The grocery boy loaded her car with twenty free-range chicken breasts. She did not discover this until she was back home, after she had cloroxed every plastic Kroger bag he could’ve held. She hadn’t asked for twenty, she’d asked for two and a pack of paper towels. He hadn’t given her the paper towels and […]
Foyle
my grandmother
my grandmother wears silk sarees woven with soft threads from India stained with rich indigo dye; tiny peacocks perch in the folds and flecks of gold adorn them like jewels sparkling with every movement. a red bindi sits between her brows – she’s a queen. but in Tesco she’s an obscurity in the spice aisle. […]
Polaris
slit through the belly and you will find hot air, slippery fat, rabbit bones, a beer belch swallowed. ask him what he has done, and he will say / nothing. flush out the acid and you will see what it has ravaged. what remains of the forest is its rot; of its birds, a feather. […]
A Little Bit of Poland in Sudbury Hill
Dear Lord, I thank you for the polski skleps – the strip-lights’ thrum above the counters thick with meat that prune-faced women slap as they walk past; fondle the tomatoes ripe, round, earth-dusty in their plastic crates; eye up the bargains, the joyous promotions – Promocja! Oferta! One-time special discount rates! – and go through […]
The Sound of Shakespeare’s Women
If Juliet was silenced amongst a patriarchal nightmare and Lavinia was two hands down with no tongue to tell their tale and Ophelia was driven to madness with no sense left to speak and Cordelia was shunned by her father, her pointless words falling on deaf ears and Desdemona’s desperate truth was shouted down by […]
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⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎ All the slow summer long……………………£9.99 I have been living……………………………£6.90 in a glass jar of anxiety……………………..£16.90 and dreading…………………………………£7.68 a day in August………………………………£6.57 when a devious envelope……………………£12.90 with a barbed paper tongue………………….£3.76 will slither through the door…………………£2.46 to determine my fate…………………………£6.83 with only a few………………………………£5.80 letters: grades that might……………………..£5.45 be as sharp as blades………………………….£9.90 or as […]
Julia
after Louisa Adjoa Parker Instead of you dying, why don’t you come round to ours. We’ll tell you we’re ready by calling your home and hanging up after three rings. We’ll hand you folded card takeaway menus, pretend to look through them then reel out the usual; garlic beansprouts with mushroom curry, as if you […]
Navajo Roads
A thick perfume of hot leather seats hangs heavy in the air, which drags out scraping melodies through an open window and I – hand on the wheel – use up a little more of man’s hydrocarbon quota. I sweat like a pig; the acrid fluid could fill a lager can to its corroded brim. […]
Found
Contains strong language d’y’see your man there, in the – in the grounds of the city hall, d’y’hear he used to be a slaver? kept slaves ‘n’ that, sold thum as well i think i read. an’d’y’hear there’s a bunch of themins – themins at that owl protest the other week – want ‘im taken […]
The Leshan Giant Buddha
After Marilyn Chin step step step to the giant Buddha made with the blood of three generations and the eyes of the monk Hai Tong made to calm the turbulent waters so that the ships could sail smoothly make your sacrifices to the Buddha because nothing comes without a price step step step to […]
Barcodes
the Race Card
People always excuse racism with the phrase “Stop using the race card” as if The exploitation of blacks The use of an infamous six letter word Is all A game Like I could use my race card to Make happy families of All those who have lost A brother A sister A parent A child […]
Love Poem to Young Offenders Support Workers
Here, where the streetlights have seen more than any expert, there is a currency in the green ghosts of cheap chains hidden under collars, or in knowing somebody’s brother from school, or in the phone numbers of people who know how to scoop up boys spilling out onto pavements, their limbs limp as weeds, without […]
CANBURY GARDENS AS A PROSE POEM DOMINATED BY THE WORD ‘LIKE’
Contains strong language
Brown Girl
Contains strong language After Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ “The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.” – President William McKinley practice your Nepali three times a day; don’t ever forget your mother tongue; always speak English outside the house or people will think you’re a terrorist; here’s how to fold dough into a […]
Indigo Mudbhary
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Maia Siegel
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Preesha Jain
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Brigitta McKeever
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Victoria Fletcher
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Imogen Beaumont
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Anna Gilmore Heezen
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Linnet Drury
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Daniel Wale
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Zara Meadows
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Leandra Li
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Anna Winkelmann
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020.
Lauren Lisk
Lauren is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, and is commended in August Challenge #3: Repetition & Imagery on Young Poets Network.
Appointments
Contains strong language. The first doctor insists that my relationship with food is to my self what a seed is to a fruit, that my eating habits are the moon and all my life’s catastrophes are the tide. The second doctor makes a diagnosis I can’t pronounce. My father tells me I will fuck up […]
Maple
They named me after a sweet tree As if to hide my spirit They named me after a gentle tree As if to hide my strength They named me after a small tree As if I would not grow They named me after an old tree As if I was not young They named me […]
Phlegethon
When she’s sat in the dark I light myself like a candle Burn away the shadows Til she’s sitting in the sunshine The only problem with candles Is that in order to glow They must burn themselves away But when she’s sat in the dark I swear, It takes everything in me Not to set […]
The Drowning of Li Po
And Li Po also died drunk. He tried to embrace a moon In the Yellow River. – Ezra Pound, ‘Epitaphs’ the river is drunk; reeling, it tosses the sad poet’s prow to the white moon which bathes gently in the dark water of heaven. the moon, enraged by this sot’s trespass, casts his prow […]
I want to stand naked in the school hall
on the podium, mid assembly, so my presence will be so overbearing no one can look away. I want their eyes to burn into my skin, examine its ripples and folds and the scar that digs it up like a trench in Ypres. I’d watch a few hundred jaws slowly unhinge, drop down into a […]
Zeyde
eyns My grandfather sat at the foot of my bed At six years old, my tongue bumbled over my anglicized versions of the Yiddish that he tried to teach me He was six when he learned his second tongue and I can barely see the first now I fell asleep to it tsvey My grandmother […]
my mother, with eight chemo sessions to go
there’s a green chair that sits in my living room. i’m pretty sure that it stands taller and older than me; for years it’s housed the bodies of my family and friends and it still smells like the wet fur of our first dog. i’ve never felt more ashamed than when sitting on the chair […]
Clocks
our clocks forgot to go back this year or maybe their hands have become stubborn in old age, so we live an hour ahead now, flowers drooping before their petals fall plates dropping when the guests have not yet arrived when I sit on bridges and watch water sleep walk, the people on boats are […]
Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
Talulah Quinto
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
Thomas Frost
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
Dana Collins
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, Dana is also commended in the Ode to (Small) Joy challenge on Young Poets Network.
