slow perch
                  rise and taste
      meniscus
                  where
pollen phlegms
                  on diesel
         slicks

‘Mexborough, Water-Fronted Properties Released’, Matthew Clegg, The Navigators (Longbarrow Press, 2015)

Back in 2013, Ruth and I had moved to Mexborough in South Yorkshire. We were both working part-time – meaning, we wanted to earn enough money to pay our way, but we also wanted enough free time to maintain our creative projects. Someone had told us that rents in Mexborough were the lowest in the country. It took us completely by surprise when we discovered that Mexborough also had a budding poetry festival, organised under the umbrella of the Ted Hughes Project. I was enough of a Hughesian to know that the…

Indonesian veterans commemorate victims of massacres by the Dutch army in the 1940s in 2013. The Indonesian experience of colonial violence is often overlooked in the Netherlands. © Adek Berry / AFP

The Dutch continue to widely underestimate their colonial violence of the past. The publication of the hard-hitting conclusions of the Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia 1945-1950-program revealed the Dutch state actively condoning systematic and structural violence during Indonesia’s War for Independence. Discourse management, short-term perspectives and diminished Indonesian perspectives explain how Dutch perpetratorship is still under negotiation in the Netherlands.

Everything changes: the Good Queen
becomes the Wicked Witch. The grey wolf
gobbles up the moon, the moon
destroys the wolf. Take one step sideways
and the monster is a frightened child.
We, who are dazzled by the sun,
are scared of shadows. We forgive
ourselves, condemn ourselves,
spiralling round the truth, walking
the labyrinth, flickering between
light and dark. Nothing is distinct –
stars sparkle in the night, and clouds
cast shadows on the corn field.

For dVerse

I went out one day to look for Good,
found a red vixen, killing
to feed her cub, a magpie
mourning a dead fledgeling; the sky
heavy with rainclouds, spilling
life on the parched ground where I stood.

A sestain again – I’m trying to make this form and rhyme scheme an instinctive way of thinking. This is a second one for dVerse, where our theme is Good and Evil.

Sunil Sharma is a Mumbai-based Indian writer. Sharma is a widely-published bilingual Indian critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. His six short stories and the novel Minotaur were recently prescribed for the undergraduate classes under the Post-colonial Studies, Clayton University, Georgia, USA. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural poet of the year award—2012.

Last year/this year

It did not rain last year
In India…and other parts
Of Asia.
The monsoon was meager
Clouds never stayed for long
Like the spurned lovers.
The winter, last year
Then the summer, this year
Were equally erratic and briefly harsh.
Rivers have run dried
Showing their skeletons and ribs
Clogged with urban debris and moss.
Summer breeze is stinging, hot.
Winter last, delayed, did not last
Even a week over the Delhi skies.
Nobody cared then
Or now.
The elite have got homes abroad
And the…

Book Review by Spriha Kant

“Silence from the Shadows” is a collection of beautiful short poetries fastened with easy words. The poet beautifully portrays how a person’s poetry dances to the feelings of the deep love that he/she has for his/her beloved as can be felt in two of his poetries, ‘Poetry Book’ and ‘Let Poetry Resonate’. The poet also encourages the youngsters for weaving their feelings into poetries by stating the greatness of poetries in the last stanza of the poem “Embrace The Power Of Words”: “Death by poetry Yet life through words” In some poetries, the poet beautifully described the different phases including sunrise, sunset, night, and evening as well as their transition to their succeeding phase using metaphors and personification of the celestial bodies that can be read in a few words quoted from his poetry, “Setting Sun” below: “The setting sun Accepts her time is done”…