Poems
Form Laboratory
Here are some exceptional poems from Jacqueline Saphra’s Form Laboratory. When I proposed this set of collaborative workshops to The Poetry School, I had no idea of the creativity it would unleash. During the darkening evenings of Autumn 2022, Thursdays became a poetic laboratory where an adventurous, generous, and inspired group of poets invented new…
Jacqueline Saphra
More love poems? Really?
‘Love’ must be one of the most overused words in the English language. So much ‘love poetry’ has been written over the course of human experience, that it might be reasonable to ask – why bother adding to the literature of love poetry? Is there anything more to say? I think there’s lots more to…
Catherine Smith
Stanzas for Ukraine – 13
After the Amstor[1] by Alisa Havrylchenko, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj. There will be no war, the two nuclear powers will only pressure each other. That’s what everyone I knew thought right Until February 24. I was preparing for the presentation of my new book, even though the news that airlines were stopping…
Alisa Havrylchenko Stanzas for Ukraine – 7
The Poet’s Nose by Serhii Rybnytskyi, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj With what part of the body can I reflect on matters as a poet? My nose, which for me it is practically an ‘Achilles Heel’. Any blow can knock me down, the slightest cold or drop in blood pressure clogs my nostrils….
Serhii Rybnytskyi Stanzas for Ukraine – 6
The Kalyna[1] Poetry Flute (Especially for Kalyna Language Press Limited[2]) by Myroslav Herasymovych, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj I looked at the news and thought. What did I think? – It’s unknown. Ah! I’ve remembered. – What? – What I thought about. – What did you think about? Without answering I turned my…
Myroslav Herasymovych Stanzas for Ukraine – 5
On The Impossibility of Not Writing by Vitalij Kvitka, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj Poetry is an infinity. War tries to deny this infinity. There are, in this sense, no greater enemies than poetry and war. The poet, after all, is trying to embody the idea of human eternity, as if the infinity…
Vitalij Kvitka Stanzas for Ukraine – 4
Stanzas for Ukraine – The Invasion of the Ukrainian Language [ Author: Lyuba Yakimchuk, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj] The war calls into question everything on which our survival depends and provokes a crisis in our vision of humanity. During Russia’s large scale war against Ukraine only the apathetic wouldn’t quote Theodor AThe…
Lyuba Yakimchuk Stanzas for Ukraine – 3
Our third blog in the Stanzas for Ukraine project is by the Ukrainian writer Oleh Shynkarenko, who is known for his experimental fiction. However, Russia’s invasion of his homeland spurred him to write poetry. His blog talks of the threat to individual identity under occupation and these previously unpublished poems deal with the war in…
Oleh Shynkarenko Stanzas for Ukraine – 2
Our second blog in the Stanzas for Ukraine project is written by the Crimean-Ukrainian poet Vyacheslav Huk, who now lives in Kyiv. He spent most of his childhood hidden from the Soviet authorities on his grandmother’s farm after reading a protest poem in class. In this week’s piece, he explains why this makes Putin’s attempt…
Vyacheslav Huk Stanzas for Ukraine (First Post)
Poetry School is proud to have partnered with tutors Steve Komarnyckyj and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, and PEN International’s Judyth Hill to publish Stanzas for Ukraine. Every fortnight we will publish a blog written by some of the most significant contemporary Ukrainian poets, who will reflect upon the more than 300 years of historical conflict their country has…
Steve Komarnyckyj
Writing After David Lynch – Students’ Poem
The Writing After David Lynch ten-week course took us all on a thrilling and mysterious journey across David Lynch’s films. As part of the penultimate session, on Mulholland Drive, I invited the students to respond to Naomi Watts’ staggering audition scene with a single four-line stanza, that I would then order and curate into a group poem. I took inspiration…
Chrissy Williams
An Anthology of Poetry Beyond Semantics: Broken and Unbroken Code
What came first, the word or the poem? And which is which? Coming together from locations all over the world, from Europe, North America, and Asia, over a dozen poets plunged head-first after answers into the murky waters of experimental semiotics. Drawing on sources from runes to javascript, samurai calligraphers to occult mediums, the work…
vilde b. torset
Adrian Street, The Early Years
I was fighting for my life even before I was born, nearly strangled at birth by my umbilical cord. By four I was re-enacting Little Bighorn, hunting Custer through the hills of Gwent, while Dad was hunted through Singapore by the Japanese. I gathered pieces of downed German bombers to build my own plane and…
Ben Rhys Palmer
‘Trace’
after a map of the Arabian Peninsula from Al Idrisi’s Kitab Rujar, 1154 I hardly recognise you, naked & nameless, a green path, vital as a vein snaking its way up to ard al iemama. In early spring, desert thistles align themselves with the stars, a trail of crumbs for a camel caravan….
