’ is argumentative, where ‘Cut Grass’ is pure image:

Cut grass lies frail: Brief is the breath Mown stalks exhale. Long, long the death It dies in the white hours Of young-leafed June With chestnut flowers, With hedges snowlike strewn, White lilac bowed, Lost lanes of Queen Ann’s lace, And that high-builded cloud Moving at summer’s pace.

This is so straightforwardly beautiful that I don’t think it needs much comment. But on we go all the same. There is an extended metaphor in the first few lines — grass as life and death — before the poem turn into a series of images, whiteness piled on whiteness. Larkin described the poem as ‘like music’ and said he heard a melody kicking in around line six. The chestnuts that were ‘unresting castles’ in May are simply flowers here. Nature isn’t threatening, perhaps because it’s dying.

‘Cut Grass’ is one of Larkin’s little Edens. The poem is steeped in an Englishness which is both nostalgic (those lovely ‘lost lanes’) and hierarchical: the lilac is bowing, the cow parsley has its folkish, regal name. In that sense, it is a deeply conservative poem, but the politics is itself in service of the poem’s deeper myth-making, which is more about coming to terms with ‘the changing of the seasons’ than submission to any kind of human order.

Jeremy Wikeley, The Trees, again

Poets have a very specific occupational hazard: the warped representation of ourselves that results from our shortfall in self-knowledge. The poem is, neutrally, the most self-conscious form of speech humans can make, and those shortfalls tend to manifest in the way our poems project our own neuroses. All poems are generally ‘revealing’ of their authors, and can be psychoanalysed. I love Sharon Olds, but I suspect her habit of relentless TMI disclosure and confession is partly there to shock her parents. In the late Cantos, I’d say Pound’s absurd who-is–the-smartest-poet–of-them-all shtick is manifesting a lifelong embarrassment over the extent of his own bluffed scholarship. I’m not sure the lad could really concentrate. There are drugs for that now. (Talking of drugs: Plath had no choice in her own terrible lie, that voice in her head which told her death was the only solution. She was unlucky to get landed with imipramine, an old tricyclic; it has the notorious side-effect of rapidly flipping the bipolar cycle from elation to psychotic plunge. It’s unbearably sad to think that today’s meds might have turned that voice off.)

To return to the subject of making it harder than it has to be – sue me, but I think late Geoffrey Hill suffers from an explicit projection of the class insecurity (British grammar school county scholarship variant) and terror of God that, despite all the alleged ‘jokes’, saw his compensating authoritarian fantasies run out of control. I think the idea was that we were supposed to be very afraid of him. (Late Hill gave full reign to his worst stylistic vice, namely melodrama: this had previously been reined in by the wise habit of slow composition, something his SSRIs had destroyed. One was pleased he was happier, as I was pleased to hear that X was now sober; but don’t force me to pretend it improved their poetry. Hill had always apparently pursued the dubious logic that to risk being easily understood was to risk simplicity, and to risk simplicity was to risk cliché, but his late work displayed a pretentiousness that could approach the inadvertently ‘Pythonesque’, in performances that forcefully implied that to fail to share his precise store of cultural signs – and therefore fail to follow the metonymic contraction this shared knowledge permitted – was to be a rube or a philistine. He was a quite extraordinary poet, but I saw few signs that he ever caught himself on. When I watch him read, I still see terrible, existential fear, and I want to hug the guy and tell him he’s not going to hell. Heaney was no less erudite, but he never bullied his readers to make himself feel better. Sorry; I’m only banging on about Hill as his best poetry means more to me with every passing year.)

OK: I think we can probably agree that this is more of an unethical parlour game. But ‘what is X getting wrong about herself?’ is as good a question to ask of a poet as of anyone else. It’s an especially good one for a poet to turn inwardly. We may all be liars, but we can’t tell an honest lie until we eliminate those we tell ourselves.

Don Paterson, POETS ARE LIARS

It’s officially publication day for White Winged Doves: A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology! Many thanks to my friend and co-editor, Megan Volpert, for going on this two-year adventure, Madville Publishing for agreeing to publish it, Donna Kile for incredible cover photography, and our stellar lineup of contributors. And, of course, to the original sister of the moon, Stevie Nicks, for inspiring us all.

If you couldn’t attend the virtual launch reading on May 26 – Stevie’s birthday! – hosted by the Georgia Center for the Book, you can watch it on YouTube by clicking the link below. [link]

Collin Kelley, Publication day and virtual launch video!

Excited to share that my new book – No Way Home – is now available on Amazon in the US and UK, in Paperback and Hardcover editions. Am sharing the links below for those who might want to check it out.

Can’t wait for you to read it! And to hear what you think of it!

US: https://www.amazon.com/No-Way-Home-Rajani-Radhakrishnan/dp/B0H3PKVBCC/

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H3PKVBCC/

It has been three long, anxious months from completed manuscript to this point. I think I am ready now to spend more time on the blogs – catch up on all that I’ve missed and start writing some new poems.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, Now Available!

Some poets find it hard to accept a poor review. Luckily, I don’t suffer from this kind of thinness of skin. I’ve had plenty of negative reviews in the past for books, whether poetry or not, and have been called all kind of disparaging names for what I’ve written in newspapers, so I have long accepted that this stuff comes with the territory.

Of course I want people to appreciate and like what I write. If I didn’t think the poems were any good, I’d not have wanted them to be formed into a collection. A collection should reflect what you think is your best work at the time it was sent off for publication. But as I said, once I’ve committed them to print, while it does feel really good when someone likes them and says so, they’re subject to the free-for-all of opinion. Or, if it turns out to be the case, subject to an utter and brutal silence.

It’s no secret that I am part of no poetry ‘school’ or clique, nor do I want to be. I won’t be entering any competitions or hawking the book around ‘collections of the year’ awards because they don’t interest me. I suggest those who compile long-or short-lists of books look first for names they have heard of, then fill out the list, mostly from the more acceptable, longer-lasting, grant-aided publishers, and finally add in a few small press books as evidence of their open mind. While any publicity is good publicity, and if a book’s title is on a long-list, that does help with marketing, it seems a fairly tired model to me and the prize largely valueless. The poetry books I buy in a year have nothing to do with a poet’s reputation. I might open them in a shop, physical or online, be intrigued by a poem, and so buy it. Or in the past, have heard someone at a reading and have bought the book on the back of it. I won’t buy it, simply because it won this or that prize.

Bob Mee, IF YOU WOULD LIKE A REVIEW COPY OF POEMS IN THE KEY OF AARDVARK, PLEASE LET ME KNOW

From 1995 and my first book, to 2025, my seventh. Thirty years of putting poems together and hoping they make sense, make more of each other, at the very least offer a view of moments in time. 

This one has taken about seven years. Some have been quicker, but this book’s poems accumulated slowly and even at the last minute I was throwing some out. 

It starts with a quote about sewing, specifically mending. My life in sewing began at school when one of the first things we were taught was how to mend a sheet. That was the 1960s. Early days for consumerism. 

Fear and loss are also linked in this book. It’s impossible to write today without acknowledging the enormous environmental changes I’ve witnessed – the loss of stag beetles paired with news footage of the Vietnam war. The loss of flies paired with love. The loss of beetles paired with lifelong friendship. 

I write about money, trade, the price of meteorites. And then there are attitudes towards older women, so ageing is another topic that feeds into poems about fear and loss. In one poem I demolish a desk, in another I am cursed, in another I place an older woman at the centre of the language of money. 

None of my books have been tightly themed but tend towards the surreal. I want to understand, celebrate, dive deep into human interaction and attempt to expand specific moments with a different language to that of everyday conversation. But I hope a reader will recognise the language of everyday in my poems, as well as the assonance, rhymes, rhythms that may not be attached to specific forms, but which give it a different tone. 

In the last section of the book, Estuary, the poems come from the fluctuating self who is travelling between two places, the place where you might encounter a saint, a preacher, a memory of childhood, where you might, like a cat, be led by a sense of home, navigate by lullaby. Where you might find yourself in hiding for a night and a day and make the most of it. The book starts with mending, ‘the sea rebuilding reefs’ and ends ‘at the mouth of a river/ with water birds’. Always the sea, and that’s the influence of my city caught between a pebble beach and rolling chalk downland. 

Making the Wedding Dress is available from Salt Publishing for £10.99

Jackie Wills, A life of mending

The work has changed over the years, but every time I think something new feels vastly different, on re-read, it is still very much the same. I don’t hate this–if anything I’ve gotten cleaner, leaner, and meaner in poems. the language is more rhythmic and concise than what I was writing a decade ago. Two decades ago. Three decades ago, I was just finishing up my undergrad degree and writing terrible rhyming poems, so getting toward something good takes time.  

While I would say many of the same obsessions that fueled book number one have similarly fueled this latest book which I am putting the very final touches on as we speak,  I think I am doing them better justice. More sure-footed and intentional than the girl who used to throw things at the wall and see what would stick. But then there are also how the obsessions wax and wane. They feel more fictionalized now, with the series in MKK almost feeling like small stories and worlds placed alongside each other in the whole of the book. The NOLA vampire poems, the Bluebeard sequence, the governess poems. There were definitely books that felt like there was more of me, personally, in them–MAJOR CHARACTERS…felt very much like this. As did FEED and RUINPORN, though there may be the rather obvious reasons for this–both were bread out of a time when I was losing my parents, restructuring my life, and undergoing a lot of strangeness in the world. But I suppose just because the poems are about other people, that doesn’t mean I am not in there, rattling around like a rock in the shoe. 

And maybe, my thoughts on mid-careerness are not about the writing at all.  Things have changed greatly in the past decade on how I look at my work and strive to connect to readers. To find the best way to situate myself and my work in a way that seems right, even if it is not the usual, well-trodden path. What I’ve found there is immensely helpful when it comes to charting paths in new mediums. To look at the scope of the playing field and be able to decide what works for me, what doesn’t. What I want and what is not all that important. It’s a better state to feeling out the world in, and ill probably be far more satisfying than the years I spent tortuously pondering what kind of poet I wanted to be, what were the rules and punishments for disobeying them. It’s actually very freeing. 

Kristy Bowen, dispatches from midcareer poeting

My Plan A was to be a university professor with tenure. In California, when you teach at a university, you don’t wear elbow patches; you wear jeans and blazers. My father, whom I only met briefly, wore those patches, smoked a pipe. For real? I thought. I wanted to become one of those West Coast-type jeans-and-blazer professors. That was Plan A. But it didn’t happen. Maybe in the future. But I have never taught at USC or any of the UCs, outside of extension classes.

We recently published an author who teaches at a public university in California and makes $310,000 a year. I thought, That could be me. My family would be living well. I would have a nice house/kayak/dog/car, take vacations like la-di-da. I always feel like when you have more money, it’s easy to lean into saying smart things because you don’t have panic in your throat, and that’s a good thing. I can picture myself with a well-compensated teaching job, waxing eloquent.

Instead, I’m on Plan B.

Plan B is publishing. Making a choice to jump headfirst into instability, risk, and recklessness. People keep asking me what I’ll do if saving Red Hen doesn’t work, as if there is a Plan C. I think, Come on, these plans don’t run to Z. There’s just Plan A and Plan B.

I’ve thought about it, sure. I could live in Sri Lanka or Vietnam on five hundred a month, but that is not the plan and wouldn’t fulfill me. Failure is not in our future.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s also healthy to say, I can’t make it without help. Every single person who has stepped up to say I am here to help you, we are finding a way to honor their names. We want to remember who got us through this crisis. We want to remember that we have friends. That we are not alone.

Kate Gale, Walking Through the Moon Door

I’m lucky enough to have my own rowing machine, which we keep on our balcony during the summer months. The balcony looks out over two tall oak trees, leaning towards each other like old friends. As I row I watch squirrels chasing each other through the trees, leaping insouciantly from branch to branch to the accompaniment of a symphony of birdsong.

Meanwhile the display screen in front of me indicates the distance I’ve rowed, the time I’ve taken, my pace, stroke rate and even my heartbeat. At any instant I have a measure of my performance. 

Often I count along with the strokes, particularly when I am pushing myself towards the end of a workout. When I go to the gym I count too, lifting weights in sets of six or eight, and noting the number of breaths for which I can hold plank position.

This has led me to muse upon how numbers underlie our activities: whether we are counting rowing strokes, football goals, or tricks in a game of bridge; recording the distance we’ve cycled or driven; monitoring blood pressure; or marking birthdays on a calendar. We count the syllables in a haiku, the metrical feet in a pentameter, the notes in a musical scale. 

We (mostly) think in words or images, but numbers – in all their glorious variations, as sequences or patterns or absolute values – provide the unobtrusive ostinato of our lives.

I row. I watch squirrels and numbers, listen to birdsong, count strokes, and muse.  Sometimes my musings evolve into a poem.

Marian Christie, Musings

There were swifts over the rooftops last night — a low, screaming party of them, six or seven, scything the air above the lane in that way they have, as if the evening were a thing to be cut into ribbons. I stood at the gate and watched until the light went. They had come up from the south of the town, over the orchard, and they turned at the church and came back, and turned again, screaming the whole time, that high thin sound that is less a song than a kind of friction. I have been waiting for them since the first week of May, when one arrived and then was gone, and I half-thought I had imagined it. Now there is a colony of them, and the evenings have their proper noise. […]

A swift does not land. Not on the ground, not in a tree, not on a wire like the swallows. Once a young swift leaves the nest it may stay airborne for two or three years before it ever touches anything — feeding on the wing, drinking on the wing, gathering nest material on the wing, sleeping, it is thought, on the wing, climbing to a great height at dusk and dozing in slow circles through the dark. It mates in the air. By the time it first comes to rest, in the eaves of some building it has chosen, it has flown a distance that would have carried it several times round the world. We share our houses with an animal that is, in almost every sense that matters, made of departure.

And it is leaving us. The swift is on the red list now — the most serious category of conservation concern in Britain. The numbers have fallen by better than half in a generation, partly because the insects have thinned, partly because we have tidied and sealed and renovated away the small dark gaps under the roofline that they need. A bird that asks of us only a hole the size of a fist, and gives back the whole high theatre of a summer evening, is being quietly evicted by our improvements. I think about this when I watch them. The impermanence is not only in their season. It is in their tenure. […]

I have spent a fair part of these last years learning, slowly and against my inclination, not to grasp at things that are leaving. It does not come naturally to me. My instinct, when something good is plainly temporary, is to start grieving it while it is still here — to spoil the present arrival with the rehearsed loss. The swifts will not let me do that. They are too fast, too loud, too entirely in their six weeks of August-bound summer for any of that elegiac nonsense. They insist on the evening they are actually in.

That, I think, is what the solstice has to teach as well, if we will let the longest day be what it is rather than what we wish it were. The light is already turning. It has been turning, in fact, since before the swifts arrived; it will go on turning while they fly south. None of that is a reason to stand at the gate in mourning. It is a reason to stand at the gate. To watch the birds cut the evening into ribbons for as long as the evening lasts, and then to go in, and to let them go when their night comes, knowing they will lift off without ceremony and that the eaves will be silent by September.

Adam Cairns, The longest day

short pilgrimage…
some sun
in the side yard

Tom Clausen, illumination

This week: the prow of the house, swampy winged women, a parking space for dreams, rubbish dumps and petrol pumps, and much more. Enjoy.

One morning last week I woke abruptly from a dream about Horace’s ode to a wine-jar, Odes 3.21, which begins o nata mecum consule Manlio (“o female-thing born with me when Manlius was consul, i.e. in 65 BC”). In the dream, the first line was the actual first line but the following three were some kind of made-up dream-Latin, though in alcaics of course, like the original.

Horace’s odes are almost all addressed to people. There are very few to non-human entities: just this one, 1.32 (the poet addressing his own lyre) and 3.13 (to the Bandusian spring). Odes 3.21 is accordingly quite often treated as a kind of comedy-ode or even a send-up of one, and this isn’t wrong, exactly: it obviously is meant to be humourous and perhaps quite affectionate. But thinking of it as a joke is not a very good guide to the experience of the poem either, because as so often in Horatian lyric, the poem ends up somewhere very different from where it started. If it begins as a kind of send-up of a hymn and a joke about Horace’s tendency to write poems about boozy parties, it ends as an actual hymn, with one of the most mysteriously beautiful closing lines in all of Horace.

Victoria Moul, O gentle tile

It was bliss. The first time this year lying on a hammock in my backyard, under tall trees, the green-filtered flickering light and Medieval music in delicious fifths on decidedly 21^st century earbuds. Then I stopped the music and listened to the birds. Our yard is surrounded by trees and is near a ravine so we have many birds and many varieties. As I was listening, I was thinking about Bernie Krause’s concepts related to soundscapes and biophony and especially the acoustic adaptation hypothesis and the niche hypothesis, that is where creatures carve out their own acoustic space in a soundscape, usually through occupying a particular frequency niche. So, not only what are the sounds of birds, but how do different birds occupy a soundscape together.

I’ve always loved seemingly uncoordinated sounds from crowds. So, rather than the coordinated homophony of church choirs, the heterophonic and more anarchic traditional chanting (including muttering) of the synagogue congregation. The aggregate sound of a party or really any large human group just doing their thing. The many intertwined voices overlapping, cancelling each other out, winding around each other, changing depending on position and depending on the pitch and timbre of the voices, occupying different acoustic niches.

All of this inspired me to rise from the hammock and create a setting of a poem, and specifically something that I’ve wanted to experiment more with: multiple versions of the same voice but presented in various overlapping ways so the words wash over you. Do you absorb the words and their meaning by osmosis? What if one voice was slightly louder? Does time pass differently as the various word repeat, echo or anticipate each other? What does it do to the language part of the brain as opposed to the music or environmental listening part of the brain?

Gary Barwin, Everyone talking and singing at the same time

This week I’ve been flying solo, a poetry reading in Rome at Keats-Shelley House, an award ceremony and a launch for an underground poetry pamphlet series. I booked an apartment and spent most of my fee on a view across the Eternal City, the dome of St Peter’s a stone’s throw from the terrace. This is not a step up. I’ll still have nothing in my pockets when I come home. But this, this I tell myself, is poetry. You don’t get to take views home with you. They remain in the places where poetry goes.

My exuberance was perhaps due to my Instagram feed that is, like everyone else’s, notoriously populated with ‘my-life-is-better-than-yours’ views. In the last weeks it has been hijacked by writers from the Hay Festival, novelists mainly, not discussing ideas, not getting into it, not getting deeply down into it but bragging, mostly bragging about the idyllic locations where they’ve written their latest best sellers.

“I spent a delightful month in Tuscany,” says Sheila De Vinity, author of the A Millpond at Marlborough (Chatsworth & Grimstone) a W.H.Smith recommendation or David Henchman-Trout addressing a sold out crowd in a tent, “I find the pace of Dorset just suits my writing,” and Daphne Soames who you’ll probably know from All Our Mothers’ Sons saying with a contrived world weariness, “Each year my publisher banishes me to a villa in Umbria and tells me not to come home until I’m done.”

Fuck you, I think, fuck you, I shout at my phone. And then I book a fancy apartment in Rome. Because I want to be like them, the writers, the serious writers who don’t seem to have a view on anything, who only seem to have a nice view over something.

Jan Noble, What do you do with a view?

One of Richard Wilbur’s best known poems, “The Writer,” begins in his daughter’s room “at the prow of the house / where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden. . . ” For years I thought I knew what that meant, “the prow of the house.” Wilbur’s biographers, who have located the very house and the very room, tell me I am not quite correct, but I hold to my mental image. I live in a house with a prow, and a neighborhood full of such houses. The years I’ve spent writing poetry have made clear to me the hold that these streets and these houses have on my imagination. In the normal order of things, supposing my work is remembered, it might be years before some critic noticed its rootedness in a place. I have the chutzpah to talk about it myself because the place is already beginning to disappear.

In architectural terms, my “prow” is a dormer, projecting from the roof-plane at the front of the house. A gable end with a prominent window can have the same visual effect. On the streets I inhabit, a hundred such dormers and gables jut into the sea of society. In each the containment of the family puts its public face toward the street, propriety and stature on view. These are Edwardian and even Victorian houses, creaky with age but spacious, with dormers that often extend from third stories, looking into the crowns of mature trees. In times past, high windows on these streets would have been tossed with elm; the dying elms gave place to ash trees, now dying in their turn and being more thoughtfully replaced with varied species. Our own tossing is done by maples.

In spiritual terms—that is, from its interior—a dormer of this kind is a place of solitude and protection. As its etymology declares, it’s often a place to sleep. The sloping walls created by the main roof, or by the dormer itself, lean in as if to embrace the inhabitant: sleeping child, daydreaming teenager, adult engrossed in some attic-exiled craft.

Maryann Corbett, Houses, Neighborhoods, Poems

When I arrived, a woman was sitting in the quiet at a side table in front of a laptop, looking pensive over the keyboard. Two people were setting up a table of books for sale. One by one people drifted in, slightly disheveled, many, some looking halt and infirm, then others arriving in twos and threes, more nimble, clutching bags and notebooks, chattering, some, others sitting quietly, men, more women, mostly middle aged and above, some scattered younger folks, one group looked like a parent and an adult child or two. Sneakers, light jackets against the rain shower, some cool glasses here and there. A writers festival, the mountains of northern New York State. I spoke to someone from Vermont, a woman from Texas visiting a daughter. That family I saw turned out to be locals. An old friend was there with his son, having traveled in from two other parts of the north to meet there. Fiction, mystery, romance, memoir, poetry, fantasy, plays, screenplays — all the minds roiling with ideas and the desire to write. In Ukraine, according to the article, the same, but younger, many wearing army fatigues, chatter, hugs, periodic evacuations because of the possibility of incoming missiles, all clutching bags of books, minds full of stories. Physicists are positing that all reality is relational, not material. We are many things, we problematic human species, but we are word lovers, tellers of tales, avid listeners, against odds of geography, war, life’s inherent limitations, large and small, grievous and petty. I am moved by this.

Marilyn McCabe, & time works it out

There’s something powerful about gathering in a room with other people to work on our writing together. There were four of us in the library yesterday, and another six online, and for an hour, all of us were working in silence, except for the scribbling of my pen and the tapping of their keyboards. It’s a pleasantly organic, embodied experience, writing like this; it reminds me of the old days in the newsroom when six or twelve of us were huddled around a large table in one room, working, together. Except in the writing circle, none of us are on deadline, and we’re all there just to support one another in our various writing projects. I noticed, at the end of that hour, that my heart rate had slowed and my anxiety levels were lower.

Dylan Tweney, Five things for June 4

Yeah, I know, Wile E. Coyote isn’t saintly, but all those years ago, watching Saturday morning Looney Tunes, young me empathized with him way more than with the smug, always-victorious Roadrunner. I hereby salute everyone giving creative chase this summer, painting tunnels on rocks, building devious literary contraptions to trap a fleeting spirit, even knowing we’ll take a lot of canyon falls.

I recently revised a brief lyric essay starring Wile E. and Krazy Kat and placed it under submission, along with a lot of poems, as I hunt out which magazines are open during these dog days (Virginia’s humidity blanket has settled on my valley). Oh, Ploughshares, how I’ve tried and tried to snag your attention almost every June for decades now: will I ever catch you? Some of my poetry submissions from earlier this spring landed well, thanks to editors at The Common, Ecotone, and SWWIM Every Day. Thanks, as well, to a few editors for sending me encouraging notes with their rejections. The longer I trudge through the desert, the more I appreciate that kindness.

Lesley Wheeler, Wile E. Coyote, patron saint

Saturday was reading through poems and checking I’m happy they’re ready, then making two lists: one of poems and one of places to send them. I also nominally suggested which poems I might send where but of course I changed this when it actually came to sending the subs (not sure if these were actually good changes, but it’s too late now!). Then the actual subs were split over Sunday and Monday, plus one on Friday night after work. I split them up cos it takes me a long time, I struggle to decide what to send where, and to stay on task, and I have to do a lot of checking to make sure I’ve included/omitted all the things on the instructions; trying to send too many in one day is overwhelming and ends up not happening. […]

It’s time consuming, right, and a bit of a headache. Even with doing all my writing in a 12 point standard font and basic formatting (excluding concrete poems obvs) I still have to read back through and double check all the formatting specs cos they’re slightly different across a lot of places.

Then if it’s a comp you have to make sure your name isn’t on it… some want page numbers in a particular place… some are specific about what they want in the file name… some want you to include a line count in the top right or the top left… some specify spacing…

Some want a separate entry form attached along with your submission, while my favourite (joking, obviously) want you to fill out their online form, make payment through a separate portal, and then email your poems along with transaction/receipt numbers and other specified information in the body of the email. Trying to get all these separate points correct as a neurodivergent is – to put it mildly – absolutely fucking brain-melty.

Rachael Hill, SUBMISSIONS – insert facepalm icon here –

I’m a bit like a hermit crab right now, quietly working on my new books. Trying to make time to stare at big skies, take deep breaths, dream big dreams and patiently birth new worlds. 

Salena Godden, Books & Festivals: Summer 2026

My father is passing
through these last days
like a ghost
he lies in
the nursing home bed
while finite iterations
of him skulk their way
toward the grave.

I am stuck in time
mulling over the past
as though I am
polishing rocks in
my mouth.

Rebecca Cook, Edit A Poem With Me

How can we tell, the ones who will be here only briefly. Is it the eyes, the smile through the unannounced pain. Is it the wandering. Where did you sleep most nights? In a poem for you I apologised, ‘I never knew your address’.

Is it the ones who pass us by like a flash, like a light, brightly. Cast deep into the back of our minds. At one point we all needed a break. Some of us were settling down, as they say. I last saw you from the 38 bus.

All of this in the one single poem I have ever written for you.

Luciana Francis, Map of Our Lives

We went to a different part of the North Carolina mountains, near Boone.  We were there for the wedding of my spouse’s sister’s oldest child.  The wedding was beautiful, of course, but there were other beautiful moments:

–On Monday night, we went to Parallel Brewing in Boone for a rehearsal dinner/party.  Do they brew beer?  I don’t know.  Did I taste it?  No.  I wanted wine to go with the pizza.  Was any of the wine memorable enough to make note of what it was?  No.

–I was much more interested in Huzzah Books, which shares the building with Parallel Brewing.  We could go back and forth, which made the party better–more space.

–I also loved lingering among the books, which seemed to be used books from decades when publishers were more serious about publishing.  I found a book of “best new poetry” published in 1960 or so.  The names were fairly familiar and all male, except for Adrienne Rich.

–One of our younger family members (21 or so) was thrilled to find a book by Jane Kenyon.  I was thrilled that she was thrilled.

–We didn’t do more in Boone.  We spent most of our time visiting with family members on the front porches of our cabins.  If it had been clearer weather, we’d have had a glorious view.

