Issue 33 September 2024

 

Flight


Editor's Comments

Welcome to Issue 33 of Allegro Poetry Magazine which marks a significant milestone. Allegro is now ten years old. During that time, I've had the privilege of publishing the work of hundreds of poets, some well-published but others published for the first time. As always, it's been a joy reading all the submissions but hard to make a final choice from my shortlist. I hope you enjoy reading the selected poems.


Poems


Under the Radar

 

It came suddenly across the moors 

in a great quell of the wind

red kite- sharp winged, huge and unexpected 

rising into the air and turning 

westward as we watched-

visitor from miles beyond, working

its shape into a new world, 

so its russets became as familiar

as the dried curls and bronze of bracken

as the wide sunset glow, 

and the brown trout in the swirling stream.

 

Martin Rieser

 



Wing Geometry
(Hawker Hurricane Restoration Detail, Scheme B Camouflage)

Across the pane, an X of tape,
the cross repeated on each window
here in Operations—
we call it luck the bombers overshot. 

Beyond the field, the thump 250s make
confirms ‘…not us’. 

From the bell we meet the sun in minutes,
climbing through stink and brightness.
We kill, are met and killed, in cold
over picture-puzzle landscapes. 

When wreckage
the colour of Kent marshes is recovered, you will find
I am twenty this autumn. 

Earth and sky are muted, riveted contours
painted hawthorn and damp clay, sheared
where the Messerschmitt rolled
just faster.

Estill Pollock




Anecdote for Poets 
‘A chiffchaff was singing at Wembdon’
for Annie Fisher 

It was a hundred years since Edward Thomas
passed through this village on his bike
in pursuit of spring, the tyre marks
of his prose career behind him in the mould,
ahead the sea, and poetry, and war. 

She thought she would go and find the place
he had heard a chiffchaff as he sped
away from that first Easter Monday
of the five still lying in wait
hatching their plan. Yet she was uncertain 

what she was hearing, as she heard
that in her absence a bird had entered
the house and flown to perch on her computer,
(though preferring woodland, a low nest)
and sung its own name to itself.

John Greening





Dragonfly 

So like a mythical creature it’s named after one.
Since the seeing of time
looking with its thousand eyes.
Dodging easily, flying
like a creature that just invented flight.
Good for the heart to see it
flit above the path and then double back for a second look
as curious perhaps in me as I am in it. Or seeing something
that I, distracted, have missed completely.
Warrior who has defeated time.
Holder on to water messages
and tales of wind changes.
Rider of the slight breezes.
Carrier of jewels that blend into a wisp of flower spit. 

Hannah Linden




 

Wind and Light


A Red Tail Hawk leaps

up from a telephone pole

     and climbs the wafting

     currents of morning wind and

     light, through a hole in the sky.

Jason Ryberg 





Flying to Majorca in March

Drop me down out of the cold wet gloom
Into the orange trees in bloom:
The olives, almonds, windmills, cypresses,
The black-eyed girls with wild tresses;
Where once were barren hillsides, peasants, mules,
Are now estates with swimming pools.

 

Robin Helweg-Larsen







 

Winter Buzzards in Knox County

 

They sit far apart

on the bare branches --

a troop of turkey vultures

a rare sub-group

high up, unmoving

like black candles.

 

The old canal town

not far from here

has its own legion

of midnight black

ravens, like ink

letters smudging

the winter sky

in an inverted script.

 

But here, with us,

as if resting

from the turned fields

of some great slaughter,

these tearing predators

linger, as signs

life has no return.

 

Like underworld judges,

drawn into the air --

the constant wash

of winter rain --

they do not support

one another or us.

They only await

our arrival beneath

to catch our breath

at this terrible

beating of wings.


Royal Rhodes






 

Point of flight

 

waking I hear the Christchurch-bound

plane above the house

 

a slim cylinder of

fifty seated souls ascending

 

elbow to elbow they await

the altitude of relaxation

 

soon the mountain on their left

will give way to less definite territory

 

hills and forests and rivers reduced

to abstract depiction

 

but these astonishments are no

longer the events they once were

 

tapping into an unimportant

hunger to be absent

 

below and behind them the sound

and the final darkness of morning recede

 

and with them the witless

bother of dreams

 

Tony Beyer 

 






Kites 

All we needed was newspaper, 
some strips of wood,
scissors, glue, rags, string,
a stick to wind it round,
and a Saturday afternoon.
Sometimes if we had a dime,
we bought a kite kit instead,
made a sleek one
of bright new tissue. 

