MARYANN CORBETT is the author of five books, most recently In Code (Able Muse, 2020). Her work has appeared widely in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including 32 Poems, Rattle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books in the US, and The Dark Horse and PN Review in the UK. Her poetry has…
My Offer, and five readings
JOHN BINGHAM has been writing poetry for nearly 20 years, from his first limerick, 'Barry the Snail', to his first competition win with 'I miss you'. John believes poetry is an amazing tool to help with expressing feeling or aiding with mental health issues and hopes his poems can one day help others. My Offer…
Top View of a House
COLIN JAMES has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published – Dreams Of The Really Annoying, from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity, from Piski's Porch Press – and a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press Top View of a House The new subdivision, “A Bomber's Paradise”, grew…
Faith and formalism
Ezekiel's vision The True Gods Attend You Clarence Caddell, Bonfire Books, 2022, 71 pages, £11.80 MICHAEL YOST finds a collection of original religiously-inspired verse rather forced There are two major traditions pertinent to verse literature that are seldom engaged in, but for all that are the more interesting when an artist does make use of…
Our Republic by the Sea, and two translations from German
PETER LILLIOS is an auditor and poet based in Sound Beach, New York. He writes: ‘I believe that poetry — and particularly formal verse — shows its strengths most readily when presented as an auditory experience. When spoken or sung expertly, the inherent musicality of well-crafted verse comes to the fore, creating a powerfully synergistic…
Last flowers of Bloom
Harold Bloom STODDARD MARTIN remembers a dedicated litterateur’s late works One can hardly think but with affection of Harold Bloom, addict of the Word, historic lover of literature, and coiner of the phrase “anxiety of influence” among other more recondite tags. It would be invidious not to feel that affection when considering his final books,…
Dispatches from 1643
The following is an extract from Book II of William G Carpenter’s epic poem about the English Civil Wars. The poet is Philip Meadowe, assistant to John Milton in his role as Foreign Language Secretary for the Council of State under the Protectorate. Meadowe reads his lines to Milton at Milton’s house in Petty France,…
The hunt for Merlin
The story so far (Chapters 2-8 inclusive have all previously been published on this site, starting here). The complete poem has just been published as A Man of Heart, by Shearsman. Mid 5th century Britain. After the legions have withdrawn, the island is facing civil war, a growing number of external enemies and a steady tide of pagan…
Parnassus, and patria
Tumuli at Revesby in Lincolnshire Sunken Island: An Anthology of British Poetry Various authors, edited by Alexander Adams, foreword by William Clouston, London: Bournbrook Press, 2022, pb, 55pps, £12.50 Bournbrook Press is an offshoot of Bournbrook Magazine, founded in 2019 to offer a “primarily British audience with traditionalist, socially conservative argument and entertainment”. This venture’s…
“Once upon a time I was a poet”
Basil Bunting. Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Creative Commons licence Letters of Basil Bunting Selected and edited by Alex Niven, Oxford University Press, 2022, £35 LIAM GUILAR welcomes new insights into a little-studied modernist's mind Basil Bunting died in 1985. Despite having been praised as one of the twentieth century’s ‘greatest poets’ critical attention to his…