–I did love seeing the fog/mist move across the land, only to vanish.  Once again, I thought about how humans might come to believe in ghosts.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Memory Whisps from Last Week’s Travel to the High Country of NC

The author event is good, as it is every year. It’s one of those jobs that I look forward to. I take 1-2-1s with PhD and MA students, helping them in their publication journeys, boosting confidences. In between events I take some time to wander into York looking for a building I’ve heard about but never seen. I walk up and down the street several times until I finally find it – the oldest house in York, tucked down an alley way called Trembling Madness Apartments.

The passageway leads to a courtyard. Within the courtyard are the ruins. An ancient window looks out into the brickwork of the wall behind it, floor joists jut from the wall, holding up air. This is the sort of ruin I like – the juxtaposition of it; the bins against the masonry, the fag ends next to the romance of a 12^th century window trailing ivy like a fairytale. I stand for a while undoing the modern to reach the past, reducing the surrounding buildings to nothing, the minster back to its original wooden structure, the window back to a view of the river, the fields. The woman in my novel would have known this place as a ruin too. It’s possible she walked here. I feel her feet in my feet, as if the building is a pin that sticks us together, holding us in one space.

As I leave, an American couple is talking a photo of the alleyway with its comical name. I apologise for spoiling the picture, and the lady tells me I suit the name perfectly and I laugh and embrace it: I am trembling madness, I am swirling between jobs, I am writer, I am carer, I am menopause, I am slipping between worlds and finding a way back to myself, and I’ve been doing that forever.

Wendy Pratt, Trembling Madness

Recently, I found myself in the middle seat on a turbulent flight, barely able to move without bumping into my seatmates.

You may know that feeling of foreboding that arrives out of nowhere. I can go months without it, and then, somehow, an accumulation of stresses tips into dread.

Anxiety has endless inventive momentum. No wonder so many writers seem to know it intimately.

So, what did I do to calm my body and mind? I used the in-flight Wi-Fi to look up poems about anxiety.

I’d love to hear which poems resonated most with your experience. And if there’s one I missed, please share it in the comments.

Maya C. Popa, The Poetry of Anxiety

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Writers are deep observers; I think that quality of being a witness and then writing it is a vital check in society. I’m a yoga teacher and practitioner, and the yoga practice also requires contemplative awareness. I do my best to honor what practicing yoga actually means; according to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: yogash chitta vritti nirodhah, essentially translates as “yoga is the quieting of all the changing states of the mind.” The primary purpose of this practice is to clear the lens to be in a state of heightened clarity at the present moment. What better conditions exist for poems to emerge than from the place of sheer presence?

8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

ESSENTIAL. The right set of objective eyes, (or a few of them), is essential to crafting and refining poems when the poems are ready for that stage of work. This is part of the journey is a wonderful opportunity for self-inquiry, because it allows me to explore my relationship with ego, want, and attachment. Why am I clinging to this couplet? What makes this image so damn precious to me? What happens if I let go and allow the space for possibility beyond what I originally imagined?

9 – What is the best piece of advice you’ve heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Last year, I had the opportunity to study with Ellen Bass on her Truth & Beauty retreat in Santa Cruz with Marie Howe. When I was concerned about about what the poem was uncovering about the person and situation it was based on and feeling guilty about putting all of the mess into the poem, she told me, “Give the poem what it needs.” It was such a declarative moment of wisdom. You can go back after and do all the things to care for the humans who’ve inspired the pieces or think about how the audience will meet the piece, but as the poem is coming to life, don’t hold back. When I head into tough territory around family of origin work, I hear this reminder and charge forward, emboldened and reminded to meet the poem where it is and tend to its needs.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emily Hyland (rob mclennan)

I don’t write poetry to get reviews or validation but all the same it’s nice when you find out someone likes what you do.

The first written response to my collection Poems In The Key Of Aardvark has appeared on amazon (from a verified sale, it says). So I will, quite shamelessly, quote in full:

“Poetry that reads like a mind passed through a shredder, then carefully reassembled by touch: fragmented, intimate, and full of strange little truths that only reveal themselves when you stop trying to read them normally. Difficult to put this one down.”

I like the idea of my mind passing through a shredder. Seems fair.

And sales are trundling along. Mostly, as far as I can tell, to people who aren’t poets. So far, so good.

Bob Mee, FIRST REVIEW OF POEMS IN THE KEY OF AARDVARK

Sitting down with a copy of Bob Mee’s magnificent Poems In the Key of Aardvark is like tackling a giant trifle with a tiny teaspoon. There’s a lot if it. Gobbled at once, you’ll be sick from here to Christmas. But take your time and you’ll be amply rewarded.

It’s a full fifteen years since Bob’s last outing: The Maker of Glass Eyes, and there’s a sense of making up for lost time – both in the urgency and sheer volume of this new collection.

Some of this work is familiar from the blogosphere, where early versions were first aired. But for me, the poems are more impressive on the page, where print rewards the courage of their convictions.  

When you have a writer as prolific and effortlessly inventive as Bob, it’s easy to miss lines – and sometimes whole poems – that truly resonate and sing.

The trouble is, he can do everything. His trick is accessibility; he’ll draw you in with a casual invitation; sometimes a throwaway line, then lead you somewhere totally unexpected.  

Christopher James, Stop making sense – a review of Poems In the Key of Aardvark by Bob Mee

Or many villages. Whole cities. And today, I want to thank them all.

My brother, Harsha, Vani, and Namratha Varadharajan – for reading the manuscript and giving me the courage to take the next step. And, with Madhuri Katti and Prithvi – for being massive sounding boards as the publishing process almost broke my resolve at every step.

My fellow-poets on WordPress and Blogger – for reading the poems when I posted them in 2022-23. You kept me going for a whole year as the series evolved. I went back several times to read your comments and reviews, when I was drowning in imposter syndrome and self-doubt. And especially Rosemary Nissen-Wade – for the idea, the inspiration and the friend that she is.

Folks at Atta Galatta, one of Bangalore’s premier indie bookstores – for letting me write and edit and sulk at one of their tables, whenever I needed a place away from home. And the good people I meet there – for all the positive energy and support.

Fellow Substackers – for your kind words of support. It encouraged me to bring new poems from here into the book.

And those who have lived through the things in the book with me, all these long years – for quietly providing a shoulder or a willing ear or an anchor, whenever I needed it. You know who you are. This one is for you.

For too long, this book has been unwilling to step out into the world. But here it is now. NWH is out on Amazon India . It will take a few more days for the international listings.

‘No Way Home’ is the dark scab on an old wound. I hope you will welcome it gently into your homes.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, Because it takes a village

I was editing the final version of the upcoming collection of poems and thinking about what holds the book together as a whole. Some of it a twisted version of matrimony and domesticity, but also in some ways, the idea of transformation and monstrosity, which is a place I have visited before obviously with previous books and series, but seems important to take into account with this manuscript in particular. Early American vampires. Murdering governesses. Swampy winged women, and, of course, Bluebeard and his wife (and hidden room full of corpses of brides.) Not that I haven’t written about monstrous women before, though they are usually less malicious. The Renaissance dog-girl of PELT, the sideshow women of GIRL SHOW and EXOTICA. The strangeness of the SWALLOW poems and the female body. These women have a bit more bite behind them. A bit more violence.

Kristy Bowen, women and monstrosity

Having had some time alone at home over the past several days, I watched a lot of bad costume television (Bridgerton Season 4), made progress on a new imaginary landscape painting, pulled a lot of weeds, and spent time combing through my computer files to see how many poems I consider ready to submit or have been published yet uncollected in a book. I figured I’d have twenty or thirty.

Reader, I have one hundred and seven.

How did this happen? When the hell over the past several years have I written over a hundred poems that were not in my last two books?

Donna Vorreyer, Aliens, MRIs, Ouija Boards, Outer Space, and Wild Carrots

We’ve all likely been to a show where no one came. In fact, some of my most wonderfully memorable shows as an attendee have been exactly that—such as seeing one of my favorite bands, Jucifer, perform at the Double Door (RIP) in Chicago to a crowd of less than 10, their wall of amps still reverberating so loud that they knocked over my husband’s beer. And for those of us who are poets and writers, we’ve all likely been on that awkward side of the microphone, staring into a room of just a few good friends or fellow readers, but playing and playing (or reading and reading) just the same.

It can sometimes be so hard to explain this to the authors I work with as a publicist. Just because a bookstore is hosting an event for you doesn’t mean people—particularly people who don’t know you—will come. And just because people come to an event, it does not mean they will buy books. Events are rarely, if ever, about sales. You will not sell enough books to pay for your time and travel (says she who is saving all her tour receipts as a tax deduction for her unprofitable writerly “business”)—even celebrity author tours aren’t known to break even (particularly those that require stylists and handlers and make-up artists).

So, why do we it? Why do we, even at Black Ocean, strongly encourage our authors to team up and get out there?

There is no substitute for the author-in-person—hearing their voice, seeing and feeling why the work matters to them, and having the opportunity to engage with the ideas in the moment, in the flesh. This is not just true of poetry (which one could argue should always be read aloud and has its origins in performance) but of serious nonfiction as well. A scholar’s true enthusiasm for their subject and their research can be infectious.

Events are about visibility and profile raising. Even those who live in a different city or can’t attend the event may see something about it on social or in a newsletter. It puts the book and author into the ether. Those mentions build and compound. A good reading may lead to a review or an interview. It may lead to word-of-mouth recommendations. Or an invite to speak to a class. It may even lead to book sales you don’t see online or a library request.

They are also worth doing just because they are fun. For me, they’ve provided the wonderful opportunity to hang with friends (thank you, Nate Hoks, for the road trip conversation to/from Iowa City), read with writers whose work I love but had never heard aloud before (thank you, Tessa Bolsover, Sadie Dupuis, Sara Wainscott, Jordan Windholz, and Anna Zumbahlen), and to make new friends and support writers and publishers I admire (thank you, Teresa Dzieglewicz and Naoko Fujimoto​).

Carrie Olivia Adams, Readings & Book Events: Do They Matter?

As I move ever deeper into the third print run of Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, I find myself reflecting more and more on the complete irrelevance and absolute significance of sales figures.

Sales are completely irrelevant to me as an objective or target, but on the other hand their growth brings with it an accumulation of readers, who are by far the most important part of my whole creative process. Without a reader’s enjoyment, my poems would seem self-indulgent.

Then there’s the fact that no favour trading or box ticking are involved in someone’s decision to sit down with a collection, and engage with it. The gaining of a reader is by far the greatest award that a poet can win.

I’ve come to believe that slow-burning word of mouth is the most solid, long-lasting way to build a reputation as a poet. Do you agree…?

Matthew Stewart, An accumulation of readers

San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil has collaborated with Sebastopol artist Tamsin Spencer Smith in this striking volume published on 24th March this year by FMSBW Press. Smith’s bold and expressive abstract paintings face Beausoleil’s poems of love and rage, observation and empathy, across each two-page spread.

Many of the poems are tall and slender, like the trees that hold the sky in place and entwine their roots … nourish each other setting an example of care and co-operation to our divided human society. Beausoleil’s California is a place where night-ships carry darkness under starlight, and urban landscapes interact with a crumbling coastline – a parking space for dreams. The poet’s eye is drawn to wandering streets and … fog-filled trees, highway signs and the scent of the ocean. The poems are sustained by love and fuelled by a fierce grief at human cruelty and destruction.

Ama Bolton, A new book from Beau Beausoleil

I’ve finally got round to cutting the grass today as we’d been doing No Mow May (How deliberate that was is up for debate), but between that and the state of our new allotment (It’s official now…we have the key and have joined the WhatsApp Group for it…) it’s been a week for wrestling with nature, so it was great timing to finish my reading of Graeme Richardson’s debut collection, Dirt Rich, this week.

Dirt Rich followed his New Walk Editions pamphlet, Last of the Coalmine Cowboys, pretty quickly, that being published in 2024. And there’s often a fear with that sort of turnaround that it has been rushed, but a) I’m not going to review a reviewer (who reviews the reviews of a reviewer, etc?) and b) while the collection contains all but 3 of the poems from LotCC, I think this is more a case of accretion of material over time.

Anyhoo, more importantly, I enjoyed it.

Mat Riches, Hardstanding for the bier

In Thistle Kate Maxwell turns a compassionate focus on daily interactions and familiar scenarios. Her poems don’t judge. She illustrates how vital acts of empathy and humanity are in healing connections with others and how to stop short of overdoing it and becoming overwhelmed. Readers are invited to see a thistle not as a prickly weed, but a sign of endurance and resilience. Something that grew where it wasn’t invited but made the best of a hostile environment nonetheless.

Emma Lee, “Thistle” Kate Maxwell (Recent Work Press) – book review

The full-length poetry debut by Edmonton-based poet, artist, educator, translator and researcher Adriana Oniță is Descântec for my Split Tongue: poems (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2026), a collection of poems that sits amid and between two languages and cultures, even as the author feels her Romanian slip slowly away. “I should have begun by saying / that I lost my mother tongue.” begins the poem “LIMBA MATERNĂ,” early on in the collection, “I know what you are thinking. / How can you lose something / that lives inside of you, unless / you chose to live languageless? // Forgive me, loss never occurs / on purpose. Think of the way / you lose a loved one, or faith.” Her poems speak of a loss still in-progress, with almost a call-and-response element to a number of these poems: offering a line in Romanian that follows in English translation, almost as a kind of reclamation of her mother tongue, but one that sits aside this more recent English comprehension. The poems work to reclaim and, perhaps, to recontextualize, offering alongside this life built fresh in Canada’s prairies. As the poem “PENTRU A FACE ŞI DESFACE / FOR DOING AND UNDOING” writes:

Fă rai din ce ai.
Make heaven from what you’ve got. 

Grăbeşte-te încet.
Hurry slowly. 

Am carat apă la fântână.
I carried water to the well.

The way her two languages, her translations, are set against each other, it suggests not simply to replicate or repeat in English, but composed and translated in a way attempting to shape and articulate that space where both Romanian and English might comfortably meet, within the comfort of her own divided imagination, perhaps. Accompanied by full-colour collages, including those built with photographs from the family archive, Oniță writes to articulate, to claim, to re-claim, setting up a new foundation from which to finally build. I am curious to see what might follow.

rob mclennan, Adriana Oniță, Descântec for my Split Tongue: poems

In Australia his literary reputation, like the man himself, was big enough to block the sun. But to the poets who grew up in Les Murray’s shadow, it was a reputation also composed of conservatism, royalism and patriarchalism. And so, as a young woman coming of age at the University of Technology in Sydney – the epicentre of a metropolitan, sloganeering conformity in the late 80s and early 90s – I deliberately turned away from Murray and his undeniable talent and originality.

Some of my reticence was understandable. Australia still had a frontier, masculine culture, and at first glance Murray’s poems appeared to inhabit that tradition too comfortably. There wasn’t much there for a young feminist to easily identify with. My mentor, Dorothy Porter, was chippy and dismissive of him, and I found it easy to fall in with her point of view.

Here’s another reason for my initial disdain: Murray was the same age as my father, and from a similar background. Working class and a Catholic convert. I was keen to code myself differently at university: sophisticated, worldly, adventurously atheist. I cringe when I think about that younger self.

But as I got older, I realised that Murray was the real thing, and far and away the most talented and original poet Australia has ever produced. When I moved to a rural property three hundred miles north of Murray’s native Nabiac to raise my young son I gained a different perspective on the rhythm of life in a farming community, and a new respect for Murray’s exploration of masculinity, of the Oz cultural cringe, of the harsh realities of Australia’s violent pioneering past – and how its brutality has affected both incomers and indigenous people. His reportage of what it meant to be a motherless working-class boy bullied at school with only a distant and haunted father to watch over him is deeply moving. […]

I remain captivated by his “Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle” – an early attempt to create dialogue between Aboriginal and western ballad traditions, at a time when most white writers were either too frightened or politically paralysed to genuinely engage beyond the usual second-hand slogans and bromides. The political and critical response to the ‘Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle’ over time is salutary. Cultural commentators as diverse as Lisa Gorton (whose review in the Australian Book Review is wonderful), Nam Le, Noel Pearson, Peter Garrett and Clive James all praise the poem. In his excellent essay on Murray in the New York Review of Books J. M. Coetzee calls it an ‘expansive, joyous holiday-season poem’ whose use of the Moon-Bone cycle is ‘a stroke of genius on Murray’s part that is also an act of homage’.

That’s the way I see it: an act of careful, respectful homage written by a man who grew up in a community that was on the very frontier of rural race relations. Where the rubber, along with human skin, hits the road – brutally, and irreversibly: a deeply uncomfortable and heartbreaking place to be, both for indigenous people and the white rural working class; a place of daily experience of the other, while sharing the same environment of poverty and marginalisation; and a very long way from the ‘ought over is’ utopias of the metropolitan universities.

Lisa Brockwell, In the Shade of Les Murray

Just arrived on my doormat is the latest, and second, issue of Free Bloody Birds, a new little magazine ‘printing new poems and essays about poetry’, edited by Alan Jenkins and Declan Ryan. Louis MacNeice turns up several times, which is always a good sign: there he is in Ange Mlinko’s essay on Derek Mahon, in Michael Hofmann’s poem for Michael Longley, and surely he’s somewhere in that fire in Paul Muldoon’s contribution.

And, of course, he’s there in John Clegg’s lovely essay on MacNeice’s London, of which more below. There’s also a superb series of poems by Leontia Flynn (who I wrote about here), an elegy for youth, called ‘Summer’:

Summer is fading
on literary ambition –
on my literary ambition
on the blood-congested drive

to conquer all readers
as not a but the poet,
marmoreal and timeless
to be referenced in every debate;

That first line, which is the first line of each poem, working its way down the page, comes from Larkin’s ‘Afternoons’. Perhaps Larkin was listening to MacNeice too. MacNeice creeps up on you, as I wrote the other day. Here is the beginning of Autumn Journal, the long poem he wrote in 1938:

Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire,
Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yew
Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals…

As FBB’s editors point out, though poets from Belfast and ‘the North’ are keen to claim MacNeice as ‘one of their own’, MacNeice ‘went to school and university’ in England and lived and worked in London ‘almost his entire adult life’. At the same time, John argues in his essay, MacNeice rarely wrote about living in London with the same roving magpie eye for he brought to places like Belfast and Birmingham.

Rather (John writes) ‘MacNeice writes at his best about London — writes, in fact, unforgettably about London — when he is leaving or entering it.’ John’s full explanation is ingenious: I won’t spoil it here. But, as he says, leaving or entering London also means being ‘on the train or on the road’, and MacNeice is the ‘first poet of things seen from that speed’: factories, the backs of houses, rubbish dumps and petrol pumps.

Jeremy Wikeley, Goodbye to London

The extreme musicality of Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au voyage”, emphasised by its very short lines, immediately make me think of Verlaine, but it combines musicality with a robust sensuousness quite unlike Verlaine’s delicate, ethereally elusive effects. In fact it’s above all the sound of the words and the way they make the mouth feel as you say them that makes their images glow so voluptuously in the imagination […]

There’s no point in commenting on the images in detail. Anyone reading the poem aloud or sounding it in his inner ear will both see them and feel how caressingly the poet evokes them in his imagination. The poem unfolds like a song, an incantation that weaves a self-hypnotising spell so that the speaker seems almost to sink into the world he’s imagining. Only almost, though. The refrain both yearns towards this world and accepts its distance. Depending on the emphasis one gives “Là” in reading the poem, this acceptance can seem like something quietly in the background or a sharp reminder of how far the speaker’s actual world is from the order, beauty and pleasure of the imagined one.

Edmund Prestwich, Baudelaire’s L’invitation au voyage

Searching our postings, I was surprised to see that Eliot is among the poets we have mentioned most often in Poems Ancient and Modern — although the newsletter has featured only three of his poems: “Gerontion,” “La Figlia che Piange,” and “Preludes” (partly because not all his work is out of copyright). Somehow, for us, Eliot remains a touchstone, and if his thought dwelt on a poet — John Webster, for example, or George Herbert — we tend to engage that thought.

A sign of age, perhaps? When Sally Thomas and I were young, Eliot’s poetry was the very horizon of ambitious verse, and high modernism the chief claim of high seriousness, both intellectual and poetic. And that was particularly true among literary and intellectual readers with a religious sense, for whom such work as Eliot’s Four Quartets gave an obvious riposte to the oft-heard sneer that believers are undereducated idiots.

As it happens, when I was starting out as a writer, I took a long lance and charged at this use of Eliot, arguing that God in his poetry is more often a device for addressing the crisis of modernity than an object of faith. The essay was overwrought, as young critics’ work often is, although I think I do still hold that Eliot was doing something intellectually and theologically risky when he took the language of mysticism, which expresses the believer’s rising to the vision of God, and shifted it down the scale to describe the non-believer’s rising to belief.

Perhaps similarly, as the years have gone by, I’ve grown less certain of the idea that Eliot’s poems are puzzles to be solved. Here’s a link to a useful hypertext version of The Waste Land, and in the presentation of Today’s Poem, I’ve placed hors-texte links to Eliot’s own notes. But I have gradually come to think that we might be best served by taking The Waste Land as a toboggan ride rather than, say, a step-by-step guide to forensic accounting. You just climb aboard and try to hang on as it shoots down a bumpy mountain run.

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: The Waste Land

Come February, maybe, we’ll embark on a study of the “Terrible Sonnets,” the hard-won late-life achievement of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889). But right now, in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway, sumer is icumen in, with all its bursting life, and it seems fitting to turn, yet again, to Hopkins’s own summertime of poetic flourishing. In the spring and summer of 1877, as Hopkins awaited the autumn and his priestly ordination, the sonnets we most readily associate with his name, voice, and vision flowed from him in a great surge: “The Windhover,” “God’s Grandeur,” “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” — and Today’s Poem, “Pied Beauty.”

This poem is one of three examples, in Hopkins, of the “curtal sonnet,” a form devised and named by the poet (the other two are “Peace” and “Ash Boughs”), and distinguished chiefly by its abbreviated length, ten and a half lines instead of the sonnet’s standard fourteen. More precisely, it is like a Petrarchan sonnet whose separate pieces have shrunk in the wash, or like a recipe with two ingredients, reduced proportionately. The Petrarchan octave becomes a sestet; the resolving sestet then consists of a quatrain and a fifth partial line. The rhyme scheme is compressed accordingly. The standard abba quatrain doesn’t repeat itself, but gives way instead to a cdecde sestet, with its first two lines forming the end of the initial stanza, broken after the d-rhyme, which is repeated an extra time in the short closing line.

The form’s compression raises the stakes subtly, requiring the poem to accomplish its Petrarchan wind-up/wind-down thought process in fewer lines, with less room at the end to tie that process off. If Hopkins’s primary fascination was with the mathematics involved in this reduction of the Petrarchan sonnet — he went so far as to work out the formula for paring it down with precision — the consequence, in “Pied Beauty,” is something that eludes quantification.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: Pied Beauty

Comprising tightly written found poems as well as persona poems in the form of police “confessions” to the deaths of the African Americans who appeared again and again on our screens, Ligatures [by Denise Miller] draws on the news articles, autopsy reports, and video recordings of and testimonies, verdicts, and sentences in the court cases to establish the undeniable, unsettling, ugly truth of the alternative narratives that Miller offers for Scott and Garner, Rice and McDonald and Steen: systemic racism in the United States, where “black and brown / people’s stories have been spun so quickly and so / thoroughly so that suddenly our lives seem to justify / the ending of them,” exists still. [..]

Just 35 pages long and containing the reported narrative of each death, Ligatures delivers a deserved punch in the gut, restoring what a headline and a hashtag cannot: name, identity, story written by “those people” denied all three.

It is not at all “the child friendly bed time story” Miller acknowledges that some in America wanted then, want even now:

[. . .]

See a picture of a black boy or black girl, a black man
or a black woman, a black person or a black person

and you wonder is she or isn’t she, is he or isn’t he, are they or
aren’t they and each isn’t but each is, you wonder is it another
story of or isn’t it? [. . .]

~ from “Dear Spectators 2: A Bed Time Story” (pp. 33-34)

History — his story, her story, their stories — in Miller’s series of strong and strongly defiant poems is the present we cannot just scroll by. Our shame, Miller makes clear, is so many more names have been, could be, are still being added.

Maureen Doallas, Ligatures by Denise Miller

A poem […] does not make the kind of sense an essay does. The experience a poem invites a reader into—even the experience it leads me through as I write it—is an emotional one; its logic is associative, not discursive. It creates what Susanne Langer calls in Feeling and Form, a “virtual experience,” by which she means that a poem, despite being made from discursive language—syntax, after all, is linear—presents the experience it contains as a whole to be encountered as irreducible to the sum of its parts. “Coitus Interruptus,” in other words, is not a report about my experience with domestic violence. Rather, it offers the reader an opportunity to feel what it was like for domestic violence to have been such an intimate part of my life.

Creating this experience necessarily meant leaving out some details of what actually happened, not because they were unimportant, but because they existed outside the emotional web of that intimacy. For example, not too long after “Mr. Peters” asked me to tape that note to my neighbor’s door, I was telling a friend about everything that had preceded my doing so as we sat talking in my living room after dinner. Suddenly, a male voice came up through the grate covering the space in the wall where my radiator was located. “So you’re the motherfucker who called the cops! You better not let me run into you. You won’t like what happens then.”

Richard Jeffrey Newman, Domestic Violence Has Been A Thread Running Through My Life

I oones fro Westminstir cam,
Vexid ful grevously with thoughtful hete,
Thus thoughte I: ‘A greet fool I am
This pavyment a-daies thus to bete
And in and oute laboure faste and swete,
Wondringe and hevinesse to purchace,
Sithen I stonde out of al favour and grace. –

Thomas Hoccleve (c1420)

The above quote is taken from Hoccleve’s (1368-1420) poem ‘The Complaint’, and it relates a situation that will feel vividly familiar to any member of our contemporary precariat, but especially to those of us grappling for purchase at the ragged edge of End Days Academia. This passage situates the speaker within the unfolding vocational crisis of the late Middle Ages, whereby expanding universities graduated ever more elitely educated clergy, whom the church could not afford to hire into beneficed positions.

There were multiple reasons for this, not least the unscrupulous practice of “pluralism”, where wealthy clerics or papal favourites were allowed to hoard multiple lucrative benefices; hiring out the pastoral overspill to poorly paid and often uneducated surrogates, such as vicars, chaplains, or lesser church officials, while continuing to pocket the juicy tithes. Increased secular interference was also a huge factor. The Catholic church had been greatly weakened (financially and in terms of authority) by the Great Schism; secular monarchs and local lords sought to take advantage of this situation by seizing control over church appointments, selling benefices off to the highest bidder, or simply giving them away to unqualified relatives in order to siphon parish revenue – the bastards.

Reasons aside, the results were clear: a crisis of vocation amongst the clergy, and the creation of what Kathryn Kerby-Fulton in her banging monograph The Clerical Proletariat and the Resurgence of Medieval English Poetry (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) calls a ‘clerical proletariat’, forced into ever more various, casual, insecure and undignified forms of labour in order to make a living. This new and highly literate proletariat took lowly positions as civil servants, became secretaries in great houses, office-clerks, jobbing liturgical labourers, itinerant scribes and – according to Kerby-Fulton’s thesis – poets.

