Editor's Comments
Welcome to Issue 30 of Allegro Poetry Magazine. In this issue there are familiar names alongside poets new to Allegro. There are many excellent poems to be found here including Clare Best's 'Sitting with my son's first leather boots which is nominated for this year's Forward Prize.
Sally Long
The Saxophone that Moves my Soul
[After Philip Larkin]
The
saxophone that moves my soul
above the
dancers on the floor
reminds me
of my solitude,
for we were
dancing in the quite mundane
pleasant
enough jigging and bop before,
with steady
communal throb of engine on slick rails
of sweat and
occasional rub of shoulders and hips,
glistening
eyes like bubbles of light, shy or sly,
all under
the retro mirror ball
and
apparatus of lasers and strobes.
But ah! That
silver saxophone proclaims
exquisite
solitude, so gladly claimed,
and, bearing
its ecstatic lash of notes, spirits lift,
like a mass
of swirling foam in a solo land where we
live as
individuals, full alone, divine and doomed.
Clive
Donovan
October was a Poorly Month
Disorientated, dysfunctional.
It left little patches of itself
around the kitchen and all down the
stairs
It hid in cupboards.
It cleaned the bath forty times in a
row
with forensic equipment.
It recorded everything I did and
said.
All the pain I’d ever known
pooled into the tall shape of an
adolescent.
I called out for Holy Men and Women,
the sages, rebel angels–
anyone who might have a handle on
this.
I drank pitchers of Holy Water,
I knelt in several Catholic churches.
Priests exorcised me. Nuns blessed me.
I tried Exposition, Benediction,
Confession and Communion.
I tried everything.
But the world didn't seem to care.
It insisted on assessing my parental
credentials
in National Curriculum levels.
Teens in blazers spat in my face.
Teachers failed me.
October was and wasn’t.
It was recovery then relapse.
Relapse then recovery.
Each dawn I’d watch a purpose of
birds
dart across an oblivious sky.
I was envious. I was broken.
November brought a sparkler fizz
of light.
But the rain put it out.
The rain and the everythinggonewrong
took its toll. I spoke in code to
friends
I shouted at doctors. I trusted no
one.
The only good thing to come out
of all that weather was the broken
fence
between my house and my neighbour's
house.
That felt like change.
That meant something.
Michelle Diaz
A Month of Rain
A month of rain today, the drift of tribes
Into nation states a headshot scrabble of dead-man votes
And oil reserves
Murder-tech recon scans crowds in
Market squares—in Myanmar, Burkina Faso or Yemen
Where the killing tallies
Peacekeepers and relief workers, messaging a local
warlord
How much for that girl
In the camps, refugees burn
Shoe leather against the cold, against cholera
And shrunk-skin babies
A boy in flip flops kicking through snow
Deep as Covid coughs
Between war and mission presence, border guards, their
Ray-Bans de rigueur, stare through falling skies
Estill Pollock
Road Goats
The tour required too much
togetherness.
The ride inside the minibus each day
Caused both of us significant distress
Since other folks could not be kept at
bay.
Some fellow travelers shouted, belched,
or coughed.
One hummed or sang. Another slept and
snored.
Our guide and driver on occasion
scoffed
At conduct which we wished would be
ignored.
We also had to share most meals with
these
Same people as we went from place to
place.
Too soon we used up stores of
pleasantries
And wanted to withdraw to private
space.
Relieved to have survived for two long
weeks,
We chose not to provide online
critiques.
Jane Blanchard
How I Find
and Lose My Mother
Hope is what
keeps her going down
the street,
to the unremarkable house
that, like
her, needs a new coat
of paint. To
be repointed, given
an extension.
I only had
twelve weeks.
She comes
with a carrier bag and
a social
worker. It’s a crash course
in
redemption. Pass, and we can leave
together.
Fail and we will be sent off
discretely in
different directions.
We were never
left alone. Each moment
of
interaction kept in a detailed logbook.
You were to
be picked up, hugged, fed, changed
into a
non-risk situation. But sleep-deprived
there were
two things I could not keep:
my anger at
bay and you.
