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Turn the River

Cortney Lamar Charleston

‘Backtrack / to the bones of the matter, which are the bones themselves.’

Reflections on shame in sacred spaces

Kate Duckney

‘At sunset the light is both nasty and nice / in my robe.’

Cassiopeia (three back-to-front songs)

Diana Anphimiadi

‘Anyway, I did not die. / I lined the sky, inside-out.’ Translated from the Georgian by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters.

Every Day Was Ordinary

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

‘A life is an open thing / leaking out into / the air around it.’

Zeus

Fiona Benson

‘days I talked with Zeus / I ate only ice / felt the blood trouble and burn / under my skin’

Home

Emily Critchley

‘to understand life / how to possibly / live in it / break it’

Judges

Natalie Eilbert

‘I was thick dough when you ran us away. I never / knew you.’

Essay

Gary Barwin

‘the heart is an ocean-sized drum / a rat-sized jellyfish’

The Blue Clerk

Dionne Brand

‘Now you are sounding like me, the clerk says. I am you, the author says.’

After Ann Lauterbach

Emily Critchley

‘The piano eyes me / from its corner – / colluding with the past’

Assuming the Habits of the Day and Night

Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo

‘my every day is a being in of being / a mixity of worlds’

The Republic of Motherhood

Liz Berry

‘a cardigan / soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk’ – New poetry from Liz Berry.

Relinquish

Kazim Ali

‘I haven’t learned very much in my life, I’ve just become a more / Choreographed disaster’

A Pinch of Salt

Andrea Brady

‘When we’re close to weaning / ourselves history gives us its reasons / to return’