Lavinia Greenlaw

‘Do they dance for those creatures / whose unmade selves / come unbuttoning out of the dark?’

Lorraine Mariner

‘The psychiatrist’s wife / has a dress the colour / of that bottle of claret / you shouldn’t have drunk / last night.’

Issue 129

Mark Doty

‘an orange plastic basket of compost / down from the top of the garden – sweet dark, / fibrous rot, promising’

Issue 107

Sam Willetts

‘The unexceptional mystery takes place: / around eleven, love turns to matter’

Issue 100

Alice Oswald

‘untranslatable hissed interruptions / unspeakable wide chapped lips’

Issue 124

Rachael Boast

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

‘No more, no longer the sweet difference / Between real and dream I knew.’

Issue 125

Christopher DeWeese

‘When the oxygen thins, / the world gets less reciprocal.’

Issue 130

Tishani Doshi

‘Rain at three splits the bed in half, / cracks at windows like horsemen blistering / through a century of hibernation.’

Issue 31

Salman Rushdie

‘Let me tell you, boyo, bach: I love this place, where green hills shelter me from fear.’

Diego Báez

‘But really, your disappearance / has never been a question of whether.’

James Lasdun

‘Blizzard died. I’m remembering / his limitless affection.’

Dorothea Lasky

‘Hi there, dear sister, I’m sad / But here to tell you / That you never did amount to anything’

Issue 115

Sadaf Halai

‘It made the sound of / a small balloon dropping.’