Now, forty
years later, she tells me
her story.
History scrapes me, scribing
pain onto my
scrimshawed bones. Here I am.
Unbroken,
whole, and as perfect to her
as the day
she walked away, alone.
She only has
twelve weeks.
Louise Longson
The Trouble
I told my
friends, “A couple married
for ages,
like you two, you’re like
a
half-blackened tree. I didn’t see
the lightning
strike, or how brightly
you once
burned, but you’re still rooted,
shooting out
brittle little twigs.”
They didn’t
find this too exquisite.
He said, “A
backhand compliment at best.
Ariel and Caliban
crammed into wood?”
I admitted the
comparison wasn’t any good.
“Isn’t that
what words miss?” I said.
They only
carry something halfway there;
one still has
to do the heavy lifting.
It’s like the
head-dip people do
pausing over
a coffin. They aren’t thinking
about the
actual meat-fact of the dead,
but the
intangibles, how they squatted
to gather a
grandchild in a party-dress;
or hefted
secateurs aloft to lop the hedges.
That’s why
mourners stop and pat the lid.”
They still
weren’t looking too convinced.
“And a
divorced couple?” she said.
I flinched.
“Well, they nearly made it,
but dissolved
along a legal gradient.
You’ll agree
that many failed things escape
prediction,
like a strong rainbow
that can’t
quite double its arc above it
and yet there
is the faintest pastel trace.”
A funny look
relayed between their faces.
It didn’t
mean “love it.” It meant “shove it.”
He said, “If
you want to talk about us
you’d have to
mention all the things
we never
meant to keep, those
accretions
heaped around us, the dishrags,
masking tape,
suitcases, and old clothes;
the loyalty
cards, receipts, bin-bags,
toilet
scrubbers and clipped fingernails;
the
light-bulbs and espresso-maker rings;
and jumble
them up, make a right mess.”
“Not pretty.”
“But you wouldn’t fail.”
Steve Noyes
Once through the marble colonnade
and sweeping stairs, we enter rooms
so grand we almost feel afraid:
great men, great speeches, sepia
views
of Strasbourg, Rome, Berlin,
Versailles;
then on past endless photographs—
high collars, confidence, low guile,
diplomacy, late night cigars.
And then, behind a hidden door
we’re welcomed with an open smile
to views across a boundary wall,
tired children straggling home from
school,
a woman unsure where she stands,
but standing freely where she can.
Phil Vernon
A far sea
What a puzzle, my love
To think, how a raindrop’s course is
set.
I remember, once, discussing this
with you.
How one mountain breath can send it
going
To one shore, or another, switch-like
As if falling atop a giant letter
‘A’.
Since then, I have grown fat
And accumulated gold.
But the falling rain? – I could only
ever watch.
Golden shovel after Sylvia Plath
Jim
Lloyd
The Traveller
It is always the same, or nearly so.
I am rushing to buy the last ticket
or catch the final train or ship or
flight.
The slow lines at terminal windows,
or lost identity card, wallet, or glasses
make me miss the chance to step on
board,
the ultimate act of will to take leave.
This never happens outside in open air,
but always under a roof or low ceiling,
sometimes with stairs or chutes leading down
and closing around me like a serpent's throat,
forcing my lungs into deeply laboring breaths.
No one speaks or makes a single sound.
My fellow travellers at different
paces,
brushing past, clutching tickets, take
the last seat and gaze
out the windows
at the passing landscapes over their
own reflections.
They are as silent as an only child
moving toy figures without a word,
or maybe speaking for them in a flowing murmur
no one else is meant to hear or know.
Just the mute advance of small men
that ends in a sudden pile of violence.
I sense the destination of
all the transport
I miss; so why do I hate being left behind?
Royal Rhodes
Mum’s hands
For years, whenever I’d
look down and see my hands,
arranged like hers,
I had to quickly scatter them,
in opposite directions
like startled birds.
I loathed the way she left them.
One held like a dainty purse in
the other. Prim keeper of some
dance
card that I felt did not include me.
