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Poem
I The first ten steps from the house to the shed, I break two or three promises the night has strung like spiders’ webs across my path. The morning is sprung with secrets the night’s been spinning all night…
Poem
Di Great Insohreckshan - Linton Kwesi Johnson
it woz in april nineteen eighty wan doun inna di ghetto af Brixtan dat di babylan dem cause such a frickshan dat it bring about a great insohreckshan an it spread all owevah di naeshan it woz truly an…
Poem
The Glance Returned - Anthony Lawrence
When you are seven years old, lying in the back of a station wagon while your parents play night tennis; when the knowledge that you are going to die one day comes through the rallies, players’ voices, and songs from…
Poem
The Distance Between Us - Tanya Shirley
For Tanice We found him in front of the garage on an ordinary morning as we walked overburdened with our mother’s briefcase and bags full of files. You were a young woman by then home for summer holidays – the…
Poet
Chris McCabe
B. 1977
Chris McCabe’s work crosses artforms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art. He was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2013 and his five collections of poetry are The Hutton Inquiry (Salt, 2005), Zeppelins (Salt, 2008),…
Poem
I pursue but I can not catch up with you, Time. You precede me like the echo of sad footfalls in my heart, fading away. Tears pool my eyes as I turn back to find the solace in a…
The Classics
Love in a Life
Read by Anthony Thwaite
Love in a Life - Robert Browning - Read by Anthony Thwaite
I Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her— Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume! As she brushed it, the…
Poem
The Love of Unknown Women - Alan Jenkins
Young women with damp hollows, downy arms, Bare burnished legs – you see them striding Towards their plant-filled offices, riding Bicycles to flatshares after work; lunchtimes, you stare As secretaries, backpackers tanned from birth Peel off their things and stretch…
Poem
Christmas in Andalucía - Neil Rollinson
I’m in the bath when you pop up, between turkey and pudding, for a drink with me: you with your g&t, me with my vodka and coke. It is dark in Surrey, while here a late sun gleams in the…
Poet
Simon Armitage
B. 1963
In May 2019, Simon Armitage (b. 1963) was named as the UK’s Poet Laureate, an appointment greeted with delight by many in the poetry world and beyond. Armitage burst onto the poetry scene with Zoom! in 1989 and quickly established himself as the…
Poet
Alison Croggon
B. 1962
Alison Croggon (b. 1962) has been described as “one of the most assured of a new generation of Australian poets.” She is the author of three full-length collections published in Australia, whilst a selected poems, The Common Flesh: Poems 1980-2002…
Poet
Sujata Bhatt
B. 1956
Sujata Bhatt (b. 1956) grew up in Pune but emigrated with her family to the United States in 1968. She studied in the States receiving an MFA from the University of Iowa and went on to be writer-in-residence at the…
Poet
John Berryman
B. 1914 D. 1972
John Berryman (1914-1972) was born John Smith Jnr. in rural Oklahoma, the product of an unhappy marriage between a small-town banker and schoolteacher. When he was eight, Berryman suffered the defining trauma of his life when his father killed himself…
Poet
Jane Duran
B. 1944
Jane Duran (b. 1944) is a writer whose work is often preoccupied with memory and exile. Born in Cuba, she grew up in the USA and Chile, the daughter of an American mother and a Spanish father who met after…
Poem
I walk in the rain to Black Rocks in search of a poem, though my head is full of slogans, though I ask myself, “What use is a poem when no rhythm can soothe the countless children carrying the…