I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought about it in these terms before: but this new social class simply saw more opportunities for writing in English because they were working for – and uncovering an audience amongst – the laity. The implications of this, in terms of determining a kind of proletarian poetics are huge: the opportunity to address proletarian themes directly; to carve out for this clerical proletariat a distinct subjectivity and realm of concern, as Chaucer does through his characters – especially the Clerk of Oxenford and the Parson – in the Canterbury Tales; as Hoccleve does through his striking first-person confessional in ‘The Complaint’, and as a roused and radical Langland does through scorching critique in Piers Plowman, with its defence of the poor and its attack on corrupt labour laws and church hierarchy. Fun fact here: the rebels of 1381 are known to have used pseudonyms, including that of Langland’s titular character “Piers Plowman”, so you have a really solid example of the way the poetry of the clerical proletariat is not merely reflecting but influencing/ imagining into being a political and literary proletarian community. Woo-hoo!

Why am I telling you this? Because Hoccelev’s despair has often, over the last couple of years, been my own, and because the situation in which he found himself resonates so profoundly with the crisis engulfing academia in Space Year 2026: there are fewer and fewer permanent positions; the universities themselves seek to outsource more pedagogic labour to adjuncts, associates, and sessional tutors. We’re highly skilled and highly qualified, but we will face chronic underemployment/ unemployment as a result of both over-qualification (ahem) and – it has to be said – a raft of unethical practices inherent to a profit driven university system that has chugged the ghastly orange Kool-Aid of business ontology down in one.

I dearly want to find these parallels comforting; to take them as proof that this too shall pass, but how I actually feel about it can be summed up in the rather more sobering assessment that history repeats, corruption endures, and that we learn – that we continue to learn – absolutely nothing. What I do take courage from is precisely the resurgence that Kerby-Fulton’s book identifies. Before resurgence must come recognition: that is, the abandoning of internalised aspirational bullshit; learning to know ourselves (myself) again as a member of the sweaty, striving, vitally alive proletariat. What do we/ I sound and think like when not staging our subjectivity for an elite – downward and outward-looking – audience, but when we are, in fact, talking to and imagining among ourselves? What kinds of speech and formal tactics might be ours? What is the new vernacular? The new idiom? The language of our intellectual laity?

Fran Lock, Hoccleve/ Hedge Schools/ Rude Bootlegs

the bee’s buzz—
another path
into thoughts

embrace by tom clausen

Last fall, one of my poems, “Confessions of a Former Scarecrow,” was featured as part of Prairie Schooner’s Intern Picks series. I’m grateful to have the poem receive that attention and wanted to share it again here as I continue thinking about looking, attention, and transformation in relation to my upcoming workshop.

You can read the feature here:
Prairie Schooner Intern Picks Fall Feature

And the poem here:
“Confessions of a Former Scarecrow”

Here is a stanza from the poem:

I’m not a man but a wariness,
a warning to keep clear of the field.
I stand, friendless—what friends, tell me,
are apple trees, a trail of leaves,
the wasted weather, these apples worn
to a sun-brown, and then just brown,
a rot and musk—everyone reeks
to me, no man, half-made of air.

Returning to this stanza now, I’m struck by the way the speaker looks out from a transformed state. The poem does not simply describe a scarecrow; it lets the speaker become a field of wariness, warning, weather, rot, and air. The act of looking here is shaped by estrangement. The speaker sees from the edge of personhood, or from a place where personhood itself feels unstable.

That feels connected to some of the questions behind my upcoming workshop, “Look / Mira: Latinx/e Ways of Looking in Poetry & Prose.” What happens when looking is not neutral? What happens when the gaze is shaped by memory, body, place, fear, language, or transformation? How might a poem or essay allow us to see from a position we could not otherwise name?

I’m interested in writing that lets looking become more than description. Looking can become pressure. Refusal. Witness. Inheritance. A way to survive. A way to change shape.

José Angel Araguz, three invitations to look

The day after my online book launch, I got up at 4.30am to get a taxi to the airport to go to Cork International Poetry Festival. I was there for four glorious days – and met so many fantastic poets and writers. If I was cast out from Yorkshire, I would probably run away to Cork. It’s one of my favourite places in the world. If any of you are thinking of a poetry holiday next year – and by poetry holiday, I mean those ones where you gather your poetry friends and descend on a poetry festival, then do think about going to Cork. The programme is always amazing, and is truly international – plenty of Irish poets but also poets from around the world. The readings go on all day and most of the night and you could quite safely go on your own and end up with friends for life by the end of the first reading.

I was very excited to be reading with Annemarie Ní Churreáin on Saturday night – she is a fantastic poet, and author of one of my favourite contemporary poems A Hymn to All Restless Girls – now the title poem of her latest collection, published by Gallery Press.

I’d bought thirty copies of the House with me, and sold twenty six books at the reading, and then one for cash in the bar afterwards, so I only had two take home with me!

Kim Moore, More Adventures with the House

I always think I need more time to write and when I have it, it suddenly seems hard to focus. But this week I sketched a poem about students finding my poetry on the internet. They’ve googled me which seems a waste, but  there’s definitely worse things out there. The fact that they chanted lines of my poetry back at me on the last day of school as some kind of taunt just tickled me. I had to write about it. They read poetry willingly, even memorised it. That has to be something to be proud of. […]

My desire to try and get published may be almost gone, but not my love of writing. So in between lesson planning, coursework, piles of laundry, mowing, feeding and negotiating with my kids, I try to write poetry. I play with words and images, I attempt to capture my moments in this world on the page. 

And I don’t press publish on this blog to reach the masses or even a trickle of readers, but for myself. To see the entries sketch my thoughts across the years, to document my highs and lows, my random thoughts, my cycling through the seasons. 

I write to find my way through.

Gerry Stewart, Writing for No Reward

[A] couple of days ago, we visited Luna Parc, which is quite an experience. It is a handmade house, sculpture garden, and studio that Ricky Boscarino has been working on for decades. A Rhode Island School of Design student fascinated by silver-smithing, Boscarino decided early on that he wanted to make a living doing art. He began by making unusual (and sometimes slightly alarming) jewelry and creating art from found objects. He’s also a painter, ceramicist, welder, woodworker…and trying to make his housing needs, studio, and life as sustainable as possible in the wooded region near Stokes State Park in New Jersey. Now, the place is a non-profit that trains students, sponsors art interns, and continues to grow and morph into, well, who knows? He’s devoted his life to art-making. And the place is really fun to explore.

Talk about inventive!

It’s something people need to do, have an urge to do–invent stuff for some purpose, to solve a problem, for enjoyment, or out of a need to play around; we are, as Huizinga says, Homo Ludens (see this post!). Play leads to all kinds of things, piqued by curiosity and that urge to fiddle with things. The patent models at Hagley were behind glass, but I was itching to play with them, like a five-year-old.

That is what I like about writing poetry, too, the play and invention of it–using words, images, sounds, patterns. Earlier today I was messing around with quatrains that used rhyme/slant rhyme line endings, switching off between ABBA and ABAB by stanza. The poem’s content isn’t cheerful, yet puttering with possible patterns was fun and kept me thinking about the topic. Then I went inside and put Bach’s Inventions & Sinfonias on the stereo.

Ann E. Michael, Invention

Working in the arts is tough going, and classes are clear in America. I think it’s hard to understand how much physical and mental labor and hours go into making books. It’s long hours. There are people who look down on those of us who work. Some people refuse to get their hands dirty, and I wouldn’t know how to step into their mindset. I have respect for all kinds of labor, whether it’s medicine, law, building houses, or kelp farming.

I could not walk into a room and pretend to be a lawyer or a stockbroker or an arbitrageur. But neither could a suit walk into our lives and paint or plant a garden or build something. I have painted and gardened and trained horses. My husband and son can do most of the trades—plumbing, carpentry, tile; my son redid my whole bathroom when the floor collapsed. We are in the substance of the world, building culture.

Which is why I want to keep the press going. I like books. I like arguing about them. When friends disagree with my thoughts on a book, I love those conversations, because I’m still in the swim of a story.

It’s late, and I need to sleep. In stress and exhaustion, I am not operating at my best, but when I wake up, the dinosaur will still be in the room—the ridiculous Kate—and what do I do with her? And the press hanging on by its fingernails, and the people who are upset with me, and all the problems I can’t fix.

Kate Gale, Waking Up to the Dinosaur: Finding Our Story of Survival

When we pick and gather, wash, chop,
stir then eat and drink, there’s almost
always a sense of ceremony. From
the holy trinity of onions, garlic, and
tomatoes to the background strains
of gingery broth, bitter greens and
tamarind pucker, any improvisation
is inspired by those who taught us:
before you reach for your portion,
shake some droplets on the ground,
ladle an offering into a bowl.

Luisa A. Igloria, It was

This week the thing that I read which kept me Alive (as opposed to just living) was the transcript of an interview between James Shaheen and Li-Young Lee on Tricycle. Like, dig this:

“For me, there’s only three postures of the soul when you’re writing a lyric poem. They can be summed up as “Oh my God,” “Oh my love,” and “Holy, holy, holy.” You know, when I experience something and I feel, “Oh my God,” I mean, I know I have to write about it. When I experience something like, “Oh, my love,” I have to write about it. Or when I see and feel something that inspires in me, “Holy, holy, holy.” Those three are the postures of awe. Adoration, I don’t know who said it, but adoration is the proper attitude of a soul in awe. And it seems to me that the lyric poem is the greatest expression of awe and adoration, turning about one thing, and that thing is unknown. I feel like I live in those three postures all day long.”

So this is what’s getting me through. Thinking about the three postures of awe. Thinking about adoration. And repeating in my head the words, holy holy holy. Also, he talks about the line of a poem being a form of trembling. When you speak a poem, when you speak, “the vocal cords are trembling.”

Poetry is not going away, awe is not going away, trembling is not going away. The holy holy holy is not going away.

I think, I imagine, what will happen next is that the realms will just get further apart. They were always apart, and I don’t know why. Because why do you want to be a human living in this world, and separate yourself from art, and joy, and beauty, and philosophical thought, and the depths of the creative experience. I think back to taking what now seems like a truly wondrous undergrad degree in the humanities, and how the arts were always pitted against the business and science faculties. That was so weird to me. I always craved more cross pollination, people-wise. Which I guess is why I worked in the science library when I was at university doing my English Honours degree. (Which I received with honours, might I add, because what the hell). My co-workers were largely science and engineering students and we had the most interesting conversations.

We get to pick our posture every day. And the thing to do is to remember. You put on your coat, your shoes. Put on your posture of awe, too. Holy holy holy, oml omg.

Shawna Lemay, Holy holy holy

And here’s a poem from Magnifying Glass which captures a moment from childhood when I was stung for the first time…

STUNG

If it was a wasp
it stung once and fled,

if it was a bee
I didn’t see it die.

I stood naked
gazing at a splinter;
a black spine centred in a pink circle.

I pushed my stomach out to watch what next,

alone and naked in a field I saw
it redden concentrically as I stared.

I held out my arms to the summer air

let my lungs expel their cry.

Sue Finch, A PERSON FLYING THEIR HORSE ON THE BEACH

We had some family stuff that happened that reminded me that life is not steady, that change is the only constant, and sometimes, those changes are not the changes we’d choose. Parents getting older, our worrying about them, and my own body, struggling with what can be several debilitating problems at once, realizing we don’t have forever, and neither do those we love. It can push us into depression or push us to try to make the best of every day we have. It’s also realizing that although right now is hard, we’re not having as bad a time as we had in the past—reading from Flare, Corona always reminds me that I had some of the worst news and the worst health of my life when I wrote that book, and I survived a terminal cancer diagnosis and an MS diagnosis and severe flare almost a decade ago now. We lose things in life—our memories, our ability to run or walk, our balance, money, security, loved ones—and we have a choice, to continue on or to stay in mourning or lament our inability to trust and secure our lives exactly the way we want them to be. Sure, the world can feel like it’s in constant apocalypse right now. But we have a choice in what we do every day with that. What do you do with your last day on earth? Why, write another poem, of course.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Reading with Kelli in Shoreline, Goldfinches, Hummingbirds, Woodpeckers, and Losing Things

this is my huge giant flower face. this is my
handful of hair. this is my rocket collection.
when i reach the moon i am going to put
my ear to the surface & listen.

Robin Gow, 6/4

This week: becoming a living ghost, getting football fans to recite poetry, advocating for stupidity and vagueness, letting chaos turn to insight, and other adventures. Enjoy!

Here is the garden
where all our sins are remembered, where
all the embers are numbered, where the fires
join hands and sing across the Gorge: a canticle
for rain forests that were never meant to burn.

Dale Favier, A Compost Prayer

let’s wait for the accident to get cleared out let’s lie about our diagnoses let’s watch amerikka’s lunatic leaders preach like Aimee Semple McPherson back from the dead in a white shirt flapping her wings I dropped the script on the floor they gave me a loaded gun I slithered on my belly toward my car then stopped in the marram grass don’t forget your permission slips don’t forget the right side of my mouth all my teeth aching

Rebecca Loudon, Deconstructing the panic

In March, traveling in Ireland, our guide mentioned almost in passing that the Irish were proud to have had a poet lead them. She meant Seamus Heaney’s friend Michael D. Higgins, the poet and sociologist who served as President of Ireland from 2011 to 2025, and who was known to quote Neruda in speeches and has written movingly about the duty of the imagination in public life. Our guide said it with a kind of quiet satisfaction, as though this fact alone said something essential about Ireland’s values.

I have been thinking about that remark ever since, more urgently since Air Force One landed in Beijing.

Consider the contrast. In the United States, the executive branch has long been dominated by two professional tribes: lawyers and business executives. This was true when I delivered a paper at a remarkable conference on the spirit of cities in Shanghai many years ago — a transformative experience that left me with a question I have never quite been able to shake: why does one of the world’s most powerful democracies hand its government to lawyers and businessmen?

Leanne Ogasawara, How To Rule The World

In 2020 I wrote a considerable number of posts, both prose and poetry, for a series I called “Musings in a Time of Crisis.” Below, the twentieth post in the series, is one of the poems I wrote (I wrote another about George Floyd, who was murdered on Memorial Day that year). It seems more than fitting to post the poem again.

The poem references “the man in the White House”; the same one currently occupies “the People’s House.” That fact alone defies all reason, continues a crisis I could not have imagined would define the state of our country in the last third of my life.

Today, I also remember my father, who received an honors burial at Arlington Memorial Cemetery, where he has lain with two infant children since his death in the summer of 1990. Beside him now is my mother.

I honor my father today. He served in World War II in the famous all-volunteer group Merrill’s Marauders (a Time correspondent suggested the name), who were deemed “expendable” as they fought, commando-style, behind enemy lines in China, Burma, and India, who, lacking medicines, fought disease of all kinds, suffered a lack of food, and generally experienced all the horror that is war. It was a time my father did not talk about. My father would be appalled by the crisis his America faces today.

A tiny American flag marks every grave in Arlington on Memorial Day. May wherever it’s flown have meaning.

Maureen Doallas, Memorial Day

the museum felt like it was holding its breath.
clean. white. guards with ear pieces.
i wanted to see the declaration of independence
mostly because of the movie, national treasure.
i hoped it might have a golden map.
instead, the document stared back at me
from behind its glass. i asked in a whisper,
“is that it?” a piece of skin & a tissue box.
dull & worn. not like an elder fish’s gills but
like old stockings. like polyester thrift store bras.

Robin Gow, declaration

It is seductive, this selective time travel. The perfect weekend with the imperfect lover whose ineptitude at love you didn’t yet know would break your heart. The languid summer just before the diagnosis, the disaster, the death. The time you were ten pounds lighter and ten choices freer and ten mistakes less marred in the mirror of the mind. Over and over, the hand of memory reaches back, grasps for the bygone moment when life was simpler or brighter or more redolent with aliveness, forgetting that the only thing for the keeping is the naked now, vulnerable as a newborn, total as eternity. The great challenge, the great triumph, is to make of memory an instrument of presence.

That is what Diane Seuss offers in her splendid poem “Weeds,” found in her altogether vivifying collection Modern Poetry (public library).

Maria Popova, How Not to Dwell on the Past

I chose this poem because it represents that feeling of holding on a little too long to something you know you should let go of. At its essence, Dream Logic is a collection about heartbreak, but with a lower case ‘h’. The poems are quiet and long-suffering.

It is also about the way the mind can split off and begin rewriting the story, creating a kind of “what might have been”, blurring the lines between memory, nostalgia and dreamscape. I have always had an overactive imagination, and writing has been a healthy way to express that. I am often haunted by Miss Havisham in Dickens’ Great Expectations, waiting all those years and becoming a kind of living ghost.

Drop-in by Satya Bosman (Nigel Kent)

I wrote this poem in 2022 in Vamvakou, Greece, where I was introduced to the hawk moth (also called sphinx moth) after running from planter to planter thinking I was watching a rather drab hummingbird at work. Its caterpillar form is called a “hornworm.” None of these delightful facts fit comfortably into the poem, but I wanted you to know. I also—up until six months ago—had a grammatical error in the poem (dangling modifier) that no one had brought to my attention. Thank goodness for the copy editor that caught it.

Maya C. Popa, Four New Poems

Much-needed rain has arrived, and therefore I’ve been inside all day instead of out in the yard and gardens. I thought maybe I would feel motivated to send some of my poems out into the wider world. Turns out that the motivation was a decided maybe, leaning toward lethargy. Instead, I curled up with a cat and Jeff Burt’s collection The Root Endures (Sheila-na-Gig Editions).

Actually, I read this book a week ago but decided to take a closer look so I could post about it, because I like it a lot. Jeff Burt’s poems contain nature-images and close observations of creatures, plants, and weather yet keep reminding the reader that there’s a decidedly human component here, an interior character who speculates about what human beings are doing here, thinking about, recalling. And how the world is constantly in flux. The rural Wisconsin of the speaker’s childhood feels vividly authentic, and I learned about lime bogs and de-tasseling corn. (I love it when I learn things from poems.) The book seems autobiographical in narrative but never becomes as specifically personal as a memoir would.

And frankly, I guess I might identify more deeply with this book than other, perhaps younger or more urban readers would. I grew up in the mid-Atlantic suburbs, but I spent all my childhood summers in the Midwestern small towns where my parents’ extended families lived. I infer that Burt is pretty much my peer, age-wise; some of his remembered details conjure up a kind of resonance I enjoy. What I’d like to learn from this collection is how to sustain a longer poem, which he does quite well. Not a strength of mine, though I’ve attempted it once or twice with some success. A poem that has numerous short stanzas and travels several pages needs to keep my attention, whether I’m reading it or writing it. Burt’s title poem (the last poem in the book) does this, as does the poem “As If Copper Wire Sang the Unleashing of Time” and “Into the Standing Grain.” Maybe studying writers like Jeff Burt and others can teach me how to write better medium-long poems when a longer poem seems necessary to whatever I’m trying to express. I don’t think I’m interested in writing really long poems–think A. R. Ammons, C. K. Williams, Robert Lowell–but I’d like to explore length a little more.

Ann E. Michael, Rainy-day reading

Vasiliki Albedo & Lucy Holmes – Sardines (Dialect Press)

“but we hesitated at the prospect of jumping out of our tenuous

skins, of dampening the fervour to sample the oily salmon curve

of yet another Bandol Rosé.”

My goodness, I am a bit of a fangirl of these two. Singularly, of course, but together is also something different and quite special. Sardines is a gorgeous exploration of artistic friendship and collaboration. It’s brilliantly put together, with the email exchange between the two poets being just as fascinating as the poems themselves. Being let into these two minds at work, and at play, riffing off each other and their influences, felt like a real treat. It is, as they call it, both intimate and expansive, and it has made me look at collaboration in a new way, as well as introducing me to Frank O’Hara.

Victoria Spires, The thing is… books!

Sze writes measured, considered poems with a focus on the natural world and nature’s ability for re-growth after winter or human-made disasters. Humans here are ciphers, following orders or keeping to a narrow path without deviation. Nature follows different rules with respect for natural cycles, seasons and the ability to bloom after loss. There’s a quiet assurance here too. The tone is unjudgmental, even when observing that humans are the authors of their own misfortune.

Emma Lee, “Into the Hush” Arthur Sze (Penguin Books) – book review

I was very struck this week by an early poem by Tennyson which I don’t remember ever reading before, ‘The Palace of Art’. This poem is — rather brilliantly, I thought — the very final poem in the superb New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (OUP, 1994), edited by Jerome J. McGann. McGann’s anthology prints a very rich mixture of verse dating from between 1785 and 1832, in chronological order, under the year of publication. ‘The Palace of Art’ was first written and published in 1832, in Tennyson’s Poems — a collection that also included ‘The Lady of Shalott’, with which it has some obvious similarities. ‘The Lady of Shalott’ is much more famous, of course, and on the whole I think deservedly so, since its fable of solitude, the soul and the insufficiency of art (“I am half-sick of shadows”) is so much tighter, mysterious and self-sufficient.

All the same, ‘The Palace of Art’ is an extraordinary poem. Tennyson started out as a romantic poet, and this poem is his leave-taking of it: a sort of peak-romanticism that is also the end of it. McGann aptly describes it as his ‘hail and farewell’ to romanticism. It’s a little bit like Milton’s ravishingly lovely imitation of Virgil in the Epitaphium Damonis, a poem that similarly ends by bidding farewell to the style it has so perfectly inhabited.

Victoria Moul, I have found / A new land, but I die.

I take the 75 bus, the service from Withernsea, back to Hull. The automated announcer says, ‘Next stop: Hull Prison.’ Do not pass go. The delightful 1932 East Hull Fire station has a motto painted above each of its three arched vehicle doors: ‘Ready Aye Ready’.

I get off at the interchange, next to Hull Paragon Station, location of both the well-known statue of Larkin and the Royal Hotel featured in his Symbolist-ish poem ‘Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel’, completed in May 1966. In his biography of Larkin, James Booth claims that the atmosphere of the hotel is largely unchanged since the poem was penned, despite a major fire in 1990 and subsequent restoration.

It’s a sonnet, of course, with the turn coming after the ninth line. Although far from being the only poem in his oeuvre to prominently feature light, it starts with ‘Light’ and includes the word ‘lights’ twice, as though hammering the point that this hotel is, and maybe hotels per se are, very brightly lit: ‘In shoeless corridors, the lights burn.’ I love hotels, and I love poems, novels (e.g. Troubles by J.G. Farrell) and films (e.g. The Consequences of Love, Some Like It Hot and The Grand Budapest Hotel) which are at least partially set within them.

A curious part of ‘Friday Night’ is ‘all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds, / Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.’ Few of Larkin’s mature poems mention smoking – is ‘Essential Beauty’ the only other? – even though he smoked throughout adulthood. In a dissection of ‘Cut Grass’, in which ‘Mown stalks exhale’, Tom Paulin conjured the perfect phrase, ‘the anxieties smokers know’; not all smokers are necessarily anxious (do Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ever get anxious?), but the overlap in a diagram by Mr Venn must be very considerable. All of this is a roundabout way of declaring my surprise that Larkin didn’t touch on smoking in his poetry more often.

The part of the poem which is undoubtedly the most intriguing is Larkin’s pressing-home of the point about the hotel being a bastion of ‘loneliness’ by adding the curiosity ‘How / Isolated, like a fort, it is’. Was he thinking of Fort Paull here? Or maybe Bull Sand, one of two Great War forts built in the Humber Estuary, visible from the end of Spurn Point, which is implicitly featured in ‘Here’ .

Matthew Paul, A bit of psychogeography

Mid-May is college commencement season here in the United States. It seems fitting, then, this week, to feature a poem about graduation. And our readers may remember George Moses Horton (1798–1883), whose “On Summer” appeared last July, as a poet whose own biography makes for the sort of triumph-over-adversity story so often embraced by commencement speakers.

Born into slavery, the sixth of ten children, on the plantation of a William Horton in North Carolina, George Moses Horton was an autodidact, teaching himself to read through hearing the Bible read aloud. He was the first African-American writer since the nation’s founding to publish a book of any kind (Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral had been published in London in 1773), the first writer to publish a literary work in North Carolina, and the only writer in American history to publish a book with an American press (J. Gales & Son, of Raleigh, North Carolina) while enslaved.

As a young man, sent from home to sell fruits and vegetables in nearby Chapel Hill, Horton began to make pocket money by composing love poems for students at the University of North Carolina. The students in turn supplied him with books for the furthering of his education. Today’s Poem, while not a love letter written for a college student, instead constitutes something like a love letter to the idea of The College Graduate and more: to the bittersweet appropriateness of leavetakings.

The verse itself, in abab quatrains of two tetrameter lines bracketed by trimeter, feels forced in places, with syntax inverted and the passive voice resorted to, to make the rhymes. Yet even where the poem strains to fulfill its form, there’s something compelling and charming in its voice. Adopting, at least in the first stanza, the persona of The Graduate, but inevitably conscious of the gap between that graduate’s future possibilities and his own, Horton writes of graduation as a kind of transcendence, as if the departing seniors were bodily assumed into heaven. One day, they’re at college; the next day they’ve simply vanished, “here to be seen no more.”

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: The Graduate Leaving College

Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. A Romanian-Hungarian poet, she learned English (her primary language of writing) later in life, moving fluently between prose poems, haiku, and free verse, often channeling the feminist surrealist currents of Leonora Carrington, Aase Berg, and Aglaja Veteranyi. In 2020, she released a bilingual (Spanish and English) collection of haiku known as While Dreaming Your Dreams (Mano Ya Mano Books) which received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. She then released her debut full-length poetry collection, Moon Flogged, in 2024 through Broken Sleep Books, and recently released a chapbook through Ethel Zine called With a Swan’s Nest on Her Back. Her second full-length poetry collection Split / Game of Little Deaths will be out with Piżama Press in May 2026.

1 – How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book, While Dreaming Your Dreams, is a collection of poems written in the haiku genre. A small independent publishing house in Spain published it in 2020, when I was already 43 years old. Even though my life did not change in a material sense, this debut proved I was resourceful and capable of turning abstract dreams into a tangible reality. Winning the Touchstone Book Award validated my work, but it also introduced an immense pressure: from that moment on, both publishers and readers expected nothing less than exceptional poetry. While writing a haiku seems deceptively simple, crafting a truly resonant one is a difficult feat. I realized quickly that I might not surpass the specific quality of the poems in my debut volume within that same form. Consequently, I put haiku on hold and transitioned toward short, lyrical prose, first in collaboration with my good friend Alan Peat, then independently. In essence, I have integrated a fragmented narrative arc into the surrealism and lyricism of my haiku roots. In comparing my recent work to my previous, I find that while the form has expanded, the core remains unchanged. No matter how much I experiment with structure, lyricism remains my second skin. Brevity and conciseness continue to define the sinews of my style.