But now age is letting us both go
I read a different palm
and see them more as gauntlets,
stone crossed upon a knight’s tomb.
One hand, reaching for the sword,
the other holding it
forever to its quest.
Paul Fenn
You can find him if you know where to
look;
on the edge of the horizon, under the
cover of trees
silhouetted against the sun.
With UV light, pooter, queen sized
bed sheet
he surrounds himself with the
dazzling and the drab
the divine and the mythical;
created because all the gods get
lonely.
Ones that span the width of a hand
or the width of a matchstick.
Ones that feed on the tears of
sleeping birds.
He wonders how they make silk out of
nothing;
how they listen to the moon.
He loves their consistency most of
all; dabs them
as they skitter and skate across a
floodlit screen.
They’re his pulse, the touchstone
by which his own life is measured
knowing the dust that falls from
crumpled wings.
What was it she used to say?
That’s not the work of a creative.
A skewer through the middle.
But he was just dormant in her
presence
camouflaged against the dining room
wall.
Now, he’s a translator for other
beings
converting one form of beauty into
another
their customs and cultures; like
forms of energy.
But they will never know him.
Perhaps tonight he’ll see males
of Rileyiana fovea
serenading females with their
mandolin wings
or the young caterpillars of Heterogynis
penella
that eat their mother as soon as they
hatch.
More personalities than a room full
of people;
inhabiting the twilight like no one
can.
He puts on sunglasses, careful not to
look at the light;
knows that if he did, he’d drift away
caught in its trap.
Christopher
Palmer
Pianist, Interrupted
I can't remember the notes tonight
It returns in waves, the melody.
Cracks appear. I can't get it right.
Memorising was easy at the height
of my concerto days. Now back to the
keys,
I can't remember the notes tonight
but later, mid-dream, they come into
sight
just as you visit me, real as day. By
dawn I see
cracks appear. I can't get it right.
The semi-quavers float on, take
flight
whilst I rest during minims, a silent
plea.
I can't remember the notes tonight,
the ones you wrote to me, often after
a fight.
I piece together what I can, try not
to see
cracks appear. I can't get it right
except in dreams. Taut skin, a flash
of light,
younger fingers gliding over keys,
you and me.
I can't remember the notes tonight.
Cracks appear. Can't forget it. I
write.
Beliz
McKenzie
Quantum
Villanelle
My cat and Schrödinger’s, are they the same?
His loves carboard boxes, so does
mine.
But I’m not sure I understand this
game.
There’s known unknowns: for instance,
his cat’s name.
- My cat’s called Leo, and he’s very
fine -
My cat and Schrödinger’s, are they
the same?
If his cat’s probabilistic, that’s a
shame -
I’d like more certainty with his
feline.
I’m not so sure I understand this
game.
If his cat’s in a quantum state, then
who’s to blame?
The physicists, not Einstein’s dice
divine?
My cat and Schrödinger’s, are they the same,
Composed of flesh and blood, both
somewhat tame?
Or trapped in multiverses more than
nine?
I’m not so sure I understand this
game.
It’s all a web of interactions, claim
Nāgārjuna, and Rovelli, down the
line.
The cats must be related, if not
quite the same.
I’m still not sure I understand this
game.
Jane Spray
Sitting with my son’s first leather
boots
It’s not the memories they evoke –
there are plenty, but I won’t list
them here,
they might escape. It’s not the
number 25
stamped on the instep next to a
little box
that says Start-rite, nor the crusts
of mud
stuck in the treads twenty-four
years.
It’s not scuffed toes, heels worn
down
in one particular place. Not deep
creases
at the ankles where brown polish
lingers.
Even if I cherish details, it’s not
those.
It’s this: I have to close my door,
sit quietly
and alone with so much love and
mystery.
Clare Best
Still Life With Onions
Sunday wind sends half a woman’s letter over our old
fence,
written for Rening, or is it Penny?
Our days are slipping by and in many ways I’m glad.
It will be nice to be home.
Blue, curvy letters on lined paper.