Rasha Al Duwaisan
‘Sakura, Sakura’
Aboard a plane before sunrise you find yourself flying over a field of fluff, a hilly country of cumulus clouds, when the alpenglow of March flows in, flooding the cabin, and you’re seven again. It’s only a week since grandmother died. There’s mud beneath your nails. Your fingertips iridesce with the scales of the goldfish…
Mason Jabbari
‘Phone Call Home from my Daughter in Chiscani, Christmas Eve 2018’
Why I want to write about the pig’s head hanging from a branch in the yard, the cat that was beaten for killing a bird, the man who one night lay down on the track, or the dog you found frozen to death in the snow, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because of our paths:…
Maggie Sawkins
‘river’
The river is a dark bone, a long narrow forearmwith direction which makes an ease of sorts. The river is a soil-dark bone full of the small, the odd,all the names it wasbefore it was river, all the names. Plucky light flips the surface,larvae hold firm, jellied and hard.Mouths open in the reed beds,longest, oldest…
Sarah Westcott
‘Your sister is a thousand eyes’ by Billie Manning
Your sister is a thousand eyes and she has been looking for you. In the park by the rusting swings, in the burnt grass, she is looking. She sees a thousand things. Chernobyl. Teeth and hair. A dead father. Ugliness. You’ve seen them. The burning buildings, the falling bridges. Children crying in the back of…
Billie Manning
‘The Number You Have Dialled Does Not Exist’ by Fathima Zahra
(After Hyon Gyon’s ‘We Were Ugly’) Your granddaughter – Wild fields of skeletons your Gardening books didn’t teach you about. She writes letters to your dead husband, Loves a boy in secret, But you don’t know that. You know her from a time of closeted Tongues and unaware Grandmothers loved better. There’s only so much…
Zahra
’25 minutes on the elliptical’
My body slowed in voluntary, wilful suspended animation / like thought / I am waiting / on the cross-trainer Window fly in front / you are dead / which is a kind of waiting Arms and legs snapping towards each other / like rows of teeth in a great big mouth Do…
Jasmine Chatfield
‘Watching the Nestbox’ by Anna Selby — Primers Shortlist 2018
Watching the Nestbox May 22nd to July 19th 2018 To hold a dying bird in your hands is like holding an argument: hot little thudding hot scuffle of feathers all angles and escape a body flooded, bolting. Its feathers peek between your fingers: reptilian tongues. A breath-a breath-abreath. Put it in your mouth like a…
Anna Selby ‘an ill wind’ by Charlotte Baldwin – Primers Shortlist 2018
Charlotte Baldwin works as an arts centre programmer, teaches creative writing and walks dogs.
Charlotte Baldwin ‘You’ by Amelia Loulli – Primers Shortlist 2018
You You came in the night put your hands around her cheeks and yanked her from my nipple or if You didn’t You stole all the food fed Yourself on the bread I baked that afternoon grew bigger or if not You hid in the corners stealing glances of moments You called mistakes warned would…
Amelia Loulli ‘To be fifteen’ by Victoria Richards – Primers Shortlist 2018
To be fifteen and after the third can of Super Strongbow cider, to throw up all over the embossed wallpaper belonging to that girl in the year above, the one with the bra straps and dirty jokes. She breathes in smoke without coughing, says, “alright?” to the most beautiful boy at school, the most beautiful…
Victoria Richards ‘After Adlestrop (for Helen Thomas)’ by Valerie Bence – Primers Shortlist 2018
After Adlestrop (for Helen Thomas) As usual, it is not widely known that you were there beside him in that carriage, at that station, suffused in sunlight and birdsong when someone cleared their throat as no-one left and no-one came. As usual, you are invisible — the hidden framework, an underpinning without which he would crumble,…
Valerie Bence