2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Poetry is an intrinsic part of me. I wrote my first pieces —if I can even call them poems— while in grade school, writing in Hungarian, my mother tongue. At the time, I found them utterly silly, yet they must have possessed some merit as they were published in a children’s magazine. However, following a single rejection letter, I retreated from writing for a significant period. I briefly resumed during my university years, still in Hungarian, but abandoned it again, sensing my work lacked authenticity; I was merely attempting to mirror the voice of a well-known Hungarian poet. For a long while, I set poetry aside to focus on reading—interestingly, primarily novels rather than verse. Then, on a snowy day in 2018, a fully formed haiku suddenly emerged in my mind, composed in English, my third language. That moment solved my dual dilemma: it defined both the genre I was meant to inhabit and the language in which I would finally find my voice.

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Réka Nyitrai

I went to find poetry, or those who might inhabit poetry, at a football match. It was a Friday night in Hull. And Friday night in Hull is the last place you’d expect to find poetry which is precisely why I thought I might find it there. There was of course a poem, Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel by Hull’s adopted laureate Philip Larkin. Larkin went out of his way to disengage from what you might describe as a poetic life, living instead as a curmudgeonly librarian in a rather remote corner of England, writing of absence and detachment with exquisite precision.

My idea was to get football fans to recite his poem. The Royal Hotel in Hull is now a temporary home for those seeking asylum and has been the focus of protest from both sides, the send-em-backers and the let-them-stayers. I’ll let you use your own prejudice to decide which group you think football fans are more likely to fall into. I felt the poem, written in the 1960s about a hotel in decline from its victorian splendour, carried new potency, might add some nuance, allow people to think differently, consider this delicate situation poetically. Lines like “writing home / if home existed” and “letters of exile” took on a different significance.

I had imagined skinheads with bitten off ears weeping and switch bladed hooligans grimacing, all delivering lines of poetry with passion or menace or unexpected sensitivity. It didn’t quite happen that way. I recorded a lot of footage and the fans were generous but most of them regressed, became nervous nine year olds at school being told by teacher to read out in class. They’d all much rather be at the football than making fools of themselves with poetry.

WATCH FULL FILM

I knew there was something in this project, a film of a poem being read by those who inhabit a different kind of poetry. I asked an actor friend and Chelsea fan Mike Grady to help it along, to offer a more considered reading himself. Mike’s done a tonne of Shakespeare, movies, TV and audio books across the decades and has that voice, you know that voice, the voice you’d listen to even he was reading an itemised bill.

Mike is calm and gentle and delivers the poem beautifully. Although he’s spent his career on stage and in film I believe he’d prefer his life to be as drama free as possible, that a poetic life is not one that he has any desire to aspire to. I’m beginning to think that most people probably feel this way. On my poetry walks I find I’m drawn to the poets who lived gregariously, lives punctuated with spilled drinks and broken hearts, knife fights and mad houses. Perhaps I need to redraw my map.

Jan Noble, Nº65 Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel

This poem was a sort of whim I had, which I wrote down, then laid aside. I often saw the title when inside explorer, but didn’t open the file again, then called, “I Asked AI,” until this afternoon. When I read it again, I thought there was something there, and as I edited and rewrote, I ended up somewhere entirely different from what I would have guessed the poem would be. Which is what poetry is really, right? The journey you take while you move through it.

And I must say that my own ambivalence about the current conversations about AI certainly came out in this poem. I could write a long, long discussion about AI and I may one day, but for now let it suffice that I am a diehard Trekkie before all other things.

Here it is, thoroughly redone, with a new title. Let me know what you think.

Space is a Perpetual Motion Machine

I asked AI
the price of milk.

She gave me a baby.

I asked AI
for breakfast.

She gave me
a potted plant.

I asked AI the time.
She gave me
a ball of string.
[…]

Rebecca Cook, Space is a Perpetual Motion Machine

Adjacent to my current writing/ researching around memory, I’ve been thinking about the difference between intimacy and immediacy as both affective experiences and as literary/ artistic techniques. In the realm of experience the gulf between these two states feels immeasurably wide: the former is a slow foliation over time; it is predicated upon mutual vulnerability and care. One grows into the intimate. Immediacy, on the other hand, is a synapse-sparking collision in-the-moment. It’s the risk of exposure, the giddy high of arousal. Immediacy is instant and kinetic. Intimacy is profound. Both are vital components of what we might rather pompously call “the human condition”, but either on its own produces an emotionally and experientially lopsided life.

Within art and literature, things look a little different: inside of review-space, I see intimacy and immediacy used as virtual synonyms a lot (cards on table, I suspect I am as guilty of this as anyone), while stylistically, the former often feels sacrificed on the altar of the latter. In poetry – the one area I’m actually qualified to talk about – this appears as, but it not limited to: direct address, and a posture of unfiltered disclosure; a plausible musicality of language, often valorised under the rubric of “accessibility”, that presents little difficulty by way of intellectual assimilation and understanding. Immediate poems make a broad appeal to the emotions through the urgency of their themes and what I guess we might call the melodic “flow” of their delivery; they excel, I’d say, at their best, in evocative moments of lyric phrase-making. They tend to centre a stable-speaking lyric subject, and are often concerned with notions of embodiment and authenticity. Intimate poems, on the other hand, are slow-growers: they slightly resist readerly efforts to enter and understand; they might take a little time to parse, to locate who is speaking, where, and to what purpose. Which is not to say that all intimate poems are “difficult” or “obscure” – Michael Donaghy’s poems are intimate, but they also operate within tightly turned and self-contained conceits – I mean only to suggest that we cannot make the same kinds of ready assumption about authentic and unfiltered writer-to-reader disclosure within an intimate poem; there’s masking, play, a teasing-out required to identify a speaking voice and its relationship to ourselves. These poems are not necessarily in or of the moment; they posit other places that we have to work to access. I think the best intimate poems are those less concerned with the “flow” or “beauty” of their lyric phrasing, than they are with judiciously weighing each word and its placement within a line; this often produces slightly strange syntax, and a feeling that pressure is being applied to language in some way; that language is being thought about as substance and structure, not only as a delivery system.

To be clear, this list of tendencies is not exhaustive, neither are these two toolboxes mutually exclusive: there are plenty of amazing poets living and dead who deploy both sets of technique within their individual poems and across the broad corpus of their work. I’m not picking a side here either. I read both. I write/ have written / written with both. I like both. Ascribing a moral or political value to a set of stylistic and structural techniques is limited binary thinking that serves absolutely no one and is impoverishing to poetry as an art. What I will say is that we are at a place, in Space Year 2026, when the immediate is in the ascendency, that is, as a dominant style on page and on screen, and as the signal nature of our experience under late-stage blah de blah.

Here I do have a problem: because immediacy is a condition of capitalism. It is manufactured by capitalism, and it serves the aims and interests of capitalism. What is immediacy, after all, but a denial or a loss of mediation? A desire for the frictionless assimilation of ideas and experiences without the necessity to collide with opposing and obstructing otherness. I follow Hegel and Kornbluh here: the world – of things and ideas – only becomes what it is through its relationships with and to (the) other/s.
Knowledge and understanding require a process of moving through and bearing with difference and contradiction – it’s dialectical, duh.

And this is self-evidently true, isn’t it? No one is legitimately going to argue that abdicating thought and choice to an algorithm has enriched our lives or experiences of art, or that the ceaselessly scrolling echo-chambers of social media have benefited anyone but ket-cooked billionaire tech bros, are they? Okay, fabulous. On some level, then, we do acknowledge that social conditions replicate themselves in consciousness, profoundly shaping the ways in which we relate to the world and ourselves. Immediacy as a poetic/ writerly technique can be a useful tool; when used consciously it can also perform a critical reflection of neo-liberal conditions. A problem appears only when this particular technique is granted an undue supremacy (which, to be clear, it has been), owing largely to the dictates of a publishing marketplace driven by demand for zeitgeisty and easily-assimilable dreck – by capitalism’s endless cool hunt, and its race-to-the-bottom populism. So far, so icky, but so much worse than a prevailing style is when immediacy becomes a manner of reading, the dominant manner of reading, the way in which editors and publishing professionals are now trained to read – this, for the practice of art and literature – is absolutely fucking disastrous.

Fran Lock, “GRANTAGATE”

I’ve become lately very wary of ways of reading poems that assume an overall meaning, or that the poem has established images in it. I need language and articulation to play a role, almost from a dugout. This stanza really answered that need this morning.

A syllogism relies on simplified language, reduced vocabulary, simplified acts. Then it can assert a truth claim and test it logically. But this stanza isn’t doing that. I can spot bathos in Pope’s Rape of the Lock, for example, because the images, argumentation and narrative are clear, so it’s more like a farce, with twists (the clown unexpectedly doesn’t fall, the vicar does). In Pope, the play of etymology is clear and the diction under control so much that it’s like maths (vide D Davie). In this late Hill stanza, Hill is recognising that he has collected vocabulary in order to make Hill Poems in perpetuity. But he catches himself doing it, and throughout the sequence advocates for stupidity and vagueness. Hence the metal detector line. Showing what rings true, and also too automated. And then there is a sad sense of age throughout the sequence and in this stanza, hence that kind of career-bathos. The theme throughout the sequence is “life is a dream”, and so there are hallucinations and sour wakings and also glad wakings, both still alive and ailing.

Ira Lightman, Brief note on late Hill

I blame these threads on Roland Barthes, and his “rustle”, that sound of fabrics swishing against each other within a sentence or phrase, the position that welcomes friction, as he puts it in The Rustle of Language (italics mine):

“I am putting myself in the position of someone who does something, and not of someone who talks about something: I am not studying a product, I am taking on a production; I am abolishing the discourse on discourse; the world no longer comes to me in the form of an object, but in that of writing, that is, of a practice; I’m going on to another type of knowledge (that of the Enthusiast)” . . .

Elsewhere, Barthes mixes his musings, always imagining that projected work (ultimately, the Proustian novel that never happened). Under the title of “Book projects”:

Incidents (mini-texts, wrinkles, haikus, notations, playing with meaning, everything that falls, like a leaf).

What does that mean?

A non-book could be conceived: one which would relate a thousand incidents, by keeping itself from ever drawing one line of meaning . . . 

Incidents kept throwing palimpsests before me, to double the trouble of my overly-entangled interpretations.

Alina Stefanescu, The two-faced self-portrait.

It was only a few years ago that I first read Anne Carson’s The Beauty of a Husband. She writes at the end, 

“Well life has some risks. Love is one. Terrible risks.
…
On a June Evening
Here’s my advice,
hold.

Hold beauty.”

When I was in undergrad, back in Miranda House, I hated men so much that my friends gave me the nickname of spinster. Before Carson, it had never occurred to me to think of men as beautiful. These past few weeks, my Instagram algorithm has been showing me reels of a woman handing out compliments to men and I thought I have been called beautiful so many times in my life but I have never called a man beautiful even though I have seen the beautiful Flemish painting like hands of men making espresso behind coffee bars in Rome, or the statuesque pose of waiters in Parisian cafes, or Michelangelo’s David, their noses and day old beards, Caillebotte’s paintings of men rowing boats or working a wooden floor, their strong forearms seducing women. Their faltering voices over phone calls, their shy disarming smiles, their bicycles, and new sneakers, their excuses to have conversations or to hold a woman’s hand, their new crisp cotton shirts, or summer haircuts, jackets, and watches, their heads turning in corridors, or attempts at making witty charming comments. Their eyes full of weight and sadness, having seen life pass them by, the undereye bags after a night of insomnia, or throats almost choked with tears. Their fear, cowardice, and exhaustion. Their helplessness and repressed anger. They, too, were children once. Their restless fingers and nails and mouths that sometimes say things I barely hear. If one looked at them long enough, they seem almost as beautiful as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. 

Saudamini Deo, On seeing men

I imagine the shape of air, the way the air moves with the wingbeats of birds. How the air vibrates when it is moved by birdsong. I imagine how the air might remember those movements it was once made of, that it was once the medium for. Lost birds. Birds that once were. Their flight, their song. The geometry of a place: its birds, trees, voices, rocks, water, air. I imagine as scaffolding for time and space as time as space are scaffolding for those things. The air is and stands in for possibility. What was possible in the past, what is possible now, what might be possible in the future. What we still have and what we have lost. How might I consider it as an instrument to play, an archive to explore, and medium to live in. I frequently consider Walter Benjamin’s angel of history and the wind of history that blows it away from history. But I think also of the entire space it is in. The wind that blows the angel back into the future is somewhere. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but in a somewhere. I think of this somewhere as having multiple dimensions: time and space, certainly, but also memory, and possibility. This is the place where I find myself. Like the self, it is both a medium, a concert hall and a harp to play.

Gary Barwin, Ghost Birds: memory and the shape of life

Shield of Mnemosyne is not my first extended, large-scale poema (Russian term for such things). I’ve written around 10 of them over the last 40 years. What is the primary, underlying literary impulse here (aside from all the other forms and phenomena of motivation)?

I am traveling a path opened by Hart Crane. His path, in turn, was opened by Walt Whitman. Hart followed Walt down that Open Road into America… and built a Bridge for it. I am trying to build a poetic House (or Temple, or Church) – a way station along, or at the never-ending end of, that cosmic trail.

There was another modernist “epic” poet, who like Crane formally announced his Whitman affiliation : Ezra Pound. And a few of my few though very fit readers have noted Poundian echoes in my efforts. But it is the gift of Hart Crane, not Pound, which has offered me the closest aesthetic model and deepest poetic inspiration. My long poems are buildings. Humble shacks, homes, temples… made with song.

I have been an outlier in American literature for so long, it’s become second nature. But I think our literary and intellectual culture simply does not know how to pigeonhole, bracket and brand me to suit its (generally commercial/ephemeral) purposes. I’m not so easy to read : you have to climb into the rafters. You have to put two-&-two together. But my idiom is music – which itself comes to me from a deep well of air, a basic joy of breathing. I mean this in very a literal sense : because when I was four years old, back in 1956, I contracted GBS (Guillain-Barre Syndrome), a rare disease similar to polio. I was paralyzed up to my neck, and kept alive by a breathing apparatus called an “iron lung”. So I’ve had a special appreciation for the breezy river of air that is poetry ever since.

As it happens, I composed my first known poem later that year, in 1956 : a brief ditty about work vs. play, addressed to my father. He scribbled it down on a little cardboard key card, on his way out the door to work. My mother saved that little card; she put it in the mail to me, sometime around 2006.

Henry Gould, Behind the SHIELD OF MNEMOSYNE

I have a broader idea around what a ‘successful’ writing life might constitute for a poet. To have five or six poems that last a hundred years already includes you in the highest rung. Three or four, is sustained brilliance, and far beyond your generation. One or two, is the goal for the most of us – to have made the hours, the life’s commitment, somewhat worthwhile. Auden is very clearly of that second group. But I cannot help but now see an infecting slackness to the majority of his verse.

Before collaborating with Stravinsky, Auden also worked with Benjamin Britten on the operetta Paul Bunyan (1941). What rigour did he bring to the project? First, let me show the rigour he demands of others. Here is Auden writing on Hamlet:

Hamlet has many faults – it is full of holes both in action and motivation. The sketchy portrayal of Fortinbras is one. We hear early about his plans, when Claudius sends word for him to stop. Fortinbras agrees, but wants permission to pass through Denmark on his way to Poland. We see him pass across the stage on the way to Poland, and he returns when everyone is dead. This subplot is needed, but it is not properly incorporated into the play. The action involving Laertes also poses problems. When Laertes returns from France the second time, why hasn’t someone told him Hamlet killed his father, and when he storms the palace, why is all the excitement over in a few moments? Polonius is secretly buried. Why? Polonius’ death is necessary to get Laertes back to England, but again the subplot is not really knit into the action. And why does Claudius delay in killing Hamlet and make elaborate plans which could miscarry? Ophelia is a silly, repressed girl and is obscene and embarrassing when she loses her mind over her father’s death. But though her madness is very shocking and horrible, it is not well motivated. She was not so wild about her meddling Papa, nor was she tremendously interested in Papa.

We have arguments about the deftness of sub-plot integrations, plot inaccuracies, and, of special note, issues with character motivation. In fact, Auden’s series of Shakespeare lectures display numerous instances of sensitivity towards character actions and motivations – those of Iago and Othello a particular standout.

How does this compare then to his self-critique of his own opera, Paul Bunyan:

Babe, the blue ox who gives him [Paul Bunyan] advice, remains a puzzle; I conceive of her quite arbitrarily, as a symbol of his anima, but, so far as I know, one explanation is as valid as another. Nor have I the slightest idea why he should fail to get on with his wife, unless it signify that those who, like lumbermen, are often away from home, rarely develop the domestic virtues.

Here, we have the librettist confessing an ambivalence as to both why the characters exist and, also, why they act in the manner that they do. How do we begin to square the discrepancy between the two stances? On days that I am feeling unkind, today is one such day, I think that Auden felt the latter statement was allowably, flippantly brilliant because, well, it came from Auden.

On more objective days, my relationship with Auden is similar to my thoughts on Hugh MacDiarmid. Admiration tinged with a weary dissatisfaction. Yes, yes, there are those wonderful few pieces, but look at the lazy slagheap of dashed-off dross… Countered by: yes, yes, look at the lazy slagheap of dashed-off dross, but there are those wonderful few pieces.

I wonder what the community thinks. Does all the poor work even count when we consider a poet and their legacy? Or does this not matter, and do only the brief heights that a poet reaches count?

Niall Campbell, Being Frustrated With One of the Greats

Spring cleaning seems like an obvious metaphor for revision and assembling a poetry ms. It’s not unlike casting a hard look at the poems you’ve accumulated and clearing out the debris that clogs their pipes, whatever elements might interrupt their force for a reader: cliché, unproductive digression, wordy moments.

I’ve done some beyond-the-ordinary cleaning this year, too, as a person on sabbatical tends to–and maybe a person winding up the whirlwind of a book launch, too. First ritual is clearing junk out of the office, which is both helpful (what have I lost track of?) and restless procrastination (I think of a dog or cat circling around before settling into a comfortable position). I also clean, literally and metaphorically, between hard writing pushes. For a few weeks I keep my head down and focus; then I get tired and fuzzy, unable to see the project, so I do a variety of chores. This includes professional stuff like reference letters; personal stuff like getting a haircut; and home tasks such as tackling a closet that suddenly looks dysfunctional. Visiting my kids as they struggled also meant tackling cleaning tasks that overwhelmed them–hard work but genuinely helpful, unlike some other parental behaviors in face of crisis. While I sorted and scrubbed, I thought a lot about cleaning my mother’s home during her final illness five years ago. Sort the pills into a dispenser, throw out expired foods and buy new, and shine up the sink because you can’t shine up the future or make medicine actually cure a person–that sort of desperate labor standing in for all that I could not do.

While polishing poems is a good and necessary step, though, I’ll make a case for dirtying them up first. At least for me, first drafts usually hide something important. It’s hard to dig into the real mess of my thinking and feeling. That stuff is ugly, burdened with shame, jealousy, misdirected anger, lazy illogic, and other emotional and intellectual habits that make me look bad. But poems become more valuable to others when I’m willing to do the work.

Lesley Wheeler, Getting dirty for poetry

Then I was right in there
amongst bouncy pond weed, 
straggly ribbons of leaves
and those shades of brown and black in close-up.
Oh, the depths of it.
I was so cold amongst the stale green smell
but happy.

They shouldn’t have ripped me from it
just to wrap me in a stranger’s dog blanket.

Sue Finch, FINDING THE SHAPE OF THE GARDEN

Poetry in part is a way to impose order, or find and highlight order or patterns. It is skill of finding significance and meaning, but if you try too hard, are too attached, remember that meaning isn’t hard to confer randomly. Try “he’s such a ___” and add a random noun. {cucumber, cummerbund, paper cut}. Meaning isn’t hard. It’s near unavoidable with our meaning-addled brains.

The danger in poetry is to hard-close, to soothe too soon, to give a satisfying shape before the work. It is to speak like a bland or witty horoscope containing no actual thought, but flattering appearance of it, thereby manufacturing a patronizing poet voice of authority.

A risk is to make the work the packaging words and poetic devices, the hook and the resolution, instead of the deeper work of changing self, disturbing system defaults, growth, depth, letting chaos turn to genuine insight into systems or witness the discomfiting. 

As hard as it can be to be published, with 1% to 3% acceptance rates, the hard part of writing, the most active time is the making, the improving, the shaking up your own practice, the expanding or leaning into the weirdness of your brain. The sporadic hurry-scurry of pitching poems is work but is not The Work.

Pearl Pirie, The Work

I am not being dishonest when I say I don’t like waking up at 6am.  It makes me negative. I hear stories of high-achieving friends waking at sunbreak to write, to lift weights at the gym …different species.  It’s only the leaking of the sun through the blinds that stirs me – I take in the morning’s emanation, all objects like clay just thrown and still wet in that bluish light, waiting to be fired.  My nerves, like theirs, also quiver… 

If I have no obligations, I will drift asleep at 7 into a savage world of my own interior, my dreamer standing at the glass, eavesdropping and observing myself with such precision I am often aghast.  I have dreams that enact social satire about our tourist class – ‘What actually IS a Rhode Island?” – to appalling tests of motherhood – I’m really eating live flesh?  – to surprises of who’s in bed with whom in what country – the full screen of entanglements.  Then there’s the Russian doll metaphor.  Walking into a Banana Republic while living in a Banana Republic — oh images on the screen, how crisp and precise!  Get out your pith helmet, your jeeps, your fake smiles….

Jill Pearlman, Savage Truths of 7am

I’m planning for a writer’s residency and thinking about what makes for a successful residency – crunchy snacks? comfortable pants and shoes? Inspiring reading material? A set of goals? I want to work on my book that I’m still sending out and write some new work – either essays or flash or poems. I haven’t felt very creative the last few months for some reason.

So I’m hoping this time away will give me some new perspectives, some time away from social media, television, and the routine.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Green Herons and Goslings, AI Lit Mag Scandals, Planning for Writing Residencies

It’s been a long time since I did a guest slot reading – my own fault, I withdrew following a now-long-ago (first) heart attack – but I’m really pleased to say I’ve been pencilled in for the excellent Buzzwords in Cheltenham on Sunday, February 14, 2027.

Yes, it’s a long way off but that shows just how popular the Buzzwords set-up is – held upstairs at the Exmouth Arms in Bath Road on the second Sunday of the month except, if memory serves me well, for August.

I’m already looking forward to it. I read there years ago and tried to contribute to the open mic session when I could, but as I said, fell out of the habit.

Now, with the publication of Poems In The Key Of Aardvark (see image of cover below), I have a responsibility to get off my behind and do readings again and anything else I can to promote it.

I’ll get out to do some open mics where I can. It’s sad that Stratford Literary Festival no longer caters for poetry – ancient or modern – but I’ll see where the new determination to socialise leads. It’s brought back fond memories of reading at a variety of festivals, poetry groups etc over many years, so this, I suppose, is something of a comeback.

Bob Mee, OF POETRY READINGS AND MINDLESS FOLK WHO STEAL CHICKENS

It feels like the first week of summer, although it’s hard for me to pin down when summer starts precisely.  The last day of in-person class feels like a demarcation line, as does turning in grades, as does graduation.  I want to spend some time this week planning for ways to get back to creative writing, the non-seminary, non-sermon writing.  I want more poetry.  I also want to remember that this summer is the time I planned to put a new poetry collection together.

Here’s what I wrote in a December blog post:  ” I’m going to wait until summer to do a deeper dive into manuscript assembly. I’m going to create a new manuscript called Higher Ground. The title works on several levels with the climate change poems along with spirituality poems.”  That blog post reminded me that I had looked at past manuscripts–do I want to use one of them as a skeleton/scaffolding or start by looking at files of individual poems?

I also want to return to my New Year’s resolution, which was also my 2025 resolution:   “I am not feeling OK about how many poems I am not writing. I do a good job of writing down fragments and inspirations, but I’m also aware that I have fewer inspirations and fragments in the past year or two than has been usual. I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished. Fifty-two poems gives me space to catch up, and space to have a white hot streak that sets me ahead.”

Here’s hoping for some white hot writing streaks this summer!

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Summer Writing Intentions

The cusp of summer always means summer projects, which, despite my not being beholden to academic calendars any longer, still seems like a nice time to try to get some things done, although not with as much fervor and doggedness as that which comes with autumn. This summer, after I finish a couple of play scripts that are in various stages, next up will be my next installment in the Antiquities series. I have only been in research mode of late and made a few collages a couple years back, but I am determined to get at least a good first draft by September on a series of Calypso-inspired poems. Considering one of the first unpublished poems I wrote in my very first year of writing seriously in the late 90s, a poem called “Plentitude” that is probably way too bad to share now, it seems fitting this is where I go next. […]

My other goal for the summer is to start dipping my toe into submitting plays to theaters and contests once I’ve built up something of a body of work to actually show off. Things have been going well, and just this weekend, I was able to put a bow on the final version of my Macbeth witches retelling, as well as get the first act roughly rendered of something else that mixes 90s culture, teen dieting, and demonology that’s turning out to be a lot of fun.

Kristy Bowen, May Paper Boat

I have to say that the research I’m doing on the novel I’m writing about libraries and card catalogues and the future, is so much fun and taking me to the coolest places. In the old days, I’d probably share some of that here, but it’s the new upside down secretive world of writing that we now inhabit I suppose and it seems folly to speak about one’s projects. But one essay that pops out is by Umberto Eco, on censorship. He wrote it in 2009 and it feels like he knew what our times would be like, because it was a lesser version of the noise filled world then. This is when the world began filling with digital noise, “an excess of information.” He says, “This great need for noise is like a drug: it is a way to avoid focusing on what is really important….” He refers to Saint Augustine and “Redi in interiorem hominem,” return to the interior (hu)man.

The thing I find most interesting is that he also says that even when people are oppressed by “the most censorious tyrants” they have been “able to find out all that is going on in the world through popular word of mouth.” And this is why he says that the biggest “ethical problems we face today is how to return to silence.” He calls for a study of semiotics of reticence, a semiotics of silence in political debate, in theater, and in other forms of communication. He asks us to consider the long pause, “silence as creation of suspense, silence as threat, silence as agreement, silence as denial, silence in music.” […]

We are in an imagination battle, as adrienne marie brown has said in her book on emergence. We need to invent new ways to see, to write, to be. Or maybe it’s a reclaiming of the old ways. I’ve been embracing my film camera, I always write with a fountain pen. I’m going to be on social media a bit less, I swear lol, or at least be there more on my own terms. I’m planning a reset time, turning it off for a week or so here and there. Maybe even a month at some point in the near future.

O’Donohue talks about the imagination. It is like a lantern, “it illuminates the inner landscapes of our life and helps us discover their secret archaeologies.” How to see the mystery and beauty ever-present?

We can cultivate the “grace of innocence” and tap into our “passion for freedom.” Our hearts are wild, naturally. We can still answer the call to a creative life for we know instinctively what that is. The imaginative life is one of mystery, ecstasy, joy, possibility, delight, revelation, and with some perseverance, perhaps transcendence.