Inside our warm kitchen, I imagine a woman
alone in a room, folding the paper one way
and then the other,
tucking it inside the envelope and sending it off -
to the place where, today, the wind grabs hold
and sends it to my hands. My mother calls -
she has just finished a book,
a memory of exile, of refugee camps after the war,
my mother’s story, the same country, and I am
suddenly aware of our small yellow house,
the old wallpaper in the bedroom, the tiny room
off the kitchen we turned into the nursery,
windows in the front with the view of Simpson’s
Rest,
the old sign at the top that names this town.
Such good fortune, to have everything we need.
My mother, two thousand miles away, sends her love,
says to kiss the children. Soon it will be
night,
the children will eat peaches and biscuits before bed.
Out the kitchen window, Jupiter will glow
in the winter sky. Perhaps I’ll write my old friend
a letter:
how the days are slipping by, but we still live
here,
same flickering streetlight across from the yard,
the kitchen at the back of the house,
yesterday’s onion scent.
Laura Tate
I
can’t tell you anything about that
After Mila Haugova
but can tell you little egrets have yellow
feet
that the red shank is sentinel of the
marsh
that a golden eagle can see a rabbit
three miles away
and that you often feel a tremor of
light
as a bird crosses the sun’s path.
I can also tell you that trees are
tall mild beings
of root, trunk, branch, leaf
they know dark earth, soft sun, wet
winds.
We, however are restless and rootless
we need to look up, listen
stand near, gain strength
feel
their old tested presence.
Sacha Hutchinson
WebMD told me I have an avoidant attachment style…
… but i'm not sure that is even possible
for someone with
borderline personality disorder. - or if it even makes any sense.
you see, people like me, we stick too easily.
it could be trauma or the way our parents raised us - actually,
I fail to see the difference. What I mean is that
it's rare for someone like me, to not get attached too quickly.
on the first day I met my last love, I knew we’d end up
together
because her honeysuckle hazel eyes melted into an ocean blue
once they aligned with mine. Our hands touched and teaspoons
clinked, in sync and i knew, if anyone was to stop us, I'd drown them,
in saltwater waves. I was manic when I met her so she fell in love with the
vibrancy
but when the batteries soon started to die, the sapphire in her eyes
turned saxe and soon all the azure had abandoned her irises
and travelled to her lips in lieu. I’d clasped my teeth to her cardiovascular
system and wrung it out, tight. And after she left, she took them with her.
so I came home, alone, to talk to all of my friends and they told me
to start by picking up a pair of scissors, snipping off my hair, strand by
strand.
my fingertips apparitions swiping these mistakes into every surface, so I sit
in the uncomfortable in-between of knowing solitary confinement
bathes a soul softer than dipping my toes into the possibility
of such desertion. or rather, the knowledge that if there’s a next time
that someone scintillates something within me, I would turn off the power
at its source. I think, now I know It’s better to live without their
light than to be
too bright for anyone else to hold for too long.
I guess that’s what they meant by avoidant.
Oli Ellis
Mistle Thrush
The way she chose an amber traffic light
to build her nest,
under the visor, up against the lens,
so her speckled breast
was lit up when the signal changed;
a shining bird.
The way they let her be there, though
the light was obscured.
The way I was one of thousands,
each in our own safe place,
to see her on a screen and wish her well;
a web, a net, a nest, a kind of grace.
Mark Totterdell
The Theatre[1]
a cento
Imagine a stone building, white pillars, classical frieze
‘CHILDREN’ written on the pavement outside
opened as a bomb shelter
crammed into the building, sleeping in offices
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
The airstrike hit the stage
six hundred people killed that night
bodies strewn everywhere
pulverised into the dust
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
A little girl lay motionless
in a huge pool of blood
others still under the rubble
the wounded screamed
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
A woman stood in her bathrobe
she had to step on the dead to escape
she ran blindly towards the sea
escaping the smell of death
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
They came to destroy it
How many bodies?
blackened by fire
one big mass grave
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
Haunted by memories,
memories blurred by trauma
egregious violation
the deadliest civilian attack
‘CHILDREN’ was written on the pavement outside
[1] Coda: Times
Newspaper coverage of the Siege of Mariupol 7 May 2022
Clair Chilvers
Pilgrim
To
the
home
of wise
Ælred
I come for salve
and
salvation. Look on my feet,
these
ulcerous slabs and pity me. I
offer
a shoe in soft lead. A lay-brother,
I
tipped up the crucible roughly, mistook
myself
the butt of young Brother Thomas’
teasing.