I can still feel that gentle shock, 
that tug on my arms
as the kite lifted aloft,
and how I learned
not to depend on steady winds,
was always surprised
that each flight, each crash,
was different, was a new love
from beginning to end. 

M.S. Rooney




 

Echoes of Flight


Watching Ramayan on television, I saw Hanuman,

Flying to Gandhamadana to save Lakshman’s life.

The light went off; summertime, I stepped outside,

Breathing fresh air.

 

A sound blasted, tearing the sky apart, a black shadow,

A huge figure like Hanuman, approaching with force.

As it drew closer, I saw the cargo plane,

Rising from the air base.

 

Times have changed, every page we turn,

History’s sages knew how to fly, across cultures,

Not just in the East, their stories now seem a wonder,

Yet we cannot judge their culture by our present scale.

 

I often doubt, could people really fly?

Indian texts speak of it,

How did these charismatic souls achieve what we cannot?

Their mysteries elude us, bound by our own present limitations.

 

The light returned, I went back inside,

Resuming the episode where I had left off,

Hanuman’s flight,

A reminder of stories that transcend time and belief.

 

Utsav Kaushik

 



The Airman

 

A canyon-wide smile I wish to nosedive into,

plunge to my debris dashed death on jagged rocks,

happy to be part of something more than myself.

The red of my blood would hide her lipstick stains

and the multiple wounds would shroud the bite marks on my neck.

I would be one with her until they recovered my remains,

hoisting my wreck past the grazing parting of her lips and to the sky.

 

I might awake, then, in the fires of hell,

having flown into the mouth of the canyon to sample forbidden fruit

growing out of the rock and dust in the shadowed depths.

I might find my eternal tormented existence

is to stare at her canyon-wide smile from a distance.

 

Joseph Blythe






 

A Clattering 

It’s after I hear of his death
that I see dozens of jackdaws
perched in the boughs of the beech trees
on the riverbank near our house. 

They take flight above the terrace
and I wonder what it is called:
a collective of jackdaws 
as they darken the sky above. 

The jackdaws circle, caw and flap
over the terrace’s rooftops -
to leave the beech trees bare-branched. 
Unweighted and now silent. 

I am left alone on the road
as their coarse cries disappear
and I wonder whether it is 
a sign, symbolic in some way. 

Then I recall what the word is
for all these jackdaws together
yes, it is called a clattering
like the sound they make when they call 

like the rattle from his old bike 
that I heard when I last saw him
from the loose chain against the guard
a different kind of clattering.
 

Ian Chapman

 

 

 

 

Downed 

 

Juvenile jackdaw flapping, flailing a loose

back-lagging wing. From the oak a pair

coax, pleading calls their only recourse. 

Futile. Failing.

 

Bedraggled, he lingers.

Helpless. Conspicuous. Fading.

 

Don’t touch. Leave him. Exposed.

Hawks hunt here. Walk on. Glance back.

See the pair ascend, their fledgeling

drifting, striving.

 

Reluctant. Rifting.

Circling in pass after pass, the pair cast

winged shadows, spanning him over

and over in farewell caresses. A solace.

 

Turn away. Keep walking, willing the 

heart-ripping strike to happen. And soon.

 

Kim Crowder






 

Yaaponsta 

 

“Archaeologists have yet to uncover any evidence of prehistoric uses for the blowhole.”

 

Among the crumbling remnants 

Of ancient Pueblo dwellings 

In the middle of the desert

Is a hole in the earth — an entrance 

To a subterranean fissure 

That draws in or expels 

Great drafts of air, depending 

On the barometric pressure. 

When my five-year-old inserted 

His smiling face, the second 

Condition was in effect.

His wavy hair was swept 

Straight up from his little head,

And suddenly instead 

Of kneeling in the sand, 

My son was falling through the sky

And laughing in the wind. 

