Forthcoming from Salt Publishing in Autumn 2023.

Martyn Crucefix’s new collection of poems trace the forensic unfolding of two landscapes – contemporary Britain post-2016 and the countryside of the Marche in central, eastern Italy. Both places are vividly evoked – the coffee shops, traffic tailbacks, shopping malls, tourist-dotted hillsides and valleys of modern Britain appear in stark contrast to the hilltop villages, church spires, deep gorges, natural history and Classical ruins of Italy. Both landscapes come to represent psychic journeys: closer to home there is division everywhere – depicted in both tragic and comic detail – that only a metaphorical death of the self seems able to counteract. Closer to the Mediterranean, the geographical and personal, or romantic, divisions are also shown ultimately to offer possibilities of transcendence.

The poems of the longer sequence, ‘Works and Days’, are startlingly free-wheeling, allusive – brilliantly deploying source materials and inspiration from Hesiod’s…

I’m convinced that when we look back upon the current decade we will come to realise that it has been a golden age for poetry when a succession of impressively talented new poets were discovered by the editors of small poetry presses. Add to that list the name, Katy Mahon, a poet from Northern Ireland, who made her debut in 2022 with a pamphlet, Some Indescribable Cord (Dreich). You only have to read the first poem in this small collection to be impressed.

As the word, ‘cord’, in the title suggests this is a collection about connection: how we are connected to others and to the past. A number of poems explore this theme in terms of the complex nature of relationships. Mask explores how a potentially warm, satisfying connection can be frustrated by someone who seeks to hide his/her true self behind a facade of perfection (a mask of…

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Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. The eldest of four children, he was born into a Jewish family and, during his childhood, was called ‘Harry’ until after his conversion to Lutheranism in 1825. Heine’s father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as ‘Betty’), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician.

He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine’s later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities — which, however, only added to his fame. He spent…

My response to Paul Brookes’ ekphrastic challenge ‘This day’. You can see the photographic image here

Tree-stone

In the tree slowly turning
to stone a face looks out
man bear dog
with an expression
of great sadness

the sight of this world
slowly turning
from green and growing
to the stone
of closed hearts and motorways
the last light in brown eyes
slowly turning.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL.He has 272 YouTube poetry videos.Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 5 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations.He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 443 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups.Member Illinois State Poetry Society:http://www.illinoispoets.org/.

My Life

My life began with a skeleton with a smile and bubbling eyes in my garden of dandelions. Everything else fell off the edge, a jigsaw puzzle piece cut in half. When young, I pressed against my mother’s breast, but youthful memories fell short. I tried at 8 to kiss my…

A poetic response to Paul Brookes’ ‘This day’ photograph. You can see the image on Paul’s blog here.

Burning skies

How many fires in the sky
before the snakes and strings
of cultured gemstone-light
sink into the ocean of dark night?

Moon-sun perhaps
will wash them away

and when daylight rises again
there may still be eyes
wild and wide
to marvel at its pearl-soft purity.