My blunder burned him, my own
feet
too, blistered in the molten spread.
He
is whole once more, but my ulcers
gnaw
deeper with heat of my anger
unforgiven.
A simple man, no
citizen
of the metaphysical
world,
I beg a simple
forgiveness.
And a
simple
Earth physic
to
help me too; the
plant
that shrieks
echoes
my mewling
as
my stained bindings
are
unwound. With the
blessing
of healed flesh
I
shall walk with a new
purpose,
transfigured
from
my base
lead
life.
A small shoe-shaped lead model is on display at
Rievaulx Abbey, perhaps brought there by a pilgrim.
Fiona Theokritoff
For my
daughter
Nothing but stillness, the breath
rising and falling, the unfailing
adherence to the score,
bar after bar
Barely to be heard
There she is, with your ear
to sleep,
her sleep
The other side from you,
beyond your apprehension,
your fears
In the cradle of dreams
Beyond belonging
Ray Malone
Sonnet Found in a Deserted Madhouse
(fantasy of an alternative future)
The winds of winter wind through empty halls,
scraps of abandoned paper blow like leaves
to settle in odd corners of old walls.
Once a community lived here, but no one grieves:
the place was nothing but a wasteful home
for the sick, sad, psychotic and insane
who, locked in rooms or left alone to roam,
babbled their lives away, inept, inane.
All funding for the loonies has dried up;
guards, nurses, admin, tea ladies: dismissed.
And all because Brussels came out on top
and closed this home of British mental mist.
Now Big Ben chimes, tolling a final knell.
Farewell, old Houses; Westminster, farewell.
Robin Helweg-Larsen
A Galway winter
sings outside.
In this bar of students and hospital
workers,
families of patients with worried
faces,
we inhabit a corner,
where you wince,
with a hand pressed to your stomach.
We’ve come from a clinical room
littered with leaflets that answered
questions
like “what is miscarriage?”
It all seems premature,
since they couldn’t even label your
pain,
speaking of how the signs suggested
our child was “not ongoing”.
I have no practice
in these situations,
can only speak of easing your pain,
of trying again
– after a tactful period –
already consigning our nameless child
to the past,
Soon,
another doctor with a gentler hand
will reveal your discomfort
as a child announcing its presence
like a drunken guest
stumbling into the furniture
of a new environment.
We’ll give her names
– Nicole, Veruna –
the latter sutured from both our
mothers,
and a year from now,
all our pensive inertia will seem like
potential energy
sprung into kinetic form
– nightfeeds, nappies, buttoning vests
–
as we dote on milk-morphined eyes.
We’ll watch her together
as she takes a step,
and smile to each other
as she keeps on going.
Trevor Conway
Seaside sparrows
Full of chatter and incessant gossip
of seed-head fennel,
hollyhocks,
the busyness of raising their young
where the air is always on the move
and dust baths, water, sunniest
spots,
the happy chance of scattered crumbs
or groundsel, a chirrup of poppies,
and nothing as good as a south-facing
garden.
D.A.Prince
Cú Chulainn’s
Leap
Loop Head, Co. Clare
Mal didn’t make it back. Unlike Cú Chulainn
she hit the chasm’s
wall, fell, and drowned,
freeing him from pursuit and the threat
of her
love-enslaving touch. So legend has it,
though I can’t
imagine a demigod leaping
that gap – some
sixty feet from stack to head.
Geology, not legend,
drew me to this spot:
rocks on the stack
and head lie horizontally,
yet further south I’d
observed strata
confounding
expectation, curving like plasticine
before steeping into
the sea – a postscript
to the relentless
squeeze of tectonic plates.
But I’m not wanted
here: swallows are diving
stuka-like towards
my head, wings whirring
as they pull up
sharply for another swoop.
I yield the heathery
ground around the lighthouse
and head to Kilbaha
for a Guinness and more
in the friendlier
ambience of Keating’s Bar.
Mantz Yorke
My Mother Eats My Flesh
when she’s hungry.
She takes bites out of me
when she thinks my head is turned.
I let her nibble at my forearm
and lick at blood-soaked
sorbet between courses.
I’m fading. But it’s fine.
I feel cold all the time;
legs constantly aching
like I haven’t uncurled
from a cocoon for years
and years and years.
I bake my mother cakes;
Victoria sandwiches
filled with fresh cream
and fat strawberries.
She says thank you
but leaves them
on the kitchen counter
for days until they go stale.
She doesn’t eat anything
that won’t go by my name.
Won’t drink tea or coffee
or try a bite of toast.
Refuses cereal, slices of apple,
and even pours cold glasses
of water over my head.
I am my mother’s
when she’s hungry. It’s okay.
Ava Patel
Cousins
We only meet in churches now, move on
to village halls, the back room of a
pub
on weekday lunchtimes.
The locals at an anxious distance
note
the decency of a best suit, black
leather
shoes waxed to a reverent shine.
The food we share, bland sandwiches,
wedges of pork pie too large to
handle
with respect. We drain our glasses,
do you remembers suspended
like a chorus. That game of Murder
in the Dark
when John got scared and cried.
At closing time we linger, unwilling
to be the one to say goodbye; head
home
along the motorway alone.
Julia
White
Life support
After seventy two hours on the unit
praying, hoping, watching test after
test,
waiting on results; we had bad news.
The machines that supported him
would be removed: a switch from
‘intensive’ to ‘tender, loving’ care.
He could feel no pain, wouldn’t move
by himself, would never wake up,
might breathe on his own.
It could mean the end of life for
him,
or the start of a new life for us
looking after a helpless child.
In the parents’ room filled with
family,
mismatched chairs, a lumpy futon,
too many sockets, we repeated the
news.
I looked up at a thin, blue ribbon of
sky –
all I could see between buildings –
wished
I could stop the clock, use a crystal
ball,
turn back time, have easier endings,
run away, fly! I really didn’t know
which outcome to wish for.
Verity Baldry
Milka Trnina Falls
Perhaps the falling water resembled her
voice.
More likely Milka Trnina chinks
like the coins she donated to preserve
the magnificence of Plitvice Lakes
safeguarded for prosperity.
Sadly, there are no recordings of
Milka,
nerve pain paralysed her face
before 78s became popular,
I imagine her soprano voice
dominating roles, Tosca, Isolde,
Brunhilde.
Without this waterfall named after her,
she’d have no voice at all,
A tune a long time silent.
another century, another country
remembers her success.
The constancy of sounds—
each outdoing the other
birdsong, cascading water.
The chemistry of precipitation
converting all which remains to stone.
Clint Wastling
For Jo
I think of the paths we walked, when you
still could
walk. Skirting that skittish horse
in a wet
Mendip field. November fog
in Venice,
when the Acqua Alta flooded
St Mark’s
square. Waiters in waders shifting
tables. Our
backstreet routes impassable.
In the glooming
dusk I teased you
with Don’t
Look Now. We laughed.
And I think of Iceland: the glacial
water electric
blue. And Almannagjá.
Walking that
dark path through the rift
between
continental plates as they drift
apart. In the
photograph I’m a pixie
in my woolly
hat. And you somehow distant,
translucent
round the edges, gazing
to the left.
Already heading for that
other
continent.
Bel Wallace
Contributors
Verity Baldry is a poet from London who
explores baby loss and the impact it has on family life and living children.
Verity recently completed an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths.
Her work has featured in Cerasus Magazine.
Clare Best has published a
memoir, The Missing List, two collections of poetry (Excisions,
2011, finalist for the Seamus Heaney Award 2012; Each Other, 2019),
plus several collaborative works. In 2021 she was a Fellow at Guildhall School
of Music & Drama. Her latest publication is End of Season / Fine di
stagione (Frogmore 2022).
