Category Archives: Uncategorized

You are moving out of a flat you never lived inattempting to figure out what is yours, what belongsto the absent landlord, the shadow that is burnedinto the fraying wicker carpet. You fill cardboardboxes with soap and shells. The sofa disintegratesat your touch and is swept away by ant colonies.Corridors lead to hidden courtyards drapedinContinue reading “David Ralph Lewis: Relocation”

In the Drakensberg mountains–ancient Zulu battlegrounds,we return to hike our childhood trails. Sweating in the African sun,we clamber boulderslaughing at circling vultures, careful to avoid the blood-redblooms of sharp spiral aloesdotting our path. We pass the cliffsidewhere you once insistedon waiting with mein a storm, terrifiedwhile Mom and Dadclimbed to the summit. Pausing at aContinue reading “Lisa Alletson: Hike with my Sister”

A Review of Robin Boothroyd’s ATOMISED Briony Hughes is a AHRC funded doctoral researcher and visiting tutor based at Royal Holloway. She is interested in kinetic movement in language, water bodies, the archive, and site-specific writing. Briony’s publications include Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books) and Microsporidial (Sampson Low). She is a founding member of the CrestedContinue reading “‘froth/forth/from/form’: Briony Hughes”

I  What is the salient difference between reflected and  bounced? Asa replication of sound there is an implicit and  derogatory suggestion this is not original. In processing  and acoustics there is resonance that signals its return as  prodigal or waylaid or quite simply the aural residue of  forgetfulness. Reverberation. Sonar and waves are heard  inContinue reading “Mike Ferguson: Echo”

A Review of Holly Pester’s Comic Timing Michael Black is finishing a PhD at the University of Glasgow, on Virginia Woolf and William Blake. His work in progress writing is most easily accessible online via the poetry journal and forum, Adjacent Pineapple. He was included in an anthology edited by Colin Herd, made for the centenaryContinue reading “The urgency of Comic Timing: Michael Black”

Nora Blascsok Nora Blascsok is a Hungarian poet based in Brighton. Her poems have appeared online and in print, including on Harana Poetry, Babel Tower Notice Board, Streetcake Magazine and in a Broken Sleep Books anthology of immigrant poets.

Teach rotting five-bar gates to walk; to pulltheir broken plank-bones from long grass-strands. Thump the compactedground of paths with blistered balls of bare feet. Cut wrinkled fertiliser bags, foundin crisp ditch-bottoms, into strips to dressthe desiccated carcass of a badger asan angel of the dry daze. Claw flints with bleeding fingernails to proveblood’s runnier thanContinue reading “Mark Goodwin: Mad Vandal’s Dry April Ramble”

III Wrapped in home-spun wool dyed king bolete yellow, I lift the curtain and enter the damp quiet of the under-canopy, seeking the medicine of bark and root. I trail fingertips over rips in the hemlock’s tree-skin at head-height. Warily, I move on to the gnarled majesty of a mature yew. Startled by the air-snapContinue reading “Emma Filtness: Extract from Spirit Bear”

The cat lives for perhaps fifteen years but don’t tell himthat / nothing is worse than a sell by date / we skiptowards the revolting tide / I wipe my mouth on yourlifestyle / do not wake in the middle of the climax / timeis alone and time is what / the sign at theContinue reading “Nikki Dudley: Mortality”

don’t go back never go back be miserable craftyvicious use honey thick words tempt the bitter& unloved with language to distract them fromthis corpse be dead inside accept the mark offlagellation grovel be penitent grateful you can die on a footpathfalling on the iceafter a freezing rainyou can die in your carout in some abandonedContinue reading “Amanda Earl: An excerpt from ‘Beast Body Epic’”