 

Patrick Kennedy






On a Summer Day, Stonehaven


The sea is a child asleep this morning,

tantrums over in summer sun that lulls,

face crease-free, smoothly reflecting

the blue-sky cloudless herring gulls

high above the harbour walls, spiralling easily

with rigid wings that hang in updrafts.

No cynical sneers today on joyous beaks, all free  

to ride the warm breeze that joyfully wafts

them higher still above the small child way below

running happily in rare release from mother’s hold

flying free across hot sand, face and feet aglow

expectantly into sea that instantly smacks with icy cold.

Mother with towel, rubs warm the bluing skin

of a child triumphant with chatter-toothed grin.

 

Andrew Urquhart

 




Hummingbird

Furious              flurry
fiery                   wings
as bird                dips beak
enters flower's   dark core
drinks at            that well
fountain             where
the world           replenishes itself

my love             drinks there

holds its place   drinks long

 

Ed Ruzicka




 

Lesson 7 – The Flight
From Eight Lessons and Carols 

So this is life at the edge. I never knew.
I never shivered in the shadows
I never listened to the rumours.
I paid my way, nodded to the right people.
I could see the edge, knew of it by repute
but it was far away and others choose
to stand much closer, and have more to lose. 

And so I paid my way, kept my eyes down,
and didn’t see the edge
creep creeping to my feet
‘til there it was, and I was just a shuffle from a fall.
There were whispers brushing past me on the updraft
and each one said to me
The edge is not a good place to be. 

Neighbours muttered to me in the street:
The going’s good for going.
Take it while you can.
We’re going. Don’t be here when the army comes around.
But when the edge keeps coming, where is safety found?
Far away, they say. Far away and further.
To lag behind would be consent to murder. 

I might have stood my ground, even then.
Perhaps it’s nothing;
Other people’s panic.
But I’m no longer me. I’m part of us. Part of more,
and if I stay there’s not just me to fall.
And so we go, outrun the edge, and wait,
‘til whispers come of the edge’s retreat. 

Edward Alport 



 

I am waiting for my lover to leave me 


Outside is a floodlight winter, even at night
city living keeps burning with a foregone brightness – 

                                                                        I tell her: call me goddess, in the morning,                                                                                                  pull my hair in orisons, leave me sprawled on 

your bed

repeating your name
into all the spaces god has left behind us. 

                                                                        The dawn is bending around us.
                                                                        The mornings are a dry river dreaming of 

thunder; 

the same way the Romans once built
household altars to protect against the growing dark, 

                                                                        most things pray for the shock of death,
                                                                        never the accumulation of debris.  

 

Outside, we watch an angel stagger along the road, 
eyrie skin sown back to earth. 

                                                                        Hope is slow this time of year: I go to work,

                                                                        I go home and I am not surprised.

We spent our last day in bed together,
waiting for the light to die.

Freya Jackson

 


Icarus flies 7,853 kilometers to be at his father’s bedside 

Suppose I fail to arrive at your English hospital in time
and we cross over the domes of Byzantium,
unrecognizable from the icons we carry of each other.
Father. Son. Unholy Ghost.

The clot the surgeons now scrape will be the same red
you blade every day onto your palette, a swanky
Reubens gash reserved for posh fabrics and nipples. 

First, they will slice through decades of raw umber
underpainted in the Frontal Lobe, lit by a candle
in the Hippocampus, past a peeled lemon Cerebellum
beside an egg-shell Thalamus, where the ideas hatch. 

Back then, every Art School taught Anatomy, 
you will tell the nurses as you descend from Anesthesia. 

Half-awake in Economy, 
I see you on a pack-horse bridge with your sketchbook
weaving Dreams of Gerontius around willow stumps,
finding Delius in the corn and an Ophelia in the weir. 

You, winding love into the thickets and holloways.
Onwards you march with the Artist’s Rifles, as to war,
leaving us in the corner of another clotted canvas,
expecting us to hold our poses for when you get back. 
 

Mark Fiddes






 

Clouds 

All the Latin names we’ve given them––
what are they up to? Very like a whale
may be their airy version of charades, 
fooling each other, the little they know of earth.
Those toppling towers of competition–– 
are they no more than aerial conversation, 
half-drunk on the mead they drain 
from what we only taste as rain? 