Times are always changing; let us use this time, we creative souls, spirits, to reinvent what creativity is even. Let’s find new ways to share our work, new ways to create, perhaps more secretly or word of mouth. Let’s share with those who approach with reverence. The others never wanted our offerings anyway.

Shawna Lemay, Let’s Talk About Word of Mouth, the Unforeseen, and Delicious Trouble

When I have created art that denies my authentic self—whether by erasing my shadow self, over-extending anchors, over-clarifying my interiority, self-questioning my patterns and symbols, or cleaning up language so that it doesn’t feel “too obscure” for the reader—I have felt a primordial sting of shame.

But when I’ve generously translated the creative currents within me without diluting them, I felt an existential, euphoric liberation.

What I have learned is that the writing doesn’t need to come with a map or key. Trust that the human heart will know its way. Indulge the mystery. Bend time. Let blue be green be garnet be gold. Resist the need to hold everyone’s hands, & to have your hands held. Let the underbelly speak. Get lost in the process. Push past the illusory. Relish in the lostness. Quiet the noise. Descend and translate. Look for the big fish in the deepest of waters.

You also never need to explain or justify your process. It’s not really about you or me. It’s bigger and deeper than us all. We are a splendid conduit when we get out of the way.

Lisa Marie Basile, The poetic permissions of dream logic & otherworlds

I keep trying to break
language into patterns that will mean something

beyond myself. I think of the mulberries I picked
from a friend’s garden, how even as half of them

sank into swift ferment, their skin still gleamed.
Night, too, presses its blue bruise against

the house walls. Everything can fold back into itself,
and my ghosts slip back like leaves into the pages of

a book. After, the air feels like it does after someone
has said something so real, it becomes unrepeatable

Luisa A. Igloria, Veined

Because we’ve lived in our house for forty years, my garden has suffered many changes of mind. And because roots can be very persistent, sometimes my older ideas re-emerge. This poem is the story of one of those reappearances, told in the classical meter known as the Sapphic stanza, one of my favorite ancient rhythms. […]

Stand there still, O vegetable love. Grow taller.
Soar and soften out to a ferny greenness
feathered open, branched to adorn these hoped-for
armfuls of roses.

Maryann Corbett, Asparagus

It’s the toadflax that gets me; those clusters of tiny violet flowers, pushing through gravel and tar. It’s the plaintain and horse tail ferns too, the black merrick, its optimistic puffs of yellow; it’s the dandelion, stonethrift, wild clary. It’s the beautiful bright things growing where they are not valued, or wanted; which insist on existing. A single purple Columbine, tall and conspicuous: I think of my trans friend in the Church reading hate mail signed In Jesus’ Name. All the people I have known who have grown in hard land, who flower, who were sometimes cut down much too soon.

I think of what lies under the tarmac; a cool world of roots, roots reaching to mycelium, a fungal network stretching far beyond the reach of each plant. I think of community, interconnection, mutual aid – the plants and mycelium network exchange sugars and minerals, water; how the network protects the plants from drought and disease. I think of pesticides and diggers: the best way to kill a flower is to take away sunlight and rain. The flowers will grow regardless of what laws are passed, what anyone thinks of us.

I think hard times are upon us and ahead of us. But we are flowers. We will continue to bloom.

Clare Shaw, Wildflowers and transphobia

This week: fists of will-be-blooms, a delicate crepuscular pinky grey, parrots nesting in the rain tree, the creeping-charlie’s faultless blue, and much more. Enjoy.

A word drops off my fingers,
hits the floor, shatters. Words
shatter not into letters
and sounds, but into sharp shards
of reflection and color,
memory and movements, dance,
hollows where meaning was home.

PF Anderson, Wordless (#NaPoWriMo 29)

I have begun to teach myself to draw with my left hand.

I have started what I hope will be a book. I haven’t written much prose in a long long time. I learned a lot writing my novel, CLICK, and by learning a lot I mean a lot of what not to do.

I haven’t been hearing poems lately and when that happens I tend not to force myself to write them. I do write them when I’m in poetry circles where we get to write and share with each other but other than that I really haven’t felt like writing poetry. It will come back when it comes back. I think I need a lot of quiet space to let my brain run across the pastures and go wild. Then the poems will come.

Rebecca Cook, Life Update

We had a beautiful full moon right on my birthday, too, and we had lovely sunny weather, so we got out and gardened and Glenn power-washed the deck, so we were ready to entertain. The full moon always gives me insomnia, and this one was no different. I was thinking about an interview with Meryl Streep about the first Devil Wear Prada and how she was thinking of retiring from acting when she was offered the job at 56. I am 53, so it made me think about when we retire as artists. I’m not making the kind of money Meryl is, and I’m much less in demand. If I retired, there probably wouldn’t be as much of an outcry as there would be over Meryl (who was not only great in Devil Wears Prada 2, but if you’ve seen her, she’s terrific in Only Murderers in the Building). It’s surprising to me that she was thinking of retiring but then spoke openly that she did the movie that was so beloved because of the large paycheck it afforded.

I’m also thinking about retirement because Microsoft is offering early retirement packages next week. Glenn still loves his job and enjoys working, so it’s not very attractive to him yet. They’re doing it to invest more in AI and less in humanity, which seems depressing. I guess poets can work until they die or decide to do something else, and we definitely won’t be offered a nice paycheck to quit, and AI may try to take our jobs anyway.

This week EcoTheo re-ran a photo I took for them a while ago, and Rattle re-ran an older poem in their newsletter. So it was nice to be remembered in these ways on a week I was feeling discouraged and thinking about quitting.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Birthday Week, Full Flower Moon, Open Books, Seattle’s Japanese Garden, and More

I’ve been observing my mind lately. It’s been such a gadfly. In five minutes I’ll have searched five things on the internet, gotten up and splashed some paint on paper, written my little 100-word daily challenge (more on that in another post), sat back down and picked up a book, put it down to look something else up, started one thing only to interrupt myself with another. Is it spring that’s making me so flighty? Life in these times? Yes and yes? I’ve been busy in spurts and listless the rest of the time, aspiring to grand ideas but too scattered to think them up, or I think them up and immediately reject them. It’s spring and not-quite-spring, some trees are dangly with their bright catkins and some are well into their leaves. My lilacs are just showing their fists of will-be-blooms but someone’s three blocks away are in full purple. On my walk up on the ridge, no jacks in no pulpits, but flocks of marsh marigold in their fancy dress. A tiny speck of eagle high in the sky circling; in a field the very earthly dark mound of a turkey vulture, its terrible red head bent to its meal. I tried to write a poemish thing based on the crazyass mix of headlines in the Guardian, the whiplash of turning to witness democracy’s demise in one article, the ridiculousness gravity lent to some fashion “controversy” in another. But Rilke said poetry was no place for irony. I disagree. Except when I agree entirely. There’s my mind again, changing, changing. But here is the venerable Don McKay, with a poem from his book Another Gravity. I’m not sure I entirely follow the line of thought of the poem. But given the state of my mind, I think it’s okay.

Marilyn McCabe, there must be a door — a door

nothing grows here, the sanctioned and expatriated seed, scoured from yr latitudes, yr gravel hemispheres. flowers: pacified fixtures, bracketed to buildings. tree: hi-vis bros administer enjambment. i bring with me only this body, idealised and desperate. it is the weed and the worm, dankly questing prole, the writhing of its reach, opaque with strain. fungus. assemble myself inside the open sprawl of it: worklife, yr city. the empire is setting. like aspic.

Fran Lock, THE MUSHROOM IS NOT A PLANT

You may be lucky enough to not feel stress or anxiety before a reading or public performance. In general, I usually get excited nerves, rather than debilitating nerves. Yesterday however felt very different. I spent the whole day in a state of extreme anxiety, worrying about everything. I knew I was being illogical because I was worrying about nobody turning up (even though ninety tickets had been sold). I was also worrying about people turning up and being bored. I spent a full hour thinking about my book and regretting writing any of the poems and publishing it in the first place.

On Saturday night, we had a power cut at midnight which lasted till midday on Sunday morning. This meant we couldn’t make lunch so we all went down into town for lunch on Sunday, which now I write it, sounds like a relatively simple thing to do, even a pleasant one! However, by this point, my ADHD symptoms were in overdrive, making simple decisions and even eating something feel completely overwhelming.

Because I usually don’t get like this before a reading, it took me a while to identify what I needed which was some time on my own to relax and work out what I was reading. I went and had a very long bath, made a list of the poems I was going to read and then left for the venue with my sister.

As Jody and I pulled up to the venue, my friends E and S were also getting out of their cars. They’d come early because E knew I was anxious about nobody turning up! When I got to the green room, my colleague Reuben from work was there with Malika – he’d met her at the train station to make sure she got up the hill ok. Carola was already there, Amanda was in mid-flow organising everyone and then Clare strode through the doors with a box full of The Book of Bogs to sell and I felt instantly calmer.

I silently thanked past Kim for the genius idea of filling this event with my best friends and my sister, of surrounding myself with friendship and laughter.

Kim Moore, HOW TO HAVE A MAGICAL BOOK LAUNCH

My poem Interior with a Table has been awarded equal Fourth Prize in the Kent & Sussex 2026 Open Poetry Competition. I was delighted, especially as the competition was judged by Mimi Khalvati. She describes the poem as a ‘sensitive example of ekphrastic poetry’. You can read her Judge’s Report here.

The poem was inspired by the 2021 painting of the same title by Vanessa Bell. The date put me in mind of WWI which enters the frame.

You can read the poem here.

Fokkina McDonnell, Interior with a Table – poem

Earlier today, as I made adjustments in the galley for GRAVEYARDS OF CHICAGO, I was thinking about my acquaintance with this particular urban legend and source materials. In particular, Resurrection Mary has been an obsession that took root when I was 12 and checking out stacks of ghost story and paranormal books from the tiny Cherry Valley public storefront library with its rickety floors, precariously leaning stacks, and questionable green shag carpet in the children’s area. It’s probably natural that I would become obsessed with ghosts given my love of horror and gothic leanings. This one seems particularly interesting from a regional standpoint (not Rockford necessarily, but suburban Chicago, though another spooky urban legend from my hometown makes an appearance in the play).

When I was taking a class back in the MFA program way back in 2005 that was devoted to writing Chicago poems, it seemed like a no-brainer, to take my obsession with this urban legend and see what bloomed. There were also great ways to bring in history and class in the city in interesting ways. The result of course was Archer Avenue. Initially, it was a small print edition that I mostly gave away and traded in the year leading up to my first book’s release. Later, those poems would fit nicely in the context of IN THE BIRD MUSEUM, my second book. 

Certain things informed that project, and by extension, the play i just wrote two decades later. In addition to in-depth research on sightings and lore, I did things like go on ghost tours and wandered around the historic State St. Marshall Fields (which was on the verge of becoming a Macy’s soon after.) Class and the idea of pauper/unmarked graves was at the forefront of my mind, as was Depression-era economics. 

While the poems wander in their p-o-v and thematic directions, the play places Mary’s story as I imagine it alongside a cab driver decades later, using music to mark the shifts in time and weaving their stories together, including one scene I really hope works that changes decades mid-scene.

Kristy Bowen, roadside ghosts and writing your obsessions

Between Marshal Pétain’s capitulation to the Nazis in 1940, and the Liberation of Paris in 1944, the French wrote over three million letters of denunciation to the authorities. After the war, some denunciations were deemed, retroactively, criminal acts: the crime of “indignité nationale.” Fascinated by their surface and their substance, I set out to write a poem based on those letters. While I admit to an interest in the more standard heroic possibilities of iambic pentameter, here my aims were Frostian. The letters are a fascinating mixture of “tones.” Rarely were the writers trying simply to convey information. They were just as keen to signal things about themselves, to the agents of the Vichy state: patriotism; sophistication; alignment with its (sick) values. They wanted to denounce “traitors,” but they wanted to sound appropriately bureaucratic in doing so. Bureaucratic tones are underrepresented in metric poetry—I’m not aware even of Robert Frost trying—but poetic they can be, when they contain an undercurrent of terror. Also poetic, in this case, is the fact that these writers’ mixed goals did not mix well: because virtue and vice do not mix well. Nor, and this is no coincidence, could the writers quite carry it all off. Their sophistication is often sour and out of tune.

That’s how it struck me, anyway. This may be serendipity, but I have leaned into it. For I should say, the letters were written in French (of course), and discussions of them referred me to a compliation titled La Délation sous l’Occupation, of which no English translation has been published. Unable to pay a real live French person to produce one, I have relied on machines to do it, machines which are, despite recent advances you may have read about, not entirely reliable. But their unreliability was, in this case, poetic, in a way worth explaining. It’s familiar enough that modern English is a mixture of German and French. Because French was, in the centuries after the Norman Conquest, the language of England’s ruling elite, French words that came to English tend to have a “fancier” meaning in English, than their originals have in French. For example, “travail” in French means (simply) “work,” but in English it means “painful or laborious effort.” Computer translations from French tend to “transliterate” French words, rather than replace them with simpler non-French words that are closer in meaning: “travails” may remain “travails,” and not be translated as “labors.” The denunciations, therefore, in my eyes, appeared to try quite hard to use the fanciest—and so, Frenchest—English words they could, even when those words were not well-suited to their intended meaning. This was, sometimes, quite amusing, as was the contrast between these elevated stylistic aims, and the sometime pettiness of the “infractions” being reported. And then, here and there, through this curtain of administrative and euphemistic malaprops, some plain and brutal language would protrude. In a poem, this could be magnified into something grotesque.

One story about World War II, is that its great evils should not be wholly blamed on a few monstrous men; shares should also be distributed to the masses of collaborators, each of whom perpetrated his or her own microdose of evil. These letters are among them, and they smell of it.

Brad Skow, The Spirit of a Broken People: French Letters of Denunciation

I was absolutely delighted yesterday to receive my contributors copy of a new poetry anthology, The New Sentience: Reimagining Animal Poetry, which is just released from Trinity University Press with a Foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. It’s a beautiful book! The editors, Ashley Capps and Allison Titus did a wonderful job putting it together, and I’m marveling at the Table of Contents, which is full of such greats as Mary Oliver, Linda Gregg, Mary Ruefle, Mary Oliver, Nikole Brown, Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Carson, Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, Camille Dungy, Ross Gay, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and Ada Limon, as well as yours truly.

The poem of mine that they’ve selected to include is “Dr. Harry Harlow’s Primate Laboratory,” from my book Darwin’s Mother, which takes the perspective of a monkey forced to participate in Harlow’s famous (and chilling) wire mother and cloth mother experiments from the 1950s. Thinking about those experiments and what it must have been like for the baby rhesus monkeys who were deprived of maternal care and familial connection still makes my heart feel as heavy as stone.

But the anthology is also rich with hope—poems of connection and kinship, of observation, odes to interspecies friendships, to entanglement, wildness, and mystery.

Sarah Rose Nordgren, Reimagining Animal Poetry

Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex. She writes about motherhood, shifts in identity, and love in many forms, frequently finding wonder in the seemingly everyday. Her work has appeared in publications including Magma, Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, and Under the Radar and her debut pamphlet Tiny Bright Thorns was published in 2024. And in news very hot off the press, Jen has just been announced as the winner of the 2026 Charles Causley International Poetry Competition.

A Dress with Deep Pockets is a book that takes us in its confidence, and talks to us candidly over the kitchen table about friendship, motherhood and ageing. Jen writes with a quiet confidence – the poems are not fussy, preferring to leave a deep imprint through their frankness and vitality.

Here is a poet who is able to bring us the essence of a character and a stage of life in swift, bright sketches – like her teenage friend, in Hare Girl, “tawny and watchful in corners, / boys staring owl-eyed from across the room.” Or the speaker of the poems, caught mid-realisation in Boxing Day Swimmers, of her own ongoing process of transformation;

It’s the strangest thing, lately,
I open my mouth and my mother falls out –
a mournful clockwork woodpigeon on the kitchen table.

Boxing Day Swimmers

What I enjoy about these poems is how lightly they wear their ‘poem-ness’. They are full of craft – clever little turns, pin-sharp images, genius line breaks – yet they are carried along with an immense warmth and wit, a voice that feels so natural and completely itself.

Victoria Spires, Fictional bats, stolen vodka and bobble hats

There are periods when I’m reading for work, others when I’m reading for pleasure. Sometimes, they overlap. At the moment, I can firmly say that my reading life feels expansive and enriching in a way that lands firmly in the realm of pleasure.

Last week, I reread Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings, which is one of my favorite collections. This week, I’m reading two extraordinary books, ’s forthcoming Middle Slope and Karen Solie’s T.S. Eliot-prize winning Wellwater. I wake up excited to read, which is a wonderful feeling.

Maya C. Popa, Poems for Your Weekend

The private detective is closing the file, dusting the mirror to move on but the woman at the heart of the case is living rent free in his mind. It suggests how experience shapes us and some memories can never be left behind.

Polly Clark has a skill for taking apparently ordinary moments, working on a piece of art, attending a funeral, finishing a job, and invests them with layered depths, showing how these micro connections shape individuals. She asks readers to look again, challenge their knowledge of how they might think this scene pans out and asks what if you focus on the less obvious, what if you were less complacent? It’s a fine balance between a relaxed, colloquial tone and a thoughtful, darker undertone and invites a reader to re-read the poem. If you’re not familiar with Clark’s work, “Afterlife” is an excellent place to start.

Emma Lee, “Afterlife” Polly Clark (Bloodaxe) – book review

A couple of years after I met this poem, I met its author at the Dodge Poetry Festival. He gave a reading and I queued up to have On Love signed, and told him that “For the Sleepwalkers” was perhaps the first contemporary poem I had loved, and that I had read it in Fifty Years, and he looked at me very seriously and said yes, he remembered that anthology, and he was very glad to know it, and thanked me for telling him, and then he signed my book “We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.”

“For the Sleepwalkers” is a simple poem is another funny thing I almost wrote in the spirit of earnest classification. Is it simple? It leapt off the page and into a seventeen-year-old, so make of that what you will. I suppose I continue to feel guarded about my beloveds after such a long estrangement from Poetry at large: the sneaking suspicion that I do not like the right things remains hard to shake, especially when I make the mistake of picking up the latest issue of whatever. But, Dear Readers, I’ve so far only gained more of you here, so perhaps that’s a kind of empirical argument for not being all that wrong.

What’s to like? Tercets! The load-bearing stanza form: I like to imagine Hirsch, inevitably, thinking Dante, maybe even making a stab at terza rima early on—wonderful / invisible, faith / path—but that may be autobiography; I can’t count the number of times I’ve set out to write terza rima and abandoned it after line five. It’s handsomely constructed, repeated phrases and constructions weaving a subtle net of sound and sense: “so much faith . . . so much faith” in the first stanza, “stairs instead of the window . . . doorway instead of seamless mirror”in the second.

Alongside, and in conjunction with, these syntactic pairings, I love the strangeness of some of the figures, how the poet doesn’t quite ask us to rethink our assumptions as much as declare them rethought. Sleepwalking is most often employed pejoratively; one who sleepwalks through life misses things, but Hirsch’s sleepwalker is the one who truly sees. Stairs in the context of somnolence denote danger, yet here they are a preferable path to a window, a safe way down, and also out; the gaping door is not a symbol of vulnerability, but preferable to the mirror’s endless echo chamber. I love the night-soaked beauty of hearts flying off and returning, the clipped percussive music of “thick black fists,” the solid sound and sense of “glove of our chests.”

Most importantly, and I think most like Hirsch—the poet laureate of insomnia—is this notion of generative dark, of insight arriving not on a beam of light, but in the wild darkness: in shedding the self and actively seeking the unknown, even though we are so often told, and so often tell ourselves, it’s dangerous.

Vanessa Stauffer, “For the Sleepwalkers” by Edward Hirsch

James Matthew Wilson has noted Ransom’s prosody in these late poems:

the falling, slant-rhymed, rhythms . . . which Ransom borrows with so much else from Mother Goose, are coupled with the mundane and the parenthetical, rhetorical, Latinate grandeur, and these all conspire to create poems immediately amusing to the ear; grotesquely jerry-rigged so as to compel us to ponder their inner-workings; and finally insistent that life in this world is a long defeat, where what is most precious, beautiful, and humane merits our reverence and study even though it will, in God’s time, fail us.

In “Blue Girls,” a number of pentameter lines, specifically the internal b-rhymed lines of stanzas 1 and 3, do contain these falling rhythms, ending on such multi-unstressed-syllabic words as “seminary” and “contrary,” which casts the short concluding lines in those quatrains, with their final stressed syllables, in higher relief. The effect, then, is something like rolling down a hill and hitting a fatal wall.

Sally Thomas, Today’s Poem: Blue Girls

Fourteen lines long, like many of his pieces at all stages of his career, “Alternative Anatomy”, describing a hawk moth, is an ethereally thinned version of a reversed sonnet (one in which the sestet precedes the octave): it’s written in short, irregular lines, and has only a few highly attenuated rhymes. The irregularity and attenuation both suit the idea of the moth’s fragility and erratic flight (itself brilliantly captured by the line end pause in ‘cleverly / erratic’). I think they have another important effect. The whole poem is brought delicately to rest by the way the last two lines move to the iambic pulse of the dominant tradition in English metrics and of the traditional sonnet in English. However, the unpredictable rhythms before that point seem to contribute to its lightness of imaginative touch and the consequent extremely open way in which its suggestiveness works. This gives it a vast imaginative reach with many overlapping circles of suggestion. Short lines isolate images and phrases, letting each resonate in the pause or blank space at the line ending. Shimmering between overwhelming extremes of light and darkness, between poles of miniaturist empathy and geographical or even cosmic vastness, and between anthropomorphic and naturalistic imaginings of moth and bat, glancing in its imagery at archaic and modern industrial techniques, at marine, submarine and aerial navigation and at the mechanics of making music, vividly evoking both the cruelty and the marvellous intricacy of the natural order, it doesn’t push the reader towards a conclusion but opens multiple vistas of reflection that he’s free to follow or not as he wills. The whole poem gives a beautiful sense of completeness, but this is entirely a matter of artistic shaping, not of the expression of an idea, and it seems to me that the abstention from any kind of intellectual conclusion that would have limited the reader’s freedom of response is as much a beauty of the poem as its shaping is.

Edmund Prestwich, Jamie McKendrick and sonnet form. Comments on “Alternative Anatomy”.

[Edwin] Muir was a Scottish poet who died in 1959. According to my note on the flyleaf, I bought my Faber edition of his Collected Poems as a student in 2000. I’m not sure how much read Muir is these days but his poems seem to me to have stood the test of time particularly well. He assumes some scriptural and classical knowledge in a way that is less common now, but his poems are never ‘learned’. You always feel that he is putting his gifts at the service of the reader — that he writes to be understood.

In this poem, for instance, there’s an obvious allusion to the story in Genesis, and also to two Gospel parables — of the wheat and the tares (in Matthew 13) and of the workers in the vineyard (in Matthew 20). ‘Tares’ is a now largely obsolete word for vetch, a kind of weed that grows easily in wheatfields. Recent translations of the Bible tend to use ‘weeds’, but ‘tares’ is the word in the King James Bible, and I would guess that for most mid-20th century readers — for whom it was no longer in common currency — the word itself was strongly associated with this particular parable. But even if you have never read the New Testament, and don’t know what ‘tares’ are, I don’t think you would have any difficulty following this poem.

Muir uses scripture (and also some parts of classical mythology) in a natural way, to clarify his meaning rather than hedge it around. This is much harder to do than it looks, and the apparent straightforwardness of Muir’s style is perhaps his greatest achievement. It is very difficult indeed to write lyric poetry which is both beautiful and straightforward to understand, and which also has something to say — a clear and specific message or argument. These seem like they ought to be the basic virtues of verse but it is a rare poet who can put all three together as consistently as Muir.

The clarity and (for want of a better word) ‘accessibility’ of Muir’s style derives to a large extent, I think, from how deeply rooted his poetry is in what we might call roughly ‘popular’ verse, including songs and hymns — the kind of verse that is shaped by use for maximum clarity. 

Victoria Moul, When will all come home?

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
I’ve been reading this one for several months. Did you know Leaves of Grass is quite long? The first (self-published) book wasn’t so bad, but the one I have, one of the later editions after he had added and added to it, is a bulky 400 poems.

Some parts are great! But some not so much. For example, should anyone, poet or otherwise, use the word “promulges” this much?

“Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself,
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.”
(from Song of Myself, 45)

Not to hate on Whitman – his work is obviously inspired by the cadences and repetitions of Biblical poetry, notably Ecclesiastes (which I was also reading at the time – interesting pairing) and the psalms. However, instead of centering around God, he centers around himself, in a universalistic way. What a tiresome subject.

Often a famous poet will be known for one or two of their very good poems, but there is a treasury of much better poetry that no one ever reads – but in Whitman’s case, I think the well-known poems are the poems you should read.

Renee Emerson, Does anyone ever finish Whitman?

Simone Weil was, to all who knew her, intense. Over the course of her shortened life, she gave herself up to an evolving sequence of political, ethical and mystical philosophies, and pushed herself and her body to great physical extremes in order to live them fully. This was her praxis, her public self.

Tom Pow’s new collection of poems has grown out of several years of immersion in Simone’s writing, augmented with visits to places which advanced her thinking in some way, or were the site of revelation, of a sudden clarity. By deepening his concept of her by encountering her in these places, he invests his poems with a directness and intimacy that comes from working with primary source material, including the places in which it was formed – the sounds of the building, the light on the walls. We encounter her in these places. It is this sense of presence, of being with, that charge these poems with such authenticity, that makes them ring true.

Lesley Harrison, The Vulnerability of Precious Things

There is no single reading of a poem. We cannot be done with it in a single pass as we might with a novel. (I don’t mean later re-reading, but the initial or single encounter.) Even a joke poem, a limerick, a short form, a couplet, requires more than a single read: it lingers and echoes in memory. Something about itself is always drawing our attention. Most verse is dross because it lacks this quality, not for any merely formal reason. When I first read ‘Filling Station’ I did not understand it in a literal sense. Some barrier existed because it is American and the lingo was obscure; some words needed looking up; some of it is simply difficult, not the sense that it is hard but in the sense that you must mull it before you “get” it. Not all difficulty makes itself known on the surface.

Late James is poetry in this sense. There is this sort of poetry in the heart of Austen, too, whose sentences roll in our minds. Not poetry in the way Dickens drops into pentameter, but in the lilt of her prose that becomes almost like the long lines of the Psalms. The family of Dashwood had long been settled in the country of Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property… We might hear Cowper behind this as well as Addison. We might have to read the novel several times before we think to ask why it matters that the residence is in the centre of their property.

Austen can be read as an easy novelist or as a difficult one, not difficult in the way Joyce is difficult, but not easy in the way Wodehouse is easy. Some novels have their difficulty submerged, like Brideshead, which I read three times through on first encounter. Just as the first time we read a great poem and it will require lots of attention, so we might need to read a novel that looks easy. But the “standard” way of reading a novel is straight through, maybe going back a little, but mostly linear. If we rate literature according to pleasure, the more linear the better. Zing! So when people discuss difficulty, a lot of their arguments might depend on how “poetic” they like their literature.

