Verse

Cantelice

'When we got in my cousin said / let’s climb that hill. We had just / got in from Rome and Cantelice / twisted away from the second story / window in cobble and brick.'

I Guess You Had to Be There

Must poets lead lives full of poetic experience? Jack Underwood is skeptical

Your life might need to take place in order for you to write your poems, but your poems should never be merely a record of your life taking place.

My big sister rings to say she is riding around / on the back of Richard’s motorbike and would I like to meet for a drink. / Richard is a married man. My sister is gay and I am always / dropping this in to conversation.

A Later Stage of Discipline

by Oli Hazzard

'Tonight, under the threshed light / of this concave city, I will underwrite / your hand-scribed manual of confidence-tricks'

Curriculum Vitae

Be Pedro Lez. Translated by Donal McLaughlin

'Almost no one knows / that Ulrich Gwerder, / who, dressed as a merry shepherd, / posed in 1970 for a jazzy poster / for Tourist Information / in the city of Lucerne / was – at heart – a leftie.'

A Traditional Christmas

by Heathcote Williams

For Christmas, the Queen / Requests new nipple tassels / Then, on Boxing Day, / She sets herself up / With a portable podium / On Brighton Pier

A Change of Climate

by Benjamin Markovits

'Snubbed by her cheerfulness like a loud door / how can I greet her without adjustments? / So when she’s gone I always stray / after her temperament, her air – / hoping to keep step with her in her absence.'