Down here, rooted to solid ground,
we know so much less than the half of it––
how far their stories travel, how they measure
distance to their unmapped horizons. 

D.A. Prince

 




Kite           

One summer thirty years ago   
in a small, pretty place, near Whitby,
we went kite dragging, not flying.
Nobody else was out
the gale battered at windows,
clothes lines flapped with white.
We ran, we kissed, hard, and I remember
the tautness of kite string round my wrist,
how it tugged at my heart.

Catherine Edmunds

 



Morning at Carterton

Oh, there’s that bird again,
the one we can never see. 

Its irregular, sparse call a liquid
bubbling, but at intervals 

too long for recording  - 

The app disclaims its ability
to recognise every bird song. 

It’s driving me a little crazy,
the not knowing. 

To the nature reserve then,
which here means just birds 

where the docent says
the sleek black and green one, 

iridescent, with a thin curved bill,
and ruffed at the neck 

with a collar of lace, is a Tui,
and yes, they’re all over the islands.

Kate Noakes




L’appel du Vide

Call of the void is a siren song, a sudden 

urge to jump down the world, the denial

of being mortal like others, that you, too, 

can fly, who needs wings? Those vultures

floating over the ruins mean nothing, not

everyone's the same, but in the end, don't 

we all die? In my arid backyard children

love to play in between two strikes, a doll

falls into the well, screams of sirens, cries

of vultures, their soft heads swarm a hole

like rotting petals—none of us is different. 

 

Özge Lena

 



What Women Are Made For

 

Twelve geese soared overhead, and I 

ached as they adjusted their skein 

 

in flawless cadence, their wings a

rhythmic beat, lauding the leader 

 

as he drew back, another now

swimming the sky to take his place.  

 

He who had borne the wind’s fury 

need not justify or insist; 

 

they recognized male’s need for rest.  

I wonder if we, too, deserve 

 

a break, a pause from absorbing 

the brunt of the wind, or if we 

 

are meant to strain on, unnoticed,

until we fall out of the sky. 

Kate Champagne




The Bird Photographer

             after photographs by Nicolas Wilmouth 

This time he’ll make things easy for himself
and dispense with the living altogether, set his sights
and speeds on re-styling flown species, his objective
to capture the soul of dusty, cooped-up creatures. 

Along the rows of glass cases he paces and peers
in forgotten rooms of a provincial museum,
looks hard for what lies beyond years of preening:
that almost-glint of glass eye, steer of tatty tail feather. 

Wings pinned, they hold their pose as he metres out distance.
Moving in, shooting close, he blinds the flock with flashes,
his colour temperature bouncing off walls and ceiling,
his backdrop of black cloth flooded in an exacted 

measure of white balance. How rich detail springs
from morning gloom: a chipped beak, bare lore, blunt talon.
You’d be forgiven for thinking them still breathing,
old birds leased new life in his makeshift, private salon. 

Paul Stephenson




Song

After Edward Thomas

 

Sing as it might, he never knew its name,

there in the beech, day after long day long,

but threw the stone that killed it on the night

his sister died. Next morning, the sad song

was back, sung by another, just the same. 

 

Seán Street

 





lines   of   a   gas   tower

 

                   shapeshifting   /   starlings

               a-dance / after  garden  joy    

           of    fat-seed    cake    /   &

        mealworms   /   wiggling     

      in  /  over-stuffed beaks

   /    rest    on   the   starting  

 lines   of    a   gas   tower    /

then   soaring   with   our   good   

fortune   flames   /   through    our    

veins   /   their   choice    to    perform   

  so   openly    /    just    a    coincidence   

       /   feeding    a    camera’s    content 

           capturing   our   precarious    joy   /

                 ///   instead    i    project   old    

                        stories    /   about     fat     

                            balls     /   &   dried

                              mealworms   /

                                 confined     

                                   to   my  

                                     four     

                                       walls                                                         

 Simon Maddrell




 

The winged dove

 

A see him, caught, a raging fly in a wab.

Aw tangled in parachute silk, he flaps,

a strange heron, in uniform. Hard tae miss

even oot on this misty moor at midnicht.