Annie Davison
Annie is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, and is commended in the Artlyst Art to Poetry challenge on Young Poets Network.
Trinity Robinson
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
what are we before we are mothers
woman wants to loop herself like a spool of thread into the cupped arms of a mug woman wants to use up all her thoughts considering the brown heart of coffee woman wants a man with a beard and a dog to lift a mug to his winded lips and swallow her chapped laughter woman […]
Explaining Memes to Keats
“So you see,” I say slowly, “It’s a little engine of remembering, recalling, reverberating in the mind, like rhyme.” “So, it can never die?” he replies. I avert my eyes. “It will, with time.”
the opioid diaries
snooze hit snooze again wake up pull on some dirty clothes run to the bathroom prep a shot cold shower shrapnel digging into flesh later dry hair wringing out dregs of the banal then abyssopelagic ecstasy when i feel like that i often feel what i feel * inventory: 70 mg valium […]
Love Poem to Myself
after Jack Underwood your hair continues to surprise me in its texture after every single wash / like the shock of a photocopier lid realising the other side when it beams white light / I could listen to you listing your banned foods for days / and tell you bad jokes about music as the […]
Jean Klurfeld
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
Libby Russell
Libby is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019 and 2020, and is commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network.
Amy Saunders
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019.
You’re Not Black
I sit with them at lunch Fried chicken on my plate I eat with a knife and fork “You’re not black, if you don’t use your hands to eat” Yet I know that hands tied up the strange fruit on the trees in the south The fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain […]
Helen Woods
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, and commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2014 and 2016.
Meritocracy
And you, you will be sat there surrounded by crackling, yellowed pages with a wad of fifties stuffed in your mouth. And me, I’ll be sat here all picturesque, swathed in marble carvings and oil paintings older than my childhood home. And I’ll silently seethe, let the blood bubble out of my tear ducts, let […]
A Word of Advice
Stop falling in love with people you could write poems about. Stop tripping over and drowning yourself in metaphors And obsessing over similes Like your silly white shirt is clouding your judgement. Resist those with whom you can be Radcliffian, Fall in love with no one in any way Byronic, Or those who may resemble, […]
In the Nude
While on holiday on a Greek island we stayed in a small village, and at the bottom of the road was a nudist resort. This was amusing to us but I think for most people it would have been embarrassing. Driving down past it on our way to the sea, some of us shut our […]
God in 80s Movies
This baby is born in pink mood lighting, synths shimmering as her tiny raw hands claw at the vinyl ceiling. This baby is born in a three storey house – powder blue and Victorian. This baby has Coca Cola and Chicago running through her veins. This baby cries prettily, and her screams fade out when […]
Elephantsong
“Do you think red is my colour?” I ask with softest teeth. “What?” She watches the mattress, how it languidly sinks beneath my thighs. “It’s just that that’s the whole Indian wedding motif; always red.” She wipes away dark chunks of kajal, small streaks of black smeared down beneath her […]
small print
if this product does not reach you in perfect condition, please return the packet and contents, stating when and where purchased. your statutory rights are not affected. well i’d like to return myself. mum will you pack me up in your stomach again. and tape shut the slit in your middle: the bit that opened […]
When my uncle stood at the top of the office block roof
he swayed from side to side, half-glugged bottle locked in his burning fingers, his silhouette framed by the black hole of night, flecks of scornful planets blinked behind his back. The whole world stretched out in front of him like the sides of a fallen-down box, and his eyes had been opened, and stared open […]
Georgie Woodhead
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Nature’s diagnosis
i’m afraid to say i’ve swallowed an apple seed and now it’s growing its roots in my belly. i believe that the trunk will run straight up through me until i have a wooden spine and ribs of solid oak. i think the seed will grow, and make branches in my lungs till it pokes […]
The Beauty of Right Now
I grew up in a town decorated with honeysuckle and sunflowers. I was not born there, nor did I move there – I woke up one morning and the town came to me. The ground was paved with cobblestones, and majestic oak trees lined the main road (the road the travellers would walk with their […]
Elizabeth Thatcher
Elizabeth is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018 and is commended in the Young Poets Network meme challenge, written and judged by poet Rishi Dastidar, with a poem she wrote jointly with Em Power.
At the Funeral
Brother and sister take polar bears. Brother parks his between two F-150s but sister’s won’t stay, instead follows her to the front row of fold-out seats and licks her wrists when hungry, so she digs through her pockets for bits of raw seal. After the ceremony, she feeds brother’s bear too. Family members say nothing […]
Maggie Olszewski
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Talking to my car
I once went over to talk to my dream car, and I complimented it, even when it was sleepy and still I climbed inside, and touched the steