Momtaza Mehri

‘salmaan the second son & his mama’s seventh seal by way of underwater & underemployment’

Selima Hill

‘Black against the sky the giant mothers / are whispering together in the moonlight’

Leontia Flynn

‘a look I’d managed to accessorize / with raw dermatological distress.’

Gillian Clarke

‘Let’s do this again, ground the planes for a while and leave the runways to the racing hare.’

Issue 120

James Lasdun

‘I thought I’d do it while I still could.’

Issue 145

Jana Prikryl

‘he cut out small talk / not hearing it, convincingly deaf to its nothing’

John Kinsella

‘They are superbly and viscerally unreal / and I feel their living drive’

Javier Zamora

‘I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.’

Diana Anphimiadi

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

Claudia Rankine

‘Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue’

Solmaz Sharif

‘To step out of my door and hope to see something like a life, something passably me.’

Issue 119

Jamie McKendrick

Maureen N. McLane

‘They party in the woods / as if they were meant for pleasure / not timber.’

Holly Pester

‘I went to Ilford alone / was handed a white laminated square’