Jane Blanchard lives
and writes in Georgia (USA). Her poetry has appeared previously in Allegro
and recently in The French Literary Review, The Lyric, and The
Seventh Quarry. Her fourth collection is In or Out of Season
(2020).
Clair
Chilvers’s published
collections are: Out of the Darkness (Frosted Fire, 2021);
and Island (Impspired Press, 2022). Her poems have been
published in journals including Acumen, Agenda, Allegro, Ink Sweat and Tears,
and Live Encounters. She was a cancer scientist and lives in
Gloucestershire, UK.
www.clairchilverspoetry.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/clair.chilvers twitter@cedc13
Trevor Conway writes mainly poems, stories and songs.
His first collection of poems, Evidence of Freewheeling, was
published by Salmon Poetry in 2015; his second, Breeding Monsters,
was self-published via Amazon in 2018. Website: trevorconway.weebly.com.
Michelle Diaz
has been widely published both in print and online; e.g Under the Radar,
Poetry Wales, Lighthouse and Live Canon. Her debut pamphlet The
Dancing Boy was published in 2019 by 'Against the Grain' Poetry press. She
is currently working on her first collection.
Clive Donovan is the author of two poetry collections, The
Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press] and Wound Up With Love [Lapwing]
and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen,
Agenda, Allegro, Crannog, Prole, Sentinel and Stand. He lives in Totnes,
Devon, UK. He is a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best
individual poems.
Oli Ellis is a poet based in
Brighton, UK. As an artist she represents many different
minority group experiences as a queer, disabled artist. She presents
a fresh take on healing through creative arts and focuses on creating a
community through shared experience and feeling in her writing.
Paul Fenn’s
poem’s have been longlisted twice in the UK National poetry competition and
this year in the The Plough poetry prize and he has most recently had poems
published in Allegro, Dreich Magazine, Ink, sweat and tears, The Frogmore
papers, One Hand clapping, Obsessed with pipework and Dodging the rain.
Robin Helweg-Larsen,
Anglo-Danish by birth but raised in the Bahamas, has been published in the
Alabama Literary Review, Allegro, Ambit, Amsterdam Quarterly and other
international journals. The Series Editor for Sampson Low's 'Potcake Chapbooks
- Form in Formless Times', he blogs at http://formalverse.com from
his hometown of Governor's Harbour.
Sacha Hutchinson won Poems for
Patience competition 2022 as part of Cuirt Art Festival
Galway. Her poetry has appeared in Ropes, Skylight 47, The Curlew, Live
Encounters, Drawn to the Light Press, How to Heal the Earth . She was a
featured reader in Over The Edge Open Reading 2021.
Jim Lloyd is a winner in the Rialto ‘Nature and Place’
poetry competition. His poems have appeared in, The Rialto, Stand,
bind, Green Ink Poetry, One Hand Clapping, Presence Haiku Journal,
and Wales Haiku Journal. He is studying for an arts practice-based
PhD, considering avian perception.
Louise Longson
started writing poetry during isolation in lockdown 2020. She is widely
published in print and online, and is the author of the chapbooks Hanging
Fire (Dreich Publications, 2021) and Songs from the Witch
Bottle: cytoplasmic variations (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). Twitter @LouisePoetical
Beliz
McKenzie is a poet and solicitor
living in Hertfordshire with her husband and two daughters. Her poetry has
previously been published in Dream Catcher magazine, short-listed in
competitions of Candlestick Press and The Emma Press, and published in
anthologies of Ver Poets, Barnet Competition and Poetry Space.
Ray Malone is an Irish writer and
artist living in Berlin, working on a series of projects exploring the lyric
potential of minimal forms based on various musical and/or literary
modes/models. His work has been published in numerous print & online
journals in the US, UK and Ireland.
Steve Noyes has published six poetry
collections. His long poem, ‘The Conveyor’, will appear
as a pamphlet from the Alfred Gustav Press in 2023. He is from Vancouver Island
and lives in Sheffield.
