The Bonfire Party by Sean O’Brien (Picador, £12.99)This sombre collection showcases O’Brien’s varied use of forms and subject matter, exploring themes of history, remembrance of war and political conflict, death, time, the... Read more »
The Man in the Wind The man in the windwho keeps us awake tonightis not the black monk of the windcowering in corners and crevices,or the white face under the streetlightstricken with... Read more »
Winter Walk She left the hut and bright log fire at noonAnd walked outside on crisp white winter snowTo find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon,The wild wood desolate and bare... Read more »
Many of 2025’s most notable collections have been powered by a spirit of wild experimentation, pushing at the bounds of what “poetry” might be thought to be. Sarah Hesketh’s 2016 (CB Editions)... Read more »
Missing You Did you know the moon was so oldIt might have to go into a home? It keeps edging nearerThe way old people do. Goya wore candles on his hatBut Humphrey... Read more »
Simile How does a simile work?— Place something next to somethingand say, here. (The here is wherethe somethings touch.) The rainy night, like Debussy.There on the shelf, a piece of grapevine in... Read more »
Namanlagh by Tom Paulin (Faber, £12.99)It has been more than a decade – “long empty days / with the blank page” – since Paulin’s Love’s Bonfire. His 10th collection is informed by... Read more »
Storm in Brooklyn Subway Thistle of rain.We seek temple from tempest,litany in lightning, a mottled crowd huddled,backs to the wall,gasping for refuge. Then, in an instant, the heavens smile,the firm ground formsand... Read more »
Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie have been named joint winners of this year’s Forward prize for best collection, one of the UK’s most prestigious poetry awards, marking the first time in the... Read more »