For some poets, like A.R. Ammons and Wallace Stevens, keeping you in the state of difficulty is almost the point. To reach a full explanation is almost to miss the point—these poets are trying to put something into words that cannot, fully, be expressed. The sense of difficulty should be where we understand that. We will only ever be able to get so close to reality through words.

Henry Oliver, Out of all the indifferences

Whenever people ask, “Which poets inspired your own work?” I end up saying that my poetry is largely influenced by prose writers—maybe even more so than the poets. Clarice Lispector is part of my holy trifecta (others include Anaïs Nin and Marguerite Duras, whose work I also practiced bibliomancy with).

Lispector, a Brazilian writer whose family origins trace back to war-torn Ukraine, lost her mother as a child (I am always interested in writers whose childhoods asked them to raise themselves, in a way—writers who operate through and within a kind of lack). I’m also married to a Brazilian person, so there’s one slightly familiar doorway through which I enter her work.

Despite genre classifications, her work is a poetics of nonlinearity and interiority. On the line level, it is positively delicious. Água Viva—a “meditation on the nature of life and time”—asks you to surrender to a sea of questions, desires, prayers, thoughts, to the very mysteries that make up our world, to the spaces in between. And I fucking love that. If there’s anything I hate in literature, it’s being hand-fed.

Água Viva is an exercise in constructing meaning, but it’s collaborative between author and writer; it feels as though the author is whispering directly to you. Or that you’re watching a prayer as it’s being transmitted to the heavens.

Lisa Marie Basile, Bibliomancy of the week: Clarice Lispector

A poetry prize that we are lucky to have in the UK is the Michael Marks Awards. Founded in 2009, it now has four categories recognising small-press excellence: Poetry Pamphlet; Publisher; Illustrator; Environmental Poetry Pamphlet. This year’s shortlists have just been published, with the winners to be announced in June.

The only shortlisted title that I currently have on my shelves is Hugh Foley’s Recent Poems (The Fair Organ), which is a pamphlet in the tradition of small, simple printed objects that I particularly enjoy as a way of reading poetry: a paper-wrapped, pocket-notebook of 28 pages, stapled and hand-stamped on the back with the publisher’s logo (I wrote about my own small-press experiment with this format here).

Of course, the downside of reading this way is that wafer-thin publications easily get lost at the bottom of the book-shelf food chain, pressed flat by the paperbacks and hardbacks they can sometimes end up tucked inside. […]

In a statement about “The Importance of Poetry Pamphlets”, the Michael Marks Awards observe:

Traditionally, pamphlets have provided a vehicle for new writers to emerge, as well as offering established poets a focused, short structure that is ideal for exploring themes […] Historically, and still, often small presses have been labours of love, individually crafting each pamphlet.

This got me thinking about which pamphlets on my shelves I value not only as short and portable early gatherings of poems that later have ended up in “full” books, but specifically those which are themselves my preferred (and sometimes only) way of reading a particular work.  [Click through for Jeremy’s selection of a half-dozen memorable pamphlets (AKA chapbooks).]

Jeremy Noel-Tod, Pinks #42: An Outside to Language

8 – How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

It has been a natural state for me to move among poetry, translation, critical work, and fiction. I may spend months or years focused on one or two, toggling between them, and then find myself drained. Other genres rush in to fill the space left and reinvigorate me. Translation, especially, recharges the mind for my own poems. There, you are both creating and kneeling at the mercy of existing language, balancing between fidelity and estrangement, mimicry and imagination, domestication and foreignization, to mold a poem in English that does to an English speaker what the original did to readers of that language. Switching modes feels like stepping out of an airport in the tropics and taking off your parka. So I never have writers’ block per se. There’s always some other kind of writing I could be doing if one type is coming up dry. And the genres necessarily challenge one another. Is this really a narrative poem or a story that hasn’t been completed? What form best serves this idea? What can this form do that the others cannot?

9 – What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

With a “9-5” job, I write when I can: a snippet in the early morning, something after dinner, a few hours on the weekend. The trick for me has been to keep the mind engaged with the literary, with the way a poet attends to the world, at least for a few dedicated moments every day; that may not be actual writing, but it keeps the writer in my mind alive.

10 – When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I turn to international writers to pull me out of the milieu and habits of U.S. literature.

rob mclennan, 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Daniel Moysaenko

like any poet, i am always
fighting the moon. i want to have her
over for dinner. i want to use
my phone flashlight to find her face.
in a dream, the house catches fire &
i turn into a diamond in the heat.

Robin Gow, battery life

According to #FemkuMag, “In September 2017 Rowan Beckett Minor coined the term “femku” in the subtitle of their first book Radical Women: A Book of Femku. Since then, the term has resonated throughout the Haiku community, thus pioneering a movement and this journal, the safe space Rowan created for women, trans, and gender-expansive Haijin to share their work.” I’d like to learn more about your first book, Radical Women: A Book of Femku. What are the main subjects and topics that you focus on in this book and what inspired you to write it?

I didn’t yet realize I was non-binary when I wrote Radical Women: A Book of Femku, so many of the poems are about navigating the expectations of gender roles in society, the sexual pressures women face, and my love-hate relationship with my body. These poems are raw, gritty, and very underdeveloped in traditional technique, so I’m not sure you can truly call them “haiku,” but they certainly have a senryu spirit and laid the groundwork for my entire poetic career.

I’m also interested in learning more about #FemkuMag. What do you enjoy the most about serving as the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of #FemkuMag?

Oh, that’s easy. I most enjoy the community I’ve built. There are many poets who tell me their submitted work was written specifically with #FemkuMag in mind, or that they would only trust me with certain topics. Unfortunately, women and transgender folks are often scrutinized for speaking their truth and most people just want someone, anyone, who will listen to their unique stories. I think it’s important, crucial even, for underrepresented voices to have a platform; all I do is secure the space and hand them a microphone.

When and how were you introduced to haiku and Japanese-related poetry?

My haiku journey began shortly after moving to Detroit, Michigan in 2017. I discovered the Evergreen Haiku Study Group at Michigan State University, run by Michele Root-Bernstein, and attended several meetings. Mike Rehling of Failed Haiku regularly attended the meetings and was kind enough to give me a few haiku history lessons over some delicious Japanese cuisine. Failed Haiku was my first haiku publication credit, the H. Gene Murtha contest was my first placement, and I had a haiga featured in the 2017 Michigan State University “Haiga Around the World Exhibition,” so I owe a lot to Mike and the Evergreen Haiku Study Group.

Jacob D. Salzer, Rowan Beckett Minor

Zoeglossia is a literary organization seeking to pioneer a new, inclusive space for poets with disabilities.  Launched in 2017, Zoeglossia is the first such organization in the poetry landscape. The idea is to provide an intersectional community open to a wide range of disability poetics, encouraging conversation and support.  This link leads to a wide variety of poems that explore the experiences and consequences of illnesses and disabilities . .. and I offer a the opening portion of a sample from that collection below.

Number Twenty by Jonathan Mack

This, the story that brings me to you, is one story in twenty. In the other nineteen I am dead. In five stories I’m dead of AIDS, having suffered every possible infection and died at home, in a variety of hospitals, and in the toilet of a theater. There are seven suicides between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. There are two terrible car accidents — one involving a drunk driver and one that is entirely my fault. In one story I live only three days and  . . .

Jonathan Mack’s poem is from This New Breed. Copyright © 2002 by Jonathan Mack.

JoAnne Growney, Resisting Disability with Poetry and Math

Over the past few years, I have interviewed over one hundred journal editors. Some lit mags want work related to specific themes such as war, social justice or the environment. Some focus on showcasing certain writers, such as women over sixty or Canadian poets. And, of course, many have specific genre parameters: creative nonfiction only, or prose poetry only, flash fiction, long fiction, hybrid works…

Yet if there is one commonality among what a majority of editors look for in submissions, it is related to voice.

Stephen Beeber of Conduit: His magazine is a “venue for voices that aren’t ready to be recognized by the mainstream.”

Cherry Lou Sy of Adroit: “A strong voice gives a story its soul.”

Michelle Lyn King of Joyland: Her magazine “is most interested in a distinctive voice.”

Jennifer Acker of The Common: The editors are “looking for really strong voice.”

Courtney Harler of CRAFT: “Does [the work] express and capture a truly authentic voice?”

Anthony Varallo of Swamp Pink (formerly Crazyhorse): He is interested in “the voice and energy of the piece.”

Sheila Squillante of Fourth River: Regardless of the genre, it is “incredibly important that the voice of the piece is strong and idiosyncratic and fresh.”

What exactly does all this mean?

In fact, the more I think about the concept of “voice,” the more fascinated I find it as a literary element. On YouTube, the question “What is voice in writing?” yields many results, ranging from the obvious to the nuanced and enlightening.

However, these videos and most other queries related to voice tend to clump together two strands of the concept. One strand is The Author’s Voice. This is your unique stamp as a writer, the singular thing that you and you alone do. This is the Hemingway story you can spot immediately; the Anne Sexton poem you recognize in an instant. This may just be another way of referring to an author’s style. Yet “voice” encompasses more. It’s bigger than style—it’s the author’s worldview, their vision, recurring themes, favored images, vantage point, social position, the very wellspring of ideas that could only come from them.

The second strand is The Voice of the Work. Many writers are admirably consistent in their works. They write about the same sorts of things in more or less the same way. I, perhaps like many of you, am not one of these writers. Some of my stories lean lyrical and are deeply serious. Others are bright and wacky. Some are violent; some are light-hearted. If there is a unifying quality that connects all these works to one another, a larger Author Voice umbrella under which my stories gather, someone else might recognize it, but I’m not sure I can.

So, in talking about voice as a literary element, it would seem important to tease out these two strands. Invariably, writers would want to know whether voice is something that can be learned. Can you strengthen your writing voice? Can you sharpen it? If so, how? What does it take to shape the voice of a particular work? What does it take to shape your own voice, as a writer?

Becky Tuch, Q: What are editors talking about when they talk about “voice”?

I’ve been moved by the sound of mourning doves, their plaintive call. Plangent, but somehow unsentimental. A kind of straightforward sound of mourning. How does the resonant coo evoke our human sorrow or mourning. Of course, for the bird, that’s just the sound they make. They are not more mournful, despite the delicate crepuscular pinky grey of their feathers and this hollow and hollowing song.

We often read the natural world assuming its signs signify our signified, as if these signifiers were human. A pathetic fallacy, but also a deeply felt cultural interconnection. Our human world has evolved in dialogue with these signs. Dark skies, brooding clouds, joyful birdsong, joyous brooks. Here we find voice for our feelings.

Gary Barwin, Bird=flute, egg=stone: Mourning and pathetic fallacy

He said, writer’s block is a myth, look around, the city will provide words for your poem

And the city spoke to me in red.
All instructions and warnings.
Private Property. No Entry.
Trespassers will be prosecuted.
Do not urinate here.
Right Arrow. Left Arrow. Straight and Right.
U-Turn. No Free Left.
Vote for __ . Or maybe for __.
Residents Only. Beware of Dog.
No Parking. Tow Zone.
Speedbump ahead.

And I imagined these signs instead:
Shhh. Parrots Nesting in the Rain Tree.
Take Left. Jacaranda tree in bloom.
Look up – full moon tonight. (And Venus!)
Free books: Take one. Take two.
Pin your poem to this board. (Poets, This Way!)
Hang your art here.
We are not busking. Sing with us.
Feel the grass. Take off your shoes.
No swimming from 2 to 4 PM. The fish are napping.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, An April full of poems -5

There is a poem written by Frank O’Hara in April 1954 titled after Rilke’s “Aus Einem April.” In Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters, Marjorie Perloff refers to O’Hara’s poem as a “loose adaptation” of Rilke’s. David Lehman has called it a “deliberate mistranslation.”

Frankly, I’m not sure what ‘translation’ has to do with O’Hara’s poem at all.

If I had to find words for it, I’d say O’Hara borrowed the structure of Rilke’s poem and cast it into the shape of Rilke’s “Aus Einem April.” The title acknowledges this Aus-Einem-April mode; there is no epigraph pointing to Rilke because the pleasure of an O’Hara poem (much like the pleasure of an Ashbery) comes from reaching the reader who recognizes the source. Even the way O’Hara closes this poem — “and out there everything is turbulent and green” — shares almost no bones with Rilke’s quiet glistenings and “still” details ordered by awe.

Alina Stefanescu, “Alfie, honest mistresses are lauded…”

I don’t think it ever would have occurred to me to translate classical Persian poetry if an Iranian friend hadn’t asked me in the early 2000s if I’d be interested in working with a now-defunct organization called the International Society for Iranian Culture (ISIC). ISIC, he said, was looking for someone to write the text for a website that would help counter the axis-of-evil caricature of Iranian culture and history that had been current here in the United States since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The focus of the website would be classical Persian literature. My job would be to make that literature and its place in Iranian and world culture accessible to an online American audience.

I was immediately interested. Since my wife is from Iran and my son is therefore Iranian-American, I had a real stake in the cultural awareness about Iran that ISIC wanted to engender; and, as a college professor and a writer, not only did I think the educational value of the project was self-evident; I also saw it as an opportunity to learn about a literature I knew next to nothing about. When I asked my friend if ISIC might see that ignorance as disqualifying, he told me not to worry. They actually wanted someone who would approach the literature from well outside the specialized and scholarly contexts in which those texts were usually read and studied.

My friend put me in touch with the man who was pre-screening those people who’d been identified as viable candidates for the project, and then he, after a long conversation of which I remember very little, told me I would hear within the next week or so from ISIC’s executive director, Mehdi Faridzadeh. When I met with Mr. Faridzadeh, however, the project he described to me was not only radically different from the one my friend had told me about; it was one I knew right away that I was not qualified to take on.

“We want you to produce,” he said, “book-length literary translations of selections from masterpieces of classical Persian literature. All told there are ten. We’re asking you to do five at a time.”

I did not hesitate. I immediately rejected his offer. While I spoke some Persian, I did not read it. How could I possibly presume to translate from it? Surely, I asked, there were bilingual poets and writers capable of doing this work. Why wasn’t he talking to them? He’d reached out to them first, he said, but, with very few exceptions, none were interested in working on classical texts, and the ones who did had either not responded to his query or had told him outright that they had other commitments. Since he wanted work to start on the project as soon as possible, he’d decided not to wait for them.

I pushed back. Given my lack of the obvious minimum qualifications, I said, I did not see how I could accept his commission or do the work with any integrity. Mr. Faridzadeh responded by pointing out to me something that I already knew, the long history of poets translating works from languages in which they were not literate by relying on informants and what are known in the field of translation as “trots” or “ponies.” These are literal or near-literal versions done by native speakers that the poets then use as a basis for the literary translations they produce. ISIC would provide me, he said, with English-language versions of the original texts that were widely recognized as valid, as well as access to scholars who could answer my questions and help me with any difficulties. Moreover, he went on, since he wanted the translations to stand on their own as contemporary American literature, as something a general readership might actually enjoy reading, he preferred the idea of working with someone like me, a native English-speaking poet, to working with someone who was bilingual but had neither a poet’s ear nor a poet’s way with words.

I’d be lying if I said that the prospect of earning myself a footnote in American literary history by producing these translations did not appeal to me. What ultimately persuaded me to accept ISIC’s commission, however, was a point Mr. Faridzadeh made about the generations of Iranian Americans who did not read Persian and for whom translations like the ones ISIC wanted to publish would be their only access to the classical literature that was part of their heritage. I thought about my son and others like him. They deserved, I thought, access to a version of that heritage that would “sing” in their dominant tongue the way the original “sang” in Persian. So, I agreed to produce a sample couple of pages from Saadi’s Gulistan, and when Mr. Faridzadeh called me a week or so later to tell me the project was mine if I wanted it, I accepted, though I was not at all prepared for the politics of the terrain I was entering.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, On The Trail of a Tale – Part Four: How I Came to Play a Very Small Role in Saadi’s Travels Through the World

There were times I wished
I’d apprenticed to a sushi chef and learned
to wield a sharp, clean blade, and times I wanted
only to walk the marbled length of museum galleries,
opening window after window on the centuries.
What I know now came mostly from learning
to sit still, opening books and letting language
take me out of myself and back again until I
could find my way to some shore resembling
knowledge, and there at last make my own fire.

Luisa A. Igloria, Some Labor

Bezos, Musk and Branson strapping the rich to rockets and shooting them at the moon is, in theory, quite appealing. They won’t send poets up there even though poets and astronauts are the same – it’s just the pay-grade that differs. Both reach out into the vast nothingness, return from the overwhelming emptiness with similar sentiment: the world is fragile. And beautiful. And insignificant.

Most poets prefer to stay grounded, don’t stretch to such perilous missions, play it safe, take what earthly succor they can. It seems the further out you are prepared to go the harder it is to attach value to your assignment. I could put on a vest, jog a few laps around the local park, say that I was doing it to save the barn owl or a rare breed of newt and I’d easily raise a few quid. If I told you I was taking a journey, a voyage into the great unknown of a poem, that this odyssey was taking place inside my head, a venture into the unmeasured depths of the imagination but for a similar cause you’d be far less inclined to part with your hard earned.

The first few times I got paid for my writing taught me a lot about how we calculate the value of such work. It was a lesson that came in three stages. I understand it’s a common experience. On the first occasion I didn’t feel worthy of the fee, I felt a little shame and embarrassment. The second time the money felt about right, I was comfortable, confident, assured but by the third time I realised that no matter what you paid me it would never be enough. This is not to say that I thought that my work was astonishingly brilliant just that there was a spectacular randomness about putting a price on it. There was an absurdity to it. It couldn’t be done with any sensible measure. I mean what do you pay for a poem?

Footballers earn more in a week than nurses do in a year and there aren’t riots in the streets. A diamond is just a see-through stone and poets go to places astronauts wouldn’t think to visit. In a parallel universe, somewhere beyond the moon, kids are tossing jewels into mill ponds as wealthy wives string common rocks around their necks.

Jan Noble, Nº62 Diamonds are (not) forever

It’s been a week of bits and pieces in terms of poetry.  Let me record some of them here:

–In my end of the semester cleaning up of the paperwork piles, I discovered lots of rough drafts of poems.  A few of them had some potential.  A few I couldn’t remember where I thought the draft might be going.  A few I didn’t remember writing at all.

It was good to remember that I did more than my computer files might indicate.

–I was making some poetry submissions to literary journals before the bulk of submitting season winds down.  There are moments when I wonder why I bother.  But the occasional acceptance still makes me happy, so I persist.

–As I was looking through my file of finished poems, I realized that I had reviewed a rough draft twice, once back in January when I first finished the rough draft and then again in April, when I had no memory of revising it back in January.  I haven’t circled back to see which draft I like better.  It does bother me a bit that I had no memory of doing the original revision.

–On Monday, I was thinking about the trinity of nuclear war movies of the 80’s, and I listened to this podcast about them and other nuclear war movies, including House of Dynamite.  As I drove down to Spartanburg, a line floated through my head:  The apocalypse will not be televised.  Once my students started writing, I put poem ideas on paper and ended up with a fairly good draft, just two hours after the line flitted through my head.

It’s not the way I usually create poems, so I was happy to have that experience, especially in a very busy week.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Poetry Creating Notes at the End of a Term

I know the unseen work behind my writing, my learning, my community building—but I also know that my “score” does not necessarily matter in a subjective field. I might have the same “stats” on paper as an award-winning, widely-published writer, yet feel invisible. And someone else might be looking the same way at me, though that’s harder for me to imagine, of course.

But I also know for a FACT that I do not do a fraction of what other writers do to seek those opportunities and awards. I spent 36 years of my life working as a public school educator, often putting the needs of others before my own. As a retiree, I get to decide how I spend my time. And though that freedom has indeed given me the gift of ample time to focus on my writing and literary endeavors, it has also given me other freedoms.

Most importantly, I have the freedom to spend more time with people I love—my family, my friends—for laughs and meals and concerts and movies and general ridiculousness. To move my body and spend time in nature. To explore new creative outlets with visual art. To travel outside the timeframe of a school year’s constraints. (TL/DR: The way I choose the spend my time is not always devoted to my writing life, but to my LIFE life.)

I may not get the accolades I see my peers receiving, and maybe I have a little pity party every now & then. It feels good to be acknowledged, after all, but that isn’t why I write. So I’m good. I will celebrate my writing wins. And I will celebrate yours.

But I will also celebrate the heron returning to the local lake. The little boy racing his mom down the hill at the forest preserve. I will sing with my husband at a concert or yell at the contestants who annoy us on Top Chef or Survivor. I will talk on the phone with my son to discuss movies, or his upcoming wedding and new home. I will celebrate a friend finishing chemo, a sunny March day after a week of gray and snow. I will celebrate the beauties of the wider world through traveling while I am still able. I will celebrate each small kindness shown to me and try to show the same in return.

This is kind of keeping score that matters.

Donna Vorreyer, Keeping Score

Frankly, it’s all too easy to find metaphors for life in the garden. Nurturing seeds with a sense of hope, even expectation, sure. Endeavoring to control outcomes though one cannot control the weather? Yep, that too. Culling, thinning, weeding in an effort to produce abundance, clarity, or beauty? Yes; and waiting and working under hot sun or in the pouring rain and being surprised by hail or hurricane or drought. (You can pop any of those words into the “search” bar on this blog page and find times I have written about said weather events.) In the thousands of poems I’ve drafted during the past 45 years, garden topics and metaphors abound. Lately, though, I’ve been dwelling on how change–inevitable in the garden–presents problems to solve but also lovely surprises. And yeah, there’s metaphor in that as well. Though people tend to avoid change, change brings a wealth of education in its wake.

It’s true that education is often humbling. We work our butts off only to discover we’ve been doing things wrong, or ineffectively, all along. That’s one of the things I learned when I began trying to grow things in earnest, and it is also true of my experience writing poems. You have to be willing to make mistakes and accept that you made them if you are going to improve; it doesn’t mean you have to solve each difficulty in a prescribed way. You can invent! As long as you know that invention sometimes fails, you can learn from it. Create a nonce form for a poem, for example. Or an improvised trellis for a squash vine that got a lot larger than you’d planned.

Every year in late winter, I devise a garden plan and order seeds. Every year in early spring, I revise the plan in some way. Every year in mid- to late-spring, the garden looks very different from those designs…it helps to have a flexible nature, since nature hates rigidity and thrives in its own way. Often unexpected. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes quite a charming surprise to which I’m more than happy to adapt–I welcome the variation! It’s a process that reminds me of writing. No wonder my gardening and my poems are so connected: the processes are so similar.

Ann E. Michael, Process & metaphor

Above the creeping-charlie’s faultless blue,
a chalk-white smudge of contrail arcs
across a sky by Watteau. Everything stills.
For now,

driver-attention holds, and brakes are firm and good.
Ducks cross in danger and care, those ancient, storied laws.
Early light spangles the cottonwood.
A flowering crab confettis its applause.

Maryann Corbett, Mayday

I just roughed out an early draft of my next poetry manuscript (and finally figured out how to automate the Table of Contents in Word—ha!). It’s a long way from done: a little short, so I have more writing underway; there’s a section that might be relatively weak, we’ll see what I think later; and I will just generally need to revise individual poems and think about the flow within sections. I’ll take my time with all of it. But the basic structure makes sense, hitting the beats and ideas I have in mind. Plus I’ve been drafting new poems toward the gaps and, at least for the moment, feel good about most of them. The working title is Spiral Hum.

It’s Friday here and I fly out on Tuesday, so I’m in the home stretch on the Storyknife residency. I’ve had a couple of down days for a variety of reasons, all of which seem inevitable. It rains a lot here in April and gray skies wear on me. Social anxiety in the company of people I’m just getting to know: for sure. The ms contains tough material and spending time with it can be hard emotionally as well as in craft terms. Sometimes drafting a poem is a total joy, an episode of absorption that leaves me exhilarated. Other days it’s a grind to haul the stanzas up the hill. It’s certainly demanding intellectual work to analyze a sheaf of poems and figure out how they could be better versions of themselves. A stretch of two or three hours can burn me out. On a larger scale, I periodically question poetry’s whole enterprise. A question from Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems” always haunts me: “What kind of beast would turn its life into words?” I’m still tracking world news as well as the struggles of my loved ones. What gave me the notion that writing is a good idea, in the face of all that?

Well, the fellowship itself suggests that I should be writing–that at least a few people in the universe want me to. This interval is a rare gift, so gratitude picks me up and set me on my poetic feet again.

I’ve also been reflecting on what about my residency has nourished my desire to write, because in general, it has. For the first time in ages, I have utter privacy to calm down and focus. I know for sure that no one will disturb me all day, though I can wander out and talk to whoever’s around, if I feel like it. Mostly I don’t, until five, when we gather for dinner. We do the dishes after and almost always go out for a walk. Then I’m back to my cabin to write and read. It’s a nice rhythm. And I would like an excellent lunch delivered to my doorstep every day for the rest of my life, please. (I have eaten very well generally, both here and in town—special shout-out to Maura’s salmon, chicken soup, and bison meatloaf; Katie’s baked goods; and the oyster restaurant on the spit.)

An equally important factor is Alaska itself. Awe is some of my most powerful poetry fuel. I crack my door and hear owls and eagles. Scary moose are marching around (don’t even talk to me about bears, who are waking up all over the state and feeling hungry). Yesterday I jumped on one of the staff’s twice-weekly errands to town so I could walk along Beluga Slough and Bishop Beach. I was hoping to find a hag stone, which I did. I filled my pockets with a variety of other pretty rocks and shells, too. I watched sandhill cranes, newly arrived. I found a mysterious feather, now on my windowsill, although I’ll leave it here, especially after learning it could be from a juvenile eagle (illegal to transport). The long stretch of sand and tide pools, distant rollers, and the Aleutian mountains beyond were gorgeous, even on a cold, cloudy day. Once, when my head was down, a raptor’s cry caught my attention. I looked up to see a bald eagle—they’re huge—perched on a carcass only several yards away. It was a dead otter and the eagle was plucking out his eye. Jesus, this is a stark, fierce, awe-inspiring place.

Lesley Wheeler, Ephemerals pt. 4 (awe and otters)

Grief has chiseled its name in me
like a bored kid with a penknife.

Then again so has love, and
I yield willingly to that inscription.

My heart is a lacework of runnels
etched by a million attempts

at gratitude, even when
I am a canyon flooded with tears.

[…]

I haven’t posted a Torah poem here in a while, so here’s one that I’m working on this week, arising out of the second part of this week’s double Torah portion, Behar-Behukkotai.

The Hebrew word חָקַק means engraved. Hukkim are the mitzvot that don’t make intellectual sense (as opposed to mishpatim, justice-commandments.) Sometimes these mitzvot are literally “inscribed” on or in us, as in brit milah.