 

Aye A’ve been in the pub, but jist a few beers.

A heard a hellava clatter, mibee his crash?

He’s ranting aboot Churchill. Expects tae meet

him. Say’s he’s flown oer tae stop the fighting.

 

Says it’s important. Says there shouldnae be war

on twa fronts. Claims he’s important. Turns oot

he is. He’s Hesse, the Deputy Fuhrer o Germany.

Me? A thoucht he wis mair like thon daft Icarus.

 

Finola Scott






 

Aberteifi Tide Times 

Each day you sit in the same chair
turned towards the Afon Teifi’s flow 

and watch the laving tidal changes lick
the cracked ribs of washed-up boats. 

Herring gulls scream choking calls
circle the cockling river for prey, 

one beats on our window at its vulturine reflection.
I know this unsettles you. 

I bring you a bowl of water, berw and foaming
and hold the mirror to your face. 

You shave away another day of seagrassed
stubble to leave flecks of blood. 

The oxygen concentrator sighs in, sighs out;
you return the mask to your mouth 

between each stiff razor stroke,
craving its breath. 

Later I drive you out to look at our cynefin
the sand-blow ballows, sea spume and strish. 

Wordlessly we watch the final weak murmurs,
the pull and empty of the tide 

before the water stills
and the sea forgets its waves. 

A single gull extends its wings
and cries

Elizabeth Wilson Davies



Contributors

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. He sometimes posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.

Tony Beyer is a writer based in Taranaki, New Zealand. His work has appeared in national and international journals and anthologies for several decades, and he is the author of a number of poetry collections. 

Joseph Blythe has been published by Stand, Grist Books, Swim Press, Livina Press and Ink & Marrow. He is working on a pre-apocalyptic eco-novel, a short story collection and a poetry collection. He holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. He tweets and Instagrams @wooperark
 

Kate Champagne lives in Minneapolis, MN. A lifelong lover of languages, she holds a Master’s in Spanish from Middlebury Language Schools. She is a Spanish teacher by day and a writer in the in-between, moved to give voice to the everyday experience and the complexities of the interior life. 

Ian Chapman is a writer who lives in the English Lake District. He has an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and when he’s not drumming with a local samba band or hill walking, he reads his poetry at the local arts centre. 

Kim Crowder’s writing has been published by numerous poetry magazines and on blogs and projects focused on human-animal relations, climate change and medical humanities. Based in rural Scotland, she is a current member of the Clydebuilt 16 poetry scheme. She holds a PhD in Visual Anthropology. See www.livesinnature.co.uk  

Catherine Edmunds is a writer, artist, and professional musician from the north of England, whose poetry has appeared in many journals, including Aesthetica, Crannóg, Poetry Scotland and Ambit. She was the 2020 winner of the Robert Graves Poetry Prize. 

Mark Fiddes lives and writes in the Middle East. His latest collection is 'Other Saints Are Available' (Live Canon). Recent work has appeared in Shearsman, Southword, The Irish Times, Oxford Poetry, Stand and The North. 

John Greening is a UK poet, a Bridport, Arvon and Cholmondeley winner with over twenty collections. He's edited Grigson, Blunden, Crichton Smith and Fanthorpe, plus several anthologies. His essays, Vapour Trails, appeared in 2020 and his Goethe in 2022. The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022 (Baylor, ed. Gardner) came out in 2023.

Robin Helweg-Larsen, Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, was educated in Jamaica and at Stowe. He has been published previously in Allegro and in other international journals. After decades in British Columbia and North Carolina, he has returned to blog at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor's Harbour. 

Freya Jackson is a poet from Leeds. She likes Pina Colads and getting caught in the rain and, conversely, is into yoga. The jury is still out on how much of a brain she has.  

Utsav Kaushik, hailing from the enigmatic realms of North India, possesses a voice deeply entrenched in the nuanced shades of grey that define the region’s cultural tapestry. His poetic expressions, resonant with the echoes of his homeland, have found a home in esteemed literary publications worldwide. With works featured in prestigious platforms such as LondonGrip, The Paragon Journal, Ashvamegh…the Literary Flight, InkSweatTears, Indian Ruminations, Linden Avenue Literary, Hawaii Review, and numerous others.

