Dad was yellow, behind his greying beard. ” It’s his liver,” the doctor said, “It’s failing.” He took it well, the news, because he’d feared For a while: Dad could feel his body ailing. It was the drugs that did it, we all reckoned. The pink and white pills that were fixing him: Saved from […]
Foyle 2002
Flea-Catcher
I bought a rechargeable torch with winding mechanism from my first salary. By the sides of roads, under bushes and plants, geranium and box, I find the choicest hedgehogs. Then I light a safety match, put the jars down, and smoke the fleas out from the spikes. If the hedgehog chokes on the smoke […]
Horse Chestnut
I have considered picking these cow eyes from the ground stowing them in woody-smelling bags to moulder as I forget amongst multi-coloured stickly bricks (encumbered by cylindrical heads). It would feel good again to stash these off-spherical shapes of marbled browns and creamy stain patches – to roughly select the plummier specimens fantasise about their […]
See-saws and the rest
Doors are opening like nails pricking tiny points into limbs, she thinks but nothing says. Oh, this is the time of the coming, the future, the eyes strained ahead to the one perfect rhyme and the rest of the dead. She says nothing of memories of parks and her dad on the see-saw. For […]
The Road Under Repair
It’s night And Bukit Timah Road is glowing orange With the visitations of Halogen angels I am alone on the bus That groans and mumbles as if I have company But this is a solitary din I dissolve into the evening on my own Cars pass Full of expatriates in transit With Cold […]
Mascara Wand
It slides up the smooth, damp tube Then waits. Rough friction as bristles squeeze through. Quick slurpy toad-kiss And it’s out. Deep channel of mud Left behind. Crust of old dried-out mud Clings to the top of the long Thin wand, reluctant To join the rest. Blackness pushes Though the gaps. So strong! Stronger […]
The Wooden Man
It seems I complained too hard about the rain shrivelling my skin or feet burning on hot sand, making me dance madly like a chained bear. Perhaps I sighed too loudly about the rough tugging of a snagged nail or the way my raw feet would bud blisters. For, when I opened my eyes […]
Butter Child
Hold my hand – you’re not safe. Your skin can’t take the heat Of the lights or the burn of Humiliation. Don’t look at The people we meet. Our skins are like wings Flown too close to the sun – A blush would kill us, A loss of face would Be a loss of […]
Four Vomits
I peel open the door and everything becomes real. My heavy footsteps embarrass me, Though only the grass notices. I sit upright on a damp log bench And feel the wind running through me, Humming and uncoiling and draining away With the waves of traffic and treelimbs Filtering together. Every sound gone Before it reaches […]
Into the Distance
I used to bring my boys here, I tell him, back when the sea was further from the village than it is now, and they used to run into the garden of the b&b early each morning to scramble down the bramble-clogged bank at the back onto the narrow beach. Even in the rain, pearls […]
Potatoes
I used to keep potatoes in my cellar in brown bags. But they grew green shoots and wanted to be planted. When it rained my friend came and looked at them. They were coal painted and their green roots were neon bulbs. He said I should give them some ground, a little bit of […]
Gigging
Check the pockets for the tickets, Reds, Lighter, Travelcard, tied shoes, keys and cash. No rush, no hurry – No matter how late you try to turn up there’s always a support band to sit through, a guy with a beard, a banjo and a bad hairdo. And after an hour of standing […]
Counting the Moons
We shall learn how the footsteps should be printed together, so that the light of the Moons does not hurt when we count them and stars will keep their distance We shall learn through the rhythm of a raised eyebrow and quivering lips, the same truth only an ant in a puddle of honey […]
A Sea-Change
I know what it is to drown. Not emotionally, the aching sweet, lyrical deaths writers and lovers will have you believe in. I talk of water, and salt piercing you like memories. And cold like marble slabs on which the dead are laid filling your nose and tongue and every dark crevice […]
Oil in the Gutter
He knows more than they think, As the rust tricycle harries The grey-evening puddles. Slut. Bitch. Whore. Why always in the kitchen, Where the fierce strip light Shies drawn out spectres? She by the sink, Pretending to wash up; He by the stove, probing Until she turns. Why always Yell, murmur, […]
Zach Simons
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002 and 2003.
Wong Chen Seong
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Peter Cashmore
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Omar Majeed
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Ming Wai Ho
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Lyndsay Coo
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002 and 2004.
Jane Richardson
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Bryan Methods
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Ben Ziman-Bright
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Anna Lewis
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002, Anna Lewis has gone on to win several prizes for her poetry including the G.S. Fraser Prize, the Robin Reeves Prize and the Christopher Tower Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Other Harbours, was published in 2012 by Parthian.
Anbara Khalidi
A winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2002.
Luke Samuel Yates
Luke’s pamphlet The Pair of Scissors That Could Cut Anything was published by The Rialto in 2013. He has been published in The North, THE SHOp, Smiths Knoll and The Rialto among others, and on the London Underground. In 2015 he was named a winner of the Poetry Business Pamphlet prize, with The Flemish Primitives. […]

Helen Mort
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield. Her first full-length collection, Division Street (Chatto & Windus, 2013) was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and, in 2014, won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. Her latest collection is No Map Could Show Them (Chatto & Windus, 2016). Helen is a five times winner of […]
Caleb Klaces
Caleb Klaces is the author of Fatherhood (Prototype, 2019) and Bottled Air (Eyewear, 2013). His poetry has appeared in Granta, The Manchester Review, Stand and Eyewear Publishing’s Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam. In 2011 he received an Eric Gregory Award. He was a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001 and […]