I started thinking about inscriptions, carving, the ways in which we do or don’t yield to being changed. The grooves we carve on ourselves through habit, and the grooves life carves on and in us. That’s what sparked this poem.

Rachel Barenblat, Carved

Have you ever done something genuinely kind and beautiful and then chose to deliberately keep it to yourself?

Is there anything soft, gentle that is kept inside — not necessarily hidden, nor embarrassingly put aside, but rather something to be proud of, and yet untold?

And what about a day when we do not reach for the phone, for the camera, not even for the pen. A day when we see, feel, touch, taste and do not have the need to tell, when the experience and its briefness (however long it may last) shall be enough.

Luciana Francis, The Anonymous Life

On the first day, the woman making my reading pass had warned me, “the days will start blending into each other” and so they have, to the point that I am only half sure that I am writing this from my bed, with Rastafarian music and weed smoke from the pavement below wafting into my room through the window, and not the reading room of the British Library because how can I be really certain that, like Alice, I hadn’t fallen into a rabbit hole, in another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again the rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next, 

What happened next was that as I was reading the manuscript, the almost endless repetition of the cursive letters made me wonder if I was not hallucinating all of it, the letters, the writer of those letters, myself, my life, the people around me, the building, the garden house of 19th century Calcutta, or the screeching ambulances of 21st century London, and if I did not exist at all, then who was it that I sometimes saw in mirrors or windows, and who was the I seeing it? Was I really in London in 2026 because if I were, how could I simultaneously be in the suburbs of Calcutta in 1873, and if I were somehow here and there, could I walk out into the garden in Chitpore with cobras, mangoes, litchies, and cats named Baguette, how she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.” For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

At exactly 5 pm, the reading rooms of the library close. Outside the archives, the world seems strange, less and less itself. The bitter pint of Guinness in the Irish pub outside the archives taste like mangoes of a long gone Indian summer. 

Saudamini Deo, Mal d’archives

                      my heart is broken
it is worn out at the knees
                       ~ Suzanne Vega 

I have forgotten how 
     to do this. 

How to sit with myself
     on a Wednesday morning 
     and pay attention. 

How to resist
     the Breaking News. 

How to resist.

Sharon Brogan, Snapshot poem 29 April 2026

This week: the clay-dusted air of the workshop, the rambling treasure hunt for a poem, writing nothing but sonnets for a year, the poets on the farthest end of the table, and much more. Enjoy.

It’s a bright morning in Yorkshire. The trees are in full blossom and there’s a fierce little breeze which scatters their petals like confetti. Today is Earth Day. It’s also the twenty second day of National Poetry Writing Month; a writing phenomenon which began in the States and now extends around the globe. According to the NaPoWriMo model, a prompt is issued and poets are invited to write (and share) a poem in response .

Yes, that’s right – a poem a day, every day, for 31 days. I can’t remember when Kim and I began following this crazy instruction – seven years ago? Nine? Ten? My blurriness is partially the result of late-night-writing-sessions and sleep deprivation by the end of the month; partly the sense of almost-total immersion in the world of the poem.

For all of those years I’ve been doing NaPoWriMo, April has functioned as a sort of creative reservoir – a time when I know I will produce a stack of drafts which will go some way to sustaining me through the rest of the year. It’s not just about quantity either: the daily discipline; the heady exposure of knowing that I’ll publish my early drafts on social media no matter how imperfect or incomplete; the delicious combination of mutual support, appreciation and competition I always feel when I’m writing with Kim – there’s no doubt that I produce some of my best writing in April.

Clare Shaw, Running with the Pack: NaPoWriMo

Early in my social media times I began adding a link to a piece of music to each of my poems. I’ve been doing this for maybe … eight years?? My playlist of these songs exceeds 30 hours now. Why am I doing this? The thing is …

A poem takes us into a waiting room.

We open a magazine on a random page and read. The person next to us changes their position on a plastic chair. The wall clock ticks on. The air is stale, infused with the deodorant of the man who has left before we entered. These lines. We reread them, not having quite got it. A fly that has landed on the table is shuffling its legs.

Then we look up.

Outside, mute, the branches of a tree. Traffic. A person hurries down the street and a piece of paper falls from their trouser pocket, but they walk on, not noticing.

We look back at what we’ve just read and it has changed.

Kati Mohr, Linking and shifting between poetry and music

Like many people, I am intrigued by bird calls. Where we live in the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges, just out of Adelaide, South Australia, we are graced by many types of native birds. However in the forty years we have lived here, the number of species found in the area had dropped dramatically. This decline has been well documented and is due to a combination of habitat destruction, mostly for human housing, and climate change. Nevertheless, most of the time, the air is filled with the calls of birds, some regular residents, others infrequent passers-by. But what are they saying to each other? what are they trying to tell us?

Here are a couple of videos I have made, in which I give voices to the birds in different ways. Both these videos have had many screenings in Australia and around the world.

Ian Gibbins, The voices of birds…

With Birds and Duduk

In this piece, I’m playing a duduk, an Armenian double reed instrument made out of apricot wood. I’m also using live digital processing and recordings of birds.

Gary Barwin, This instrument is made of trees and birds

And there is this beautiful thing Ted Berrigan said, as quoted by Ron Padgett:

The gods demand of the system that a certain number of people sing, like the birds do, and it somehow was given to me to be one of those people—and I mean I did have a choice—I could have decided not to, to be a truck driver or a filmmaker. But I like doing that, and I feel that probably the major reason I write is because the gods might destroy… the whole thing could fall apart. I lift my voice in song. I lift my voice in song.

Valium numbs every part of the song that seeks to keep things whole in me.

The administrative precision of the hospital emphasizes the humiliation of being embodied. I will always dread it. But I won’t spend this week consumed by the worry of waiting for results.

I lift my voice in song instead, to quote Ted.

Alina Stefanescu, What started with wax.

I say to the tree growing inside me

It is one thing to taste your bitter
leaves but now I hear your barbets
all day, their song is crawling out
of my ear, do you know they are
planning to escape?

I think they saw a cloudless sky
dancing in my dreams.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, An April full of poems -4

During bouts of outdoor work, when I’m mindlessly weeding, pruning, or doing soil prep, I’ve been mulling over whether–and if so, how–I’ve changed as to writing poetry (see closing paragraph of last week’s post). There are vague recollections of getting really on a roll and drafting new work into late hours of the night when I was 20 or 21 years old. But how I went about it, what approach I took to writing back then? I barely recall. It’d require research into my old journals to figure that out; there, I dare not go! And what happened to all the poems I typed up on my heavy, electric typewriter (an early 1970s Adler, if I recall aright)? They’ve mostly vanished, though a few reside in my attic in several boxes of old literary magazines which chose to publish my efforts. […]

I’ve just finished reading poems by the 16th c. Korean poet Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn, a brilliant person who started writing before age 8 and died at 27. A young person all her life, by our standards, and a prodigy. A frequent theme of hers is yearning for a husband or lover who is far away, a trope as common in Asian poetry as in European poetry. The lover has gone to war, or been exiled, or is in another region on work for the king/emperor/church, or is at sea. Nansŏrhŏn frequently wrote in the style of the Chinese poets who penned this sort of yearning poem; in fact, her husband was often distant, trying to work his way into a higher-status position, while she was left at his home with her in-laws. Her desire may not even have been so much sexual longing as just plain loneliness. Her work, even when it is not more romantic in subject, is suffused with an overall sorrowful yearning.

I recall having that feeling when I was in my teens and early twenties. Often, I wasn’t even sure what it was I yearned for or desired specifically. I just felt the sense that something was missing in my life, and I suspect that many of my earliest poems aimed to describe vague heartbreak about a kind of emptiness. (I assure you, my work was terrible–no comparison to Nansŏrhŏn can be made here.) However, when I read her poems, that’s what resonates with me. […]

[W]hile I recognize and appreciate the sentiment that accompanies yearning, my work has not been animated or inspired by that particular kind of longing for awhile now. It’s not that I lack desires, but the tenor of the feeling is different. Romantic love or an unrealized self? Not so much. The longing is for new places, further questions, better solutions, comfortable nearness, safe space, peace. I find much to learn every day, much to love, to admire. In spite of everything.

Ann E. Michael, Learning & yearning

Kelli Russell Agodon came out to be our featured reader at the J. Bookwalter Poetry Series (just rebooted!) on Thursday night and she did a great job, as did the open mic-ers, and a wonderful audience. It’s always a pleasure to hang out with poets here in Woodinville, and the weather obliged, not being too cold or too hot, and the evening ending in golden light as the last reader read.

We also got to introduce Catherine Broadwall’s upcoming book, Afterlife, which will debut on May 5, and she’ll be our featured reader on June 18. I feel very lucky to have so many talented friends and writers around for inspiration.

Kelli read from her upcoming book with Copper Canyon, Accidental Devotions, which if you haven’t thought about preordering, think about it! It’s got Alexa solving existential crises, mermaid dreams, Emily Dickinson’s phone messages, and a whimsical take on a world in chaos. Kelli and I have been friends since before our first books were taken, so we were reminiscing a bit, how we’ve changed as people and writers, how we haven’t changed. I think both of us have become better writers, and part of that is a function of having supportive writer friends, and part of it is not giving up, and another part is becoming more comfortable with who we are as people, which somehow translates into poetry.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Kelli’s Reading in Woodinville, Goldfinches Returns with Cherry and Crabapple, Birthdays Approaching and the State of Publishing (And Fear of Failure)

“In Geologic Time, It Happened Just Seconds Ago” is a poem that came together over many years. In 2005 I first jotted down notes about the canyon, the view from Airport Mesa, and the Milky Way while on my honeymoon in Sedona, Arizona. Over the next twenty years or so, I returned to that material now and then, but never had the poem in my grasp, just images. After my divorce, I went back to those old, failed drafts to see what I could find. That excavation led me to a poem that is, in its own way, about excavation, and about seeing things later through a different lens.

What helped me find and shape the poem was seeing an opportunity to play with repetition and variation. Like jazz musicians, we writers can improvise and riff! I’ve noted some of that riffing in the handwritten annotation below.

As I note here, I saw the opening—“Our honeymoon was a strand of scenic overlooks”—as an opportunity to play with variations on that sentence. Mid poem it becomes “Our honeymoon was a stranded scene I overlooked,” and in the end it becomes “Our honeymoon was a strand, a strangeness, a look ahead.” Riffing on the words in those sentences inspired me to play with other words and to find possible variations. Ultimately I built the form of the poem around those variations and revisions/distortions, with the end words in lines 1-3 (stand, wrote, scenic) corresponding to the end words in lines 4-6 (strange, penned, scene), and so on.

Maggie Smith, Behind-the-Scenes Look: “In Geologic Time, It Happened Just Seconds Ago”

In the summer of 2023, the poet and translator Aaron Poochigian posted on social media a link to an article about an unusual archaeological find: On a fragment of an amphora from Spain at some time in the first four centuries CE, some words were scratched into the wet clay that are quite different from the usual commercial information. The article’s authors identified the words as coming from Vergil’s Georgics. Theorizing about the sort of person who might have inscribed poetry on a pot, they note that children and youths were commonly employed in pottery manufacture of the time, and that the Georgics might well have been used in pedagogy in the agricultural area where the fragment was found. Whether or not their scenario is likely, it struck a chord with me, recalling my teenage encounters with Vergil’s hexameters, a rhythm I’ve tried to echo with the stresses of modern English, and used in several poems. The poem I based on this article has finally, finally, appeared in the little magazine Vergilius, so I can show it to you.

On some words of the Georgics,
inscribed on a fragment of Roman amphora unearthed in Spain

Journal of Roman Archaeology, June 5, 2023

Picture him, down on one knee in the clay-dusted air of the workshop,
bent to the wet terra cotta. He’s mouthing the sounds of a poem,
working the spelling out roughly; misplacing the start of the sentence—
wrong, but we see what he’s after. Underside up, the amphora,
waiting, still soft, is a near-irresistible draw to his stylus.

Everyone writes on amphorae—the contents, the names of the sellers—
what’s to deter him? His memory’s zephyred away to the schoolroom
now, and he’s singing it—quietly, quietly—wheat fields and grapevines,
oxen and beehives; he’s singing the gyre of the year in the heavens,
Bacchus and Ceres. He’s etching his love of it into the softness […]

Maryann Corbett, Vergil, dac-hex, and me

Much is written about how to be a good listener. Far less is written about how to be a poetic one, or rather, how to listen for the poetic.

When I write poems for strangers as I do on my podcast, There’s a Poem in That, I I don’t write affirming poems that reflect the client back to themselves, merely. Instead, I take a more assertive stance. It’s not about listening and repeating, it’s a poetic processing I’m still learning how to think about.

Nomenclature for this practice can still only be borrowed. The stranger asking me to write a poem for them—do I call them a client (medicine)? A subject (visual arts)? A querent (Tarot)? Do I talk about this work as clinical? Service-oriented? Socially engaged? A healing art? Isn’t it all those things?

Listening, too isn’t enough of a word for what constitutes the rambling treasure hunt for a poem in someone else’s story. The process is more journalistic than therapy-based, but art’s the goal. I get in there, and I tangle. It’s almost physical. I tangle with what people try to tell me.

My standard three hours of interview provide ample opportunity to learn whether, and how, to challenge my querents’ narratives, test assumptions, and clarify loose language. I begin to make demands. If someone is bold enough to require a poem from me; I’m emboldened to require they take the project seriously. I do them the favor of holding them to task.

Active listening is one thing; proactive listening is a more recently advocated set of advanced techniques in which the listener pushes back a little harder in a more deliberate effort to understand not just the words a person is saying but what, in fact, they mean by them. It’s a kind of parsing in which a subject’s words need not be taken at face value if their meaning is obscure. It’s worthwhile work for poets, who are trained to interrogate the language.

I listen for images, metaphors, motifs, patterns, and archetypal hero’s journey stuff. But I also listen for those narrative gaps in querents’ stories into which a poetic conversation can fit where nothing else seems likely to. I hasten to those clearings in a client’s imagination where only a poem might spark new fire.

Todd Boss, Call it “Anthrophrasis”

My Jesus in the World poems can demand a willing suspension of disbelief, since Jesus is doing activities that he didn’t do in the Gospels:  bowling, going to a holiday cookie swap, helping with hurricane clean up, and so on.  But I worried that mention of a midlife crisis would disrupt that suspension of disbelief.

This morning, the solution came to me, and it’s so obvious I hesitate to admit that it didn’t come to me sooner.  I can take out the reference to a mid-life crisis.  Let the reader decide why Jesus is buying a run-down house to renovate. 

There are so many wonderful ways this poem could go–it’s so wonderful to have a glimmer of an idea that’s closer to fully recognized than just a whisp and to have poem creation to look forward to in the week to come.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Jesus Remodels a Fixer Upper

I’ve noticed that more of us are questioning the platform. Like me, these other users — most of whom, in my case, are artists or writers — don’t want to leave a place where they’ve staked out a long-time presence and do have a sense of community, but they are also putting more energy into their own websites, blogs, and other online forms that are not corporate, not part of the big system, and remain under one’s own control. They are also hungry for other forms of activity and community that require — and acknowledge — genuine connection and greater attention. I’m not going to leave the site, but I’m now much more aware of what it is, how it affects me, and how I want to use it.

None of what I’ve based my life upon is disposable. When we take the time to create a work of art, to play or listen to music, grow a garden, learn a language, write a set of poems, or build a relationship, we do so because our effort feels worthwhile and we hope the result will last. Our lives themselves are short; time is precious. I want to make intentional choices and to spend most of my time in the real world, as positively as possible. So I think the right thing for me is to limit my intake of news to what’s necessary for knowing what is going on, and not get drawn into the maelstrom of debates and opinions; to limit my time on social media; to write as thoughtfully as possible, to keep learning, to devote myself to music and art and the people I care about — many of whom are online friends, some of whom I met through Instagram itself — but in a thoughtful way that honors the best aspects of who we are and what we respect in each other.

Beth Adams, Instagram, Revisited

So where are we now with the gift economy as artists/writers/creatives? I remember when I started blogging 2000 years ago and it was very much an exchange of ideas, freely given. I remember when I saw blogs like Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian) monetize. It was the first blog I can remember doing that and it blew my mind. Like, jealous! A bit. But also, it seemed odd? And now I think, how my life would have been so much better if I’d figured all that out way back when. These days I still struggle with the whole Ko-fi thing :) And I’ve whined about how maybe I should move to Substack all the time and then never do.

And now the question, the problem of AI, stealing our gifts but also messing up the gift economy. And then the feeling that it’s foolish to be putting almost anything on the internet at all. I honestly don’t know what to do with all these thoughts currently. Because just the pure giving online has brought me a lot of goodness in this world. So anyway, I’m sitting with the Wittgenstein quotation, the gift as a problem to solve.

Shawna Lemay, Live Like an Artist – Thinking about The Gift

This week, on a tiny writing retreat, I’ve been thinking about the idea of running without fuel in the tank. And sometimes, not just fuel: no oil, no coolant, and the car needs some work as well. I’ve been thinking about what makes it possible to move forward when your resources are depleted. To be your best self, whatever that self is.

I used to find that whenever I traveled, I ran on empty. I was eating badly, not exercising, I lost connection with my game, and when I got back, I grasped at reconnecting with my life. But I like to think that being able to be my best—my most creative self, my most wild and fun self, my most dedicated self to Red Hen self, my most focused self—all requires some care, attention.

Some people need a lot of time with other people to feel good. I need a certain amount of alone time, and I need to spend that alone time reading, writing, or exercising, not doomscrolling. The apps raise my anxiety, and they convince me that everyone else’s life is much better than my life. They give me a fidgety unhappy edgy mash of dark to mess.

Alternatively, reading centers me, exercise brings my brain into focus, and writing reminds me of who I am. During my alone time, I rein in my urge to deep-dive, and I return to my focus. […]

On this, my birthday week, I think of Molly Fisk’s poem “Cedar Waxwings.” It is a good example of finding yourself through silence. It’s a poem that makes me think about healing and finding grace and getting back to equilibrium, and all of those things that I hope are possible while I am breathing, writing, finding my pulse.

So much depends on my finding my breath again. On refilling my tank. On resisting mournful isolation and embracing good solitude. I look to Molly, now, who is such a centered, soulful person. When I talk with her, when I hear her, her voice is large and surrounds me, and I feel like she is someone who climbed a mountain and saw the surrounding fields and all the trees, who saw devastation, too, and managed to stay sane and lived to tell the tale. She’s at the center of her own stillness, writing and seeing. Let us all aspire to such grace.

Kate Gale, Solitude, Stillness & Sanity: On Remembering Yourself Through the Empty

I’m back from the New Orleans Poetry Festival, where I taught a surrealist poetry class with poet and librettist Melissa Studdard. We were the last class, which made me a little worried because I thought everyone might be tired and thinking about midday snacks & drinks—however, I was so wrong! What a joy to be overfilled with people—two rooms, all chairs taken, and people on the floor—all writing surreal poems. It made me realize that even with everything in the world, people still want to create something, to write poems, to be in community. I needed that reminder.

Melissa and I also did a little photoshoot for our poetry series, Poems You Need, and I, of course, wore the wrong shoes and sliced my foot (this should be no surprise to anyone who knows me—I always wear the wrong shoes).

The problem was—we had no tissues to stop the blood; it was just me, bleeding onto my discount Italian flip-flops and the sidewalk like a very low-budget horror film. Our photographer, who turned out to be a quick-thinking hero, pulled out a tiny white baby sock (clean! her son’s!) she’d been using as a lens cover and saved the day. (And yes, I was fine, no stitches, just alcohol, Neosporin, and a very tight bandaid!)

Kelli Russell Agodon, The World Is Too Much and Also Beautiful

Being at a yarn show with hundreds of people is a complete contrast to my one-to-one coaching or the times when it’s just me writing poetry, but there is also a lovely cross over with my values of being helpful, listening to people and taking time for reflection. And this week while simply being in a show ground I have felt the lovely tingle of tears of happiness in my eyes when recounting moments that have brought me pure joy in my life and listening to other people tell me theirs. I have laughed a lot and remembered to stay in the moment because after all it is the moment that counts. Oh, and I remembered to still myself and say thank you when complimented by a stranger so that I actually got to feel the complete glow of how that feels.

Here’s to finding the ways we laugh with others, supporting those we love and being ourselves in the moment.

Graphene, from my first collection Magnifying Glass, is shining in my mind as a great poem with which to end this blog…for the wonder of celebrating the shine and the marvel of being human.

Graphene

Perhaps, before their pencil, in that building

it was in me – that flat form carbon atom;

hexagonally honeycombed
undiscovered and waiting.

And before that, did it come from a star?

Maybe it was once inside you.
You are a study in graphene:
cleaved graphite, harder than diamond,

stronger than steel.

Exceptional.

Sue Finch, THREE TIMES A YARN SHOW

over the last couple of years, by far my richest and most rewarding poetry experiences have been the launches of work by long-time friends. these gatherings mean an immense amount to me, and i wouldn’t trade my participation for anything in the world. but – there is always a but – the very things that make these these celebrations so joyful, so moving, and so special – their warmth and intimacy – are also the things that make them tricky. and by “tricky” i mean… what, precisely? i suppose i must mean the sensation of emptiness that assails me in the midst of the social. […]

people are very mysterious to me: how they think, feel, fit together, move through the world. i can – and do – enjoy and admire many of them – but i do not understand them even slightly. it’s like… it’s like life is a fundamentally different force for most humans than it is for me. they have all of these experiences, achievements, ideas, relationships, and these things fill them up, or they enlarge them, give them a shape and a substance, a weight in the world; they anchor them to reality and to each other. for myself, life isn’t like that, it’s momentum without mass, just restless moving energy; it forces me forward, and it thrusts itself through me, but there’s nothing to hold on to, nothing to build on or around. i feel flimsy, i guess. i feel.

Fran Lock, MORNING PAGES

When I look up and away from the screen, there is a community I adore. Throughout multiple visits to a local wetland, I watched a discarded iced donut in the grass slowly get eaten away. Simply because I went for a walk to escape nonsense, I once observed ants protect aphids on a plant called Fireweed because the ants love the honeydew that the aphids produce. Community is everywhere. Symbiosis is necessary. Communication is necessary. Ten years now I have bent down to a plant or pointed to a bird and said their name to my husband. And now he says them back to me, his finger pointing up at the sky.

Sarah Lada, Rich Rich

I’ve drafted three poems now, one each morning. I’m also accumulating a windowsill full of spruce and alder cones, bits of moss and quartz, and other stray items: a rose hip, a mollusk shell, dried stalks of some kind of aster.

I hear owls at night: the deep hoots of a great horned owl, the faster, higher calls of a northern saw-whet owl. I missed some aurora activity last night, though. I gave up and went to bed at a quarter after midnight, thinking it was too cloudy, and others saw the flickering just fifteen minutes later.

Heading toward summer, Alaska, or this part of it anyway, is gaining five minutes of light a day. The sun currently sets at 9:30 but the glow lingers longer, hovering at the horizon until 10:30 or later.

Today, Saturday, is brilliantly bright, at least for now. The snow-blanketed volcanoes across Cook Inlet are perfectly clear. Directly across from my desk rises the cone of Augustine (Chu Nula, translation in progress). Visible at the edge of my view is Iliamna (Ch’nagat’in, One that stands above). I have to walk outside to see Redoubt (Bentuggezh K’enulgheli, One that has a notched forehead).

Lesley Wheeler, Ephemera pt. 3 (the wild life)

Today, my birthday started the day off with French toast made for me by J and sitting down to write some poems to catch up on NaPoWriMo hi-jinks I have fallen behind on.  We don’t really have plans for the day since J has three gigs today stretching from early afternoon til 2 or 3 am. So I am on my own, and will probably work on editing things, tidy up the bedroom, and watch something trashy later. […]

In the end 51 was a wild year. Depressing on a global scene, and dysfunctional even on a level that my previous half-century had not seen. Yet, on a personal level, things feel good, though ever precarious financially (but then again, while things are more expensive, I have never quite been flush there even when they were cheaper.)  I probably wrote over a hundred poems, edited dozens of chapbooks, made many collages and cover designs. I published three physical books (one a regular full-length collection, one a text/visual hybrid, and another special-edition hardcover w/ fauxtographs for Patreon. ) There were also a handful of e-zine editions. A smattering of video poems. Meanwhile there have been countless movies, many plays and musicals, occasional weekends away, and of course, the wedding last summer, which was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. 

Kristy Bowen, 52

Once upon a time, around the time I first moved to London, I wrote nothing but sonnets for a year. They weren’t strictly sonnets, because they mostly didn’t rhyme and when they did rhyme they didn’t follow the right patterns; the metre, to the extent there was one, was rough and ready even by my standards. Never mind. I’d been reading a lot of Robert Lowell (possibly too much). The not-quite-sonnet tradition goes further back still.

More interesting, looking back, was how addicted to the form I was. I couldn’t stop writing and whatever I wrote came out in fourteen lines. Here is Ken Gordon, writing about his own sonnetification in Sonnet by Other Means: “It was like a fever. I began writing sonnets continuously. Daily. Sometimes two or three (or even four) in a day. I was like a chain-smoker: One sonnet lit another.” I don’t think I ever wrote four in a day, but yes—it was like that.

Are people drawn to certain forms? It’s a good question. I am still a sonnet reader, but I haven’t started a new one in years. Maybe it is also a question of timing: to everything its season and perhaps particularly to sonnets, that form which is so contained, so combustible, and apparently inexhaustible.

You can read one of those London sonnets in the The Sonneteer. I am grateful to Ken not only for taking it, but for providing the title—the only title possible, but I didn’t know that. The poem riffs on Jackson Browne’s song of the same name (written when he was a teenager, made famous by Nico). 

Jem Wikeley, Poetry Notebook, 24/04/26

Several years ago, rummaging through the archives of the Academy of American Poets, I came upon a box labeled “Ballots 1950” — the record of the secret vote by the chancellors the year the Academy’s prestigious fellowship was awarded to E.E. Cummings, catapulting him into renown. The voting process is a black box — no one outside the Academy ever finds out who else is in the running and by how much the winner wins.

Leafing through the ballots, one other name appeared over and over, so much so that I was impelled to count.

Marianne Moore had lost by one vote, never knowing how close she had come. It would be many more years until, at 77, she was finally awarded the fellowship.

Long before that, before she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award (sharing a table with Rachel Carson at the ceremony), Moore had set down her views on writing in a series of essays later collected in the out-of-print gem Predilections (public library). Pulsating through them is a reckoning with the impossible task of the writer — to weave tapestries of truth and meaning from the tenuous thread of words on the ramshackle loom of language.

In an essay titled “Feeling and Precision,” Moore writes:

Feeling at its deepest — as we all have reason to know — tends to be inarticulable. If it does manage to be articulate, it is likely to seem overcondensed, so that the author is resisted as being enigmatic or disobliging or arrogant.