Patrick Kennedy is an assistant librarian, an antiquarian bookseller, and the author West of House, a book of poems. His work has appeared in The Rotary Dial, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, The Literary Hatchet, and elsewhere. 

Özge Lena's poems have appeared in the UK, USA, Canada, Iceland, Bangladesh, Serbia, and France. Her poetry was shortlisted by prestigious competitions such as the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021, The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023, and for the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize in 2024. 

Hannah Linden, from Devon, UK, won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition in 2021, and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. She is published widely and her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. Twitter: @hannahl1n

Simon Maddrell has appeared in AMBIT, Magma, The MothThe Rialto, Poetry Wales, StandUnder the Radar and many othersHe has had five pamphlets published since 2020.

Kate Noakes' most recent pamphlet is Chalking the Pavement, Broken Sleep Books, 2024. Her eighth full collection is Goldhawk Road, Two Rivers Press, 2023. Recently moved home to Bristol, Kate has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Reading. Further details can be found at www.boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com

Estill Pollock's publications include Constructing the Human (Poetry Salzburg) and the book cycle Relic Environments Trilogy (Cinnamon Press, Wales). His recent poetry collections, Entropy, Time SignaturesArk and the forthcoming Heathen Anthems are published in the United States by Broadstone Books. An e-chapbook, And Then, is published by Mudlark.

D.A. Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her second full-length collection (Common Ground, HappenStance, 2014) won the East Midlands Book Award 2015. Her third collection, The Bigger Picture (also from HappenStance) was published in 2022.
 

Martin Rieser Published: Poetry Review; Magma 74; Morphrog 22; Poetry Kit; Primers Volume 3; Artlyst Anthology 2020; Alchemy Spoon 2022; Ink Sweat and Tears 2019/2023, Runner up Norman Nicholson 2020; Shortlisted: Frosted Fire 2019 /2022; Charles Causeley Prize 2020; Wolves Poetry Competition 2022, Geoffrey Stevens Poetry Competition 2023, Longlisted: Erbecce Prize 2023; Winner of the Hastings Poetry Competition 2021.

Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including:  Allegro, Last Stanza, Ekstasis Poetry, Ekphrastic Challenge, The Montreal Review, and elsewhere. His poetry and art collaborations have been published by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina. 

M.S. Rooney lives in Sonoma, California with poet Dan Noreen. Her work appears in journals, including The Blue Mountain Review, Hole in the Head Review, Leaping Clear and Pensive Journal and anthologies, most recently Alchemy and Miracles (Cassandra Arnold, Editor). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

Ed Ruzicka’s third, full-length book of poems, "Squalls" (Kelsay Books), was released in March. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary and many other literary publications. Ed, who is also the president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana, lives with his wife, Renee, in Baton Rouge.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays and a few short stories. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s  and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). 

Finola Scott confesses writing is compelling. poems appear widely -Lighthouse, Gutter, PB. She knows poetry won’t change the world, but continues to write. Winner of the MacDiarmid Tassie, Runner-up in McLellan (Scots) competition, she writes in Scots and English. www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/finola-scott/                         Three publications. Info & poems at FB Finola Scott Poems.

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023 and was a Finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards 2024 for Gay Poetry. He co-edited the ‘Europe’ issue of Magma and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh. He lives between Brussels and Cambridge. Website: paulstep.com / Instagram: paulstep456 / X: @stephenson_pj 

Seán Street’s most recent collection is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press, March 2024). Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, and several studies of sound poetics, the latest being Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong, published in July 2023 by Bloomsbury Academic. He is emeritus professor at Bournemouth University and now lives in Liverpool. 

Andrew Urquhart has worked as a teacher for many years. He writes poetry in both English and Scots, and his work has most recently appeared in the award nominated pamphlet, Mair Northern Nummers, and in magazines such as, Lallans, Poetry Scotland, Clarion, Wee Sparrow Poetry, Defenestration and Dreich.

Elizabeth Wilson Davies (@LizWilsonDavies) is a poet from Pembrokeshire in west Wales. She has an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Post-colonial Literatures and has received a New Writer’s Bursary and mentoring support through the Literature Wales scheme.