Christopher
Palmer is a poet and visual artist
based in Canberra, Australia. He’s been published worldwide, including in the Australian Poetry Journal, The Brasilia review, The Galway Review, London Grip and takahē, among
others. His first collection, Afterlives, was published by Ginninderra
Press in 2016.
Ava Patel won Prole Magazine’s 2021 pamphlet
competition with her debut pamphlet ‘Dusk in Bloom’. She’s been published
in webzines (London Grip; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Atrium; Porridge) and
magazines (South Bank Poetry; Orbis; SOUTH; Dream Catcher; New Welsh Reader,
The Seventh Quarry, DREICH).
Estill Pollock's publications include Constructing the
Human (Poetry Salzburg) and Relic Environments Trilogy
(Cinnamon Press, Wales). His latest poetry collections Entropy,
Time Signatures and the forthcoming Ark, are published
by Broadstone Books. He lives in Norfolk, England.
D.A.Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her third collection from HappenStance Press, The
Bigger Picture, was published in 2022.
Royal Rhodes
taught courses in global religions for almost 40 years. His poems have appeared
in various journals, online and in print, including: Last Stanza, Abandoned
Mine, Snakeskin, The Lyric, and The Montreal Review, among
others. His art and poetry collaborations were published by The
Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press.
Jane Spray’s poems, several
prize-winning, have appeared in Fourteen Magazine, Madrigal, Wildfire Words,
Blithe Spirit, and New Chan Forum as well as in many anthologies and other
publications. She belongs to three writing groups in the Forest of Dean, and
sometimes also writes in her wood in Gwent.
Laura Tate’s work has appeared most
recently in Halfway Down the Stairs, Anti-Heroin Chic, and has work forthcoming
in The Stray Branch. For many years, she was an elementary school remedial
reading teacher in rural central New York. Now she’s a retired grandmother
living in the northern Virginia/D.C. area with her writer husband and a small
orange cat.
Fiona Theokritoff
lives in Nottinghamshire. She completed her Creative Writing MA at Nottingham
Trent University in 2019. Her work has appeared in Mslexia, The Interpreter’s
House and Under the Radar. A long time ago, Fiona studied ecology: these
days she writes poems about scientific ideas, as well as shoes.
Mark Totterdell’s poems have appeared widely in
magazines and have occasionally won prizes. His collections are This
Patter of Traces (Oversteps Books, 2014), Mapping (Indigo
Dreams Publishing, 2018), and Mollusc (The High Window Press,
2021).
Phil Vernon returned to
the UK in 2004 after spending two decades in different parts of Africa. He
works in the international humanitarian and peacebuilding field. His version
of Stabat Mater with music by Nicola Burnett Smith has been
performed internationally. This Quieter Shore, a
micro-collection, was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2018, and a full
collection Poetry After Auschwitz was published by Sentinel in
2020. Another collection, Watching the Moon Landing, was published
by Hedgehog in 2022. He recently completed a new cycle of poems that explore
the link between peace, conflict and place: Guerrilla Country. www.philvernon.net Twitter: @philvernon2
Bel Wallace has recently completed an MA
in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Last year she was awarded Highly
Commended in the Writers’ Weekend Flash Fiction competition for ‘Mist’ and her
poem 'Prayer to the Octopus' was short-listed for the Bridport Poetry Prize in
2022. Two other poems,' Extinction Lament’ and ‘The Avenue’ will appear in Raceme
Issue 14 in March.
Clint Wastling has a new collection out with Stairwell Books,
called quiet Flows the Hull. He’s had poetry published in Dream Catcher, Orbis
Strix and Popshot Quarterly. You can catch Clint on Twitter @clint0000
Julia White has been interested in words for most of her life
but has concentrated on poetry in recent years. She gained an MA in
Creative Writing in 2019. Her poems have previously been included in East
Midlands Poetry, Captured Creativity, Nine Muses and Allegro.
Mantz Yorke – a scientist by training –
lives in Manchester, England. His poems have been published
internationally. His collections ‘Voyager’ and ‘Dark Matters’ are published by
Dempsey and Windle.