How we name what we feel is not so much a matter of our writing style as of our style of being, because in order to articulate something we must first apprehend it and we apprehend every smallest thing with the whole person — with the frame of reference that is our entire life, the sum of our experience and memory. When “one of New York’s more painstaking magazines” asked Moore to distill her poetic style into a formula, she fought back the “dictatorial” reflex to quip:

You don’t devise a rhythm, the rhythm is the person, and the sentence but a radiograph of the personality.

And yet a personality can write with more or less persuasion — that is, write more or less well — depending on what the person brings to the writing.

Maria Popova, Marianne Moore on the Three Elements of Persuasive Writing

This week, I attended a phenomenal reading at the Poetry Foundation featuring Ashley M. Jones, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Donika Kelly, and Patricia Smith. The poems asked a great deal of us—our attention, our emotional depth, our fullest humanity. They were not always easy—that is, they did not always say the easy or obvious thing. They did not lead with something “everyone can relate to” to win us over. They often centered on confronting and difficult subjects.

And that’s one of the things I love about poetry, the way it can immediately deliver identity and experience grounded in the complex and ongoing web of history. In other words, these poems were ambitious. They seemed to hope to outlast their moment in the grit, music, and scope of what they offered and asked of the listener. I felt challenged. I felt moved.

It made me reflect on how I’ve been teaching writing for 14 years, and my list of similes for what the process is like has grown stranger by the year.

Maya C. Popa, Poems for Your Weekend

In the opening poem in this collection, “Dear Life,” Popa writes, “I can’t undo all I have done to myself / what I have let an appetite for love to do me.” These lines set the tone for a book that again and again catches us on its barbed hook. Language hooks us. Ghost crabs are a “speculation on shape,” water, “an artifact of loneliness.” Can I capture the essence of this book after only one reading? Probably not.

Toward the end of the book, toward the end of a long poem, “Pestilence,” Popa writes: “Each day I remember / Each day I strategically forgot,” and “how human     is the future / will it let us let / I am listening through my terror for yours…”

Olawaseum Olayiwola in The Guardian described Wound Is the Origin of Wonder as “purposefully heart-decelerating.” It balances contemplation with a sense of walking through the natural world, balances woundedness with a deep, profound healing. I’m wholly intrigued.

Bethany Reid, Maya C. Popa, WOUND IS THE ORIGIN OF WONDER

I can’t let Poetry Month go by without sharing a few notes about books I’ve spent time with this month. So, here are a few brief recommendations:

#evolutionarypoems

by Mihret Kebede and translated from Amharic by Anna Moschovakis

When’s the last time you read an Ethiopian poet? Or poetry translated from Amharic? Well, it was a first for me, and I continue to be impressed by the incredible work that the good people at Circumference Books are doing. So many of their books are from regions and languages that are so rarely represented in English translation, and thus, feel so very new and surprising in all the right ways. And if you, like me, are looking for an activist poetics for our times, these are politically engaged poems that provide a very personal model for literary resistance.

Yes & Now

by Yvette Nepper

Yvette may be one of my earliest friends in poetry land—we met our freshman year, when we were both at Ohio University for a time. I greatly admire Yvette’s work within the poetry community in Cincinnati, and we share a Gen X love of DIY and zine culture that continues in many of Yvette’s chapbooks and projects. Yes & Now is one such limited edition chapbook (in this case produced by FTP), “printed on a mimeograph machine in Mike Cowgill’s mom’s basement.” I love Yvette’s ability to balance profound thought with humor and play that makes one feel like it’s totally okay and maybe even preferable sometimes to have a dance party within what feels like an apocalypse. Come hear Yvette read at my house this September, and while you can’t buy Yes & No online anymore, check out her other chapbooks.

Carrie Olivia Adams, April Sunbeams & Books

This, Ian Storr’s second, beautifully-titled collection of haiku (and haibun), has been a long time coming, 16 years in fact, since Seeds from a Larch Cone. Ian is my friend, and was my long-time colleague at Presence haiku journal – he was the managing editor from 2014, following the tragic death of Martin Lucas, until last year, a stint in which he undertook much more than the lion’s share of the work involved in cementing its reputation as one of English-language haiku’s best journals, if not the best.

I know I’m biased but I have no hesitation in saying that Late Light, published by Alba Publishing and available here (scroll down) is the most important collection of haiku by a British poet since (at least) Thomas Powell’s Clay Moon (Snapshot Press, 2020) and the two collections by our late Presence colleague Stuart Quine (Alba Publishing, 2018 and 2019).

Ian hails from Sheffield and still lives there. He spent his working life as a children’s social worker, an immensely important and difficult job. The compassion, objectivity, resilience and intelligence needed for that profession shines through in Ian’s haiku.

Matthew Paul, On Ian Storr’s Late Light

Marriage is one of the most marked gaps in classical literature. I can’t, off-hand, think of a single good classical poem about being married, and barely any even about a wife (as opposed to a lover or would-be lover). Marriage is of course depicted quite often in Greek tragedy, though generally not very positively. But that’s not to say there’s no good Latin poetry about marriage — around 1500 the Renaissance Latin poets Pontano and Sannazaro, in particular, pioneered the Latin poetry of marriage and this sub-genre remained fashionable for a good century or so. […]

I’ve been thinking about marriage in literature, and especially in poetry, partly because I have been rereading Women in Love for the first time in decades, and partly because this week I finally received the copy of Matthew Buckley Smith’s Midlife, which I’ve been waiting for — I ordered it a while ago but it took a good few weeks to make it across the Atlantic and through French customs. Smith is the host of the popular, if oddly named, Sleerickets poetry podcast, which I’ve been on a couple of times — once a year or so ago and then just last week. I’m not a big podcast-listener myself but I enjoyed talking to Matthew, who’s a gifted interviewer, both times. Sleerickets’ trademark is plain-speaking so in that spirit I hope Matthew won’t mind that this week I’m writing about his own poetry.

Midlife, published in 2024 by Measure Press, was Smith’s second collection and the winner of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award in 2021. (This is an American poetry prize that recognises excellence in formal poetry, with a particular interest — in recognition of Wilbur’s legacy as a translator — in poets who also translate; previous winners have included A. M. Juster, A. E. Stallings, Rhina P. Espaillat and Maryann Corbett.) Last year he was also one of the Rattle Chapbook Prize winners, which means that his pamphlet The Soft Black Stars was circulated to all Rattle subscribers (including me) a few weeks ago (if you’re not a Rattle subscriber, you can order it here).

The first thing to say is that Smith is a very good poet in various ways: he is technically accomplished, he has some range in both form and style, and — a feature that readers of Horace & friends will I think particularly appreciate — he conveys an enjoyable impression of literary depth. Midlife contains one excellent (and one less good) version of Horace, one fairly good version of Catullus 51/Sappho 31, one version of/response to Rilke, as well as versions, responses and allusions to Homer, Tennyson and (especially) the dramatic monologues of Browning. The Soft Black Stars, though on the whole a bit less ‘literary’, contains poems responding to the Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Seafarer’ and to Ezra Pound. (The title of the pamphlet is taken from a short story by the American horror writer, Thomas Ligotti, but I haven’t read these stories so won’t comment on that.) Smith is writing in that American formalist tradition that sometimes sounds to my British ear just a bit too clickety-clack, and at times I find him a little boxed-in by his forms. But this is a pretty minor niggle: if you enjoy collections written entirely in “traditional” verse, he is obviously one of the very best US poets writing in this way today.

Victoria Moul, On marriage

Rhina P. Espaillat published this sonnet, titled “Here,” after the passing of her husband, Alfred. And it is as precise a description of what remains after losing a spouse as anything English literature has to offer. It is a poem, in my own lingering grief, I can hardly bear to read and yet cannot bear to set aside.

After the death of Dylan Thomas, Caitlin Thomas published a 1957 memoir of her time married to the poet, with the unbearable title Leftover Life to Kill. Espaillat catalogues instead the actual leftover objects.

Born on January 20, 1932, Rhina P. Espaillat had her 90th birthday in 2022 celebrated by several of the better poetry publications. Back in its heyday, Prairie Home Companion featured her work. The godmother of the New Formalism — the counter-current that emerged in the late 1980s to offer alternatives to the endless free verse of modern college writing-program poetry — she occupies a section in every contemporary anthology of rhymed and metered verse.

The authorized translator of Robert Frost into Spanish, and the translator of such works as the poetry of St. John of the Cross into English, Espaillat is a major poet working in our lifetimes. Which is why we’ve featured her work several times here in Poems Ancient and Modern: the comic “Undelivered Mail,” the dimeter of “Things That Go,” her translation of “Songs of the Soul in Intimate Amorous Communion with God.”

And in “Here,” the reader will find several of the features that recur in her verse. The sonnet form she often uses. The simple rhymes, for example, that do not strain for effect. The list-making. The precise observation of “his red Swiss Army knife / hiding its tiny arsenal of blades” and the near personification of those knife blades: “like legs tucked under.” A refusal of hyperbole: “I almost hear him say . . . ” And a powerful emotion never named but completely expressed, with the unbearable ending […]

Joseph Bottum, Today’s Poem: Here

The latest from Colorado poet and critic Camille T. Dungy is America, A Love Story (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2026), a powerful collection of poems that provides a table of contents listing single poems and poem-clusters, arranged in untitled sections counterpointing with occasional stand-alone pieces. The book-length suite of America, A Love Story is exactly that: a heartfelt declaration and examination of a complicated country and culture, and a history of aggression, devastation and racism that still ripples across the landscape of generations. “America,” she writes, as part of the brilliantly-devastating opening poem, “This’ll hurt me more,” “there is not a place I can wander inside you / and not feel a little afraid.” Writing of childhood, her father and grandmother, the use of the switch and of her father being pulled over by the police, the second page of the same poem offers: “Of course my father fit the description. The imagination / can accommodate whoever might happen along. / America, if you’ve seen a hillside quickly catch fire, / you have also seen a river freeze over, the surface / looking placid though you know the water deep down, / dark as my father, is pushing and pulling, still trying / to go ahead. We were driving home, my father said. / My wife and my daughters, we were just on our way / home.” This is a book of consequence and heart, and the cruel nature of love itself, articulating a detail of people and movement, history and storytelling with an attention to intimate detail. Amid the story of the neighbourhood women amid a shared stray cat in the poem “True Story,” a piece that tells far more than I’ll offer here, she writes: “One woman believed, as Issa believed, / that in all things, even the small and patient / snail, there are perceptible strings that tie / each life to all others.”

There is such a delicate way that Dungy articulates her narrative collage around the idea of love, of America, including an America that will impact her children, and all that might lie ahead; of the ties, and even the traumas, that bind people together, offering poems from a variety of sides and perspectives, coming together to form a coherent shape around how she understands and approaches her love, her America, from the best elements to the worst, and what all that requires and declares, demands and articulates. 

rob mclennnan, Camille T. Dungy, America, A Love Story

If [Liam] Guilar’s approach to translation is to reimagine, then the way Kit Fryatt and Harry Gilonis work in Book of Inversions is to take things apart and then put them back together in carefully random disorder. As the author/translators note in their introduction, it’s ‘a book of inversions, turning the world upside down’.

The introduction also mentions some antecedents to their approach, including Pound’s Homage to Sextus Propertius, Celia and Louis Zukofsky’s homophonic Catullus, Anne Carson’s versions of the same Latin poet, Richard Caddell’s transmogrification of I Gododdin in his elegiac For the Fallen, and Geoffrey Squires’s My News for You: Irish Poetry 600-1200, not so much an antecedent as it was published while Fryatt and Gilonis were hard at it, but certainly a kind of gold standard for anyone tackling the field. There are also notes that indicate textual sources, other translations (full disclosure, three of them are mine), and further interesting titbits about each poem inverted. The notes also indicate if the version is by one or other of the authors or a joint effort.

Their title plays on the Lebor Gabála Érenn, englished as The Book of the Takings of Ireland, or The Book of Invasions. As such, it is fitting that, after a couple of dedicatory snippets, they open with a version of Amergin’s Song from that text. Not the famous, or infamous, ‘I am the wind on the sea’ one, but Amergin’s third song. Amergin Glúngheal is Ireland’s mythical first poet, and the songs represent a moment of claiming Ireland, which, maybe, makes this a doubly appropriate opener. Here it is in the Irish Text Society version by Macalister, the official version, if you like:

A fishful sea!
A fruitful land!
An outburst of fish
Fish under wave,
In streams (as) of
A rough sea!
birds,
A white hail
With hundreds of salmon,
Of broad whales!
A harbour-song—
An outburst of fish,
A fishful sea!

And here’s the Gilonis take:

Fishfilled sea!
Fertile land!
Fish erupt!
Fish in waves
bird-flock-like!
Ocean’s wild!

White sea hail,
salmon hordes,
widespread wales!
Harbour song:
‘Fish erupt,
fishfilled sea!’

And the Irish text as best as I can manage to reconstruct it from what’s to hand:

iascach muir
mothach tîr
tomaidm n-eisc
iasca fothuind
rethaib ên
fairge chruaid
cassar finn
crethaib én
lethan mîl
portach lág
mniportach lugh
tomaidm n-eisc
iascach muir

What’s immediately apparent, even to readers with no Irish, is that the new version adheres much more closely to the chant-like terseness of the original, short lines and an emphatic rhythm and an echo of the Irish tendency to composite word formation. 

Billy Mills, Celtic Matters

The poet J.H. Prynne died this week, at the age of 89. I’ve been reading his work since I was a student. My first experience of it was very like the one described in this tribute by Ian Patterson for the London Review of Books blog:

[the] poems were like essays in their apparent substance, but they had a manner, a rhythm and a music, as well as a density of thought that shifted my idea of what poetry was and what it could be and do

So this week I thought I would try to give some account of that experience: the reading of words that sound explanatory but resist explanation, and which resonate with a musical air of meaning that repeats itself as a kind of thought.

[…]

wresting the screen before the eyelet lost / to speech tune you blame the victim: I’ve quoted these unpunctuated lines together because I don’t know how to split them apart. Following the clear but abstract statement of the distinction between knowing and doing, we are suddenly plunged into a confusion of violent action. To “wrest” is usually to “wrest control” of something: here, “the screen before the eyelet lost”. This is — to use a synonym for darkness — “obscure” (Latin obscurus, dark, hidden, secret). But obscurity is also what is being (obscurely) described: to put a “screen” before an “eyelet” is to block a small hole for light. So clarity of knowledge has been followed by a cover-up. “Lost”, at the line-break, is the hinge word here, the moment of maximum confusion before an immoral argument emerges which inverts the dynamics of power: “you blame the victim”. How / why do “you” do this? Because you are “lost / to speech tune”, like a good poet. But here it sounds as though your eloquence is a bad habit.

Jeremy Noel-Tod, In Darkness by Day

We’ve been thinking a lot about the poetry of Douglas Dunn recently, especially Douglas’s superb and undervalued pre-Elegies poems. This seemed a good excuse to give this little essay a second airing; it appeared in a recent-ish issue of The Dark Horse devoted to Dunn and his work. It’s about my own debt to Douglas, and to one poem of his in particular. Since that poem is unavailable online, I’ll risk reprinting it at the end of the piece until I’m told off. You can, however, still read it in Dunn’s essential New Selected Poems. […]

I remember reading ‘Remembering Lunch’ in an appropriately wine-stained paperback copy of St Kilda’s Parliament, bought in the Charing Cross Road in the late eighties. I’ll have picked it up it from one of the second-hand bookstores where, twelve or fifteen years earlier, Douglas would have flogged his review copies to pay for his long Soho lunch and its longer bar tab. I had just read and fallen in love with Elegies, as we all had; but with the young male poet’s atrocious impatience to have everyone sprawling on a pin, I decided I had Dunn’s measure. I opened at ’Remembering Lunch’. So much for that theory. For one thing, even the measure was new to me. What’s with the long line? Isn’t it prose when you keep bopping your head on the right margin? Clearly not; but are poets permitted such long sentences? At the time, one knew just enough to reach for the word ‘Jamesian’ whenever one encountered such fluent hypotaxis, but little else. I was, at least, used to poems ending with the sea. The sea is literally a great place to stop. But it was clearly going to take me years to catch up with the rest of it, and I had best make a start.

Don Paterson, Learning from Dunn

At age 76, [Robert] Cording has been writing a long time; he started before he was out of college, and he published his first book of poems in 1987, almost 40 years ago. To look back over that lengthy career is to begin to understand something about the meaning of his new book’s title: what he’s been able to achieve through decades of devotion to his craft, which produces both an accounting and an appraisal of all that he has written and published, and what is possible to ascertain from what the poems tell us about the life Cording has experienced and lived and shared, not only with those he loves but also with his readers.

About the latter, Cording’s poems make quietly clear his life’s through-lines:

[. . .] family and friends, [. . .]

our blessings—the disarming joy of being
loved, the bounty of the natural world
that still takes our sight beyond ourselves. [. . .]

~ from “Talking Through a Storm” (p. 114 )

As that excerpt implies, Cording is an observer of the interior life, one from which he draws energy and consolation, as much as he is a poet who looks out into the world of both the ordinary — “all that is / too humdrum for our notice,” the “nothing much” that characterizes daily goings-on (“Ode to Ordinariness, pp. 130-131) — and the inexplicable and divine, whether it is “the perfection of birdness” (“Lord God Bird,” pp. 132-133) or “some accidental loveliness / we put our hopes in” (“Massachusetts Audubon Chart No. 1, 1898,” p. 185).

As attentive as Cording is to these constants, as much as he can praise the recurrence of “the sun returning like a second chance / after this evening’s shower” or “the moon rising like a clockface” (“Ode to Ordinariness,” p. 131), the world, he writes, “keeps moving to its tasks, random with pain, / rich with surprise” (“All Souls’ Morning,” p. 54), landing him in an “in-between” space where grief and lament reside alongside praise and “a source of awe”: “the colors // of dawn on the earth’s other side. Everything— / the tamaracks and maples, the spruces and their / smoke- winged / sparrows, the painterly sky darkening toward infinity” (“For Rex Brasher, Painter of Birds,” pp. 75-76). The lesson to be drawn, then, is that both suffering and cause to celebrate can and do coexist, that a day can be “perfectly made for delight” while “grief is endless” (“Four Prayers,” p. 151).

Maureen Doallas, Robert Cording’s ‘What’s Possible: New & Selected Poems’

May 2026, next month, marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of my first book of poems, The Silence of Men, which I think is worth celebrating because it is—and this is a testament to CavanKerry Press’ commitment to its authors—still in print and, somewhat remarkably (to me at least), still selling. I just received my 2025 royalty check for $4.83. It’s easy to laugh at that amount, and we’ve all heard the jokes about how poets are only in it for the money (right?), but I have always believed that poetry does its work in the world very slowly. I don’t know how many copies of the book that check represents, or how many people will ultimately read those copies, but it makes me happy and not a little bit humbled to think that poems I wrote more than two decades ago are still doing their work somewhere.

[…]

How To Write A Political Poem During These Unprecedented Times, by Adrian S. Potter:

Perhaps we sink too much energy into pretending to be unoffended when we really should feel insulted. As part of his unapologetic reign of bluster, one of our so-called leaders keeps teaching a master class on how to parlay hot takes and brash rhetoric into votes and profit. Meanwhile, I’m busy trying to write a poem that will finally put an end to bigotry, and yes, even within the false mythology of a post-racial society, bigotry still exists.

The tension in this piece is between the self-important navel-gazing that characterizes the way some writers live “the literary life” and the implicit call to action with which Potter ends the piece: “But when I try to write about [these unprecedented times]…my hand instinctively tightens into a fist hoisted high above my head.” The essay was published in 2004, and I imagine that, in light of what’s been happening in the United States and the Middle East, it lands with even more urgency than it did back then. I found myself thinking of Louise Glück’s essay “The Idea of Courage,” in which she critiqued the use of the term courage to described what it took for a poet to write poems that revealed aspects of their life they might not otherwise have revealed. Specifically, I found myself remembering Glück’s point that this usage of courage “concentrates attention on the poet’s relation to his materials and to his audience, rather than on the political result of speech.” We all know the stories of the poets in totalitarian nations throughout history who risked that political result and paid with their lives. Iran, of course, is one of them. How far are we, I asked myself when I finished reading Potter’s essay, from a time when the difference between writing a political poem and raising one’s tightened fist into the air will not be as different as he suggests.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, Four by Four #54

in the front yard, the ferns
are unfurling their fists. i wonder what it is
that they reach for. i should probably open
my hands too. catch something. not a star,
maybe just a petal from the peach tree who might,
if the world is real enough this year, bear fruit.

Robin Gow, poem in which i am an activist

The Heart of American Poetry

Based on A Poet’s Glossary, a book I always enjoyed opening, I impulse-purchased this new critical work by Edward Hirsch. But it is not a book I will finish, though I will keep dipping. The attempt to link poetry to the state of America is far too blunt, the readings are often too anecdotal, and thus the page count is far beyond the actual interest, though the book is not without interest and if some compressed version of this was available in online essays, I would read it. In general, this might be a worthwhile book for someone new to the topic, but it feels old-fashioned to me. If the topic at hand is so important (as I agree with Hirsch that it is) some other way of discussing it must be found. No easy task, and perhaps an unfair criticism, but that is where we are.

*

The Modern Element

Adam Kirsch’s 2008 book about modern poetry is much more lively, gets to the point, and has Kirsch’s own strongly-held views to sustain it. It is less about “who we are now” or whatever, but has a lot more to say about the poets and the nature of poetry. Kirsch is against “poetry’s neurotic obsession with the modern”. He thinks the “poetics of authenticity” which prevailed after the war, and which finished the job Romanticism started and led to the removal of formal qualities, “has thoroughly failed” and has prevented poets from writing major works. He wishes us to return to the pragmatic tradition of Johnson, Aristotle, Horace, and Arnold. A very worthwhile book.

Henry Oliver, Palms, poems, moderns

It was late May, and I had a day off, or was killing time between my day and evening jobs, and I missed campus, with its grassy quad and emerald oaks and bobbing tulips, its redbuds and dogwood, magnolia and cherry, and so I went to the park in search of something like it. There was nothing there that one would call manicured, and what I missed most of all, I’m sure, was the people who’d sit in the grass and read poems with me. I remember I wrote a letter to a friend—we had email, but nobody had a computer; word processors hulked on our desks like suitcase bombs—and then I read Sweet Machine for the first time, and “Door to the River” is the poem that left me breathless in the grass.

What’s to like? I’ve been asking another version of that question a lot lately: Why do I like what I like? It’s a simple poem, so far as the literal circumstances: it begins in ekphrasis, more specifically interpretive ekphrasis—the speaker doesn’t tell us what the painting looks like, but attempts to interpret de Kooning’s intention or meaning—then progresses to narrative description, recalling yesterday’s meadow, then proceeds through a series of questions that feel by turns existential and self-directed, arriving at something like certainty, then a turn to exhortation and another narrative that leads to a moment of lyric epiphany—of transcendence. Why do I like it? Because it is transcendent, and it brings us along on its path towards insight.

Maybe simple isn’t the word.

“Door to the River” is sort of the antonym, conceptually and formally, of another field poem, Mark Strand’s compact little “Keeping Things Whole.” I’m tempted to call it an antidote as well. There’s paradox at the heart of Strand’s poem: If his speaker is what is missing, he is also the missing piece; in that sense, he belongs wherever he is—and yet the division seems to be absolute. There is “the air,” and there is “my body,” and though the two meet, they remain separate. There is such a thing as lack: the air can lack the body; the body can lack the air. Together they “keep things whole,” but this wholeness is only accomplished by continuous motion, is comprised always of its individual components.

In “Door to the River,” we have another mind contemplating another field, but the insight that arrives is entirely opposite: in this field, there is both stillness and fullness: “some / balance . . . no lack, nothing / missing from the world.” It’s an experience of completion, wholeness, abundance. And so the final revelation at the end of the breathless penultimate sentence—this is a sentence that began thirty-one lines earlier, with “It was her voice”—arrives as an utter surprise: that this experience of wholeness must be the same as the experience of death. Having tumbled through to the end of this astounding claim, we end with the simple finality of a one-word sentence: Fine.

Vanessa Stauffer, “Door to the River” by Mark Doty

Spring of course is the season of possibilities. April has been a busy month but now the big weighty tasks are behind me — giving workshops, which is not a task I do with ease, memorializing a friend — and I feel lighter and the mornings have been so sweet with a perfect mix of chill and warmth from the heating sun. Trees are crazy with buds and blossoms and the azaleas across the street are laden. A squirrel ate my one lone tulip, as it does every goddamn year. And it’s been very dry and my least favorite season, summer, is on its way, and it could be a scorcher. So it goes. I try to give participants in my workshops a sense of possibilities, but memorials for friends signal an end to possibilities. One possible outcome of possibilities is nothing. I think of this often. And so. The old eat-drink-and-be-merry, the old eat-dessert first, the old be-here-now. I can only shrug or laugh or be wry. I like the word wry — it’s a tricky little devil: that sometimes-y vowel, that silent w. You can speak it without opening the jaw, the maw of possibility. I like this wry poem by Aidan Chafe for that very thing, its wry embrace of what is possible.

Marilyn Mccabe, with snot and ice cream

Listening to Kathy Acker, dead twenty-five years, read her translations of the poet Sextus Propertius from Blood and Guts in High School … let there be no double winter dead winds … I understand my missteps are all colossal flaps for the wind to carry me, whether I want to be carried or no. The landing isn’t up to me. The wind decides. All my successes or perfections don’t need the head of a pin to stand—that would be too vast—so I never keep one around. My journey needs no island. I’ve given up maps. Since having is believing, I don’t believe. Call me useless, call me criminal, call me undigested pizza with hallucinatory moments of despair—but nothing has always been greater than something.

If one assumes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is correct … Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away … then perfection is the blank page before the poem gives words to lyric, the imagined story before its told, before the idea of Venus de Milo Apollo gives shape to stone, before strokes of paint find a fence or sky or face on canvas, before the note is played. The saying, the doing can only muck the truth.

How to have one and not the other is the real task at hand, the work behind the work—the bottom of the glass reached as the meal is finished—plates carried to the kitchen—the chair returned to its place.

Sam Rasnake, Monday Works… #14: “On Perfection and Flaws”

The poets on the farthest end of the table are laughing
and the visiting scholar on the other end is trading
jokes with the futures trader, and no one quite notices
when the waiters come to fill and replenish cups of water
and tea. Your colleague is rhapsodizing over the thick
clouds of chicken and corn in the soup, and you give
your whole mind to all of this, for here as in the world
attention is a practice that asks nothing from you except
to be here. Though when all of you walk back into the night
and the air is cooler and all are hugging and waving goodbye
or someone is suggesting you find somewhere else to go and
have margaritas, you know the world is waiting to slip into
your mouth again— another kind of communion, the kind
you have every day, the kind that stains your fingers
and leaves a slight film of oil, even now in this kitchen
where, standing barefoot on cold tile, already you are
chewing on the future.

Luisa A. Igloria, Poem at 3 AM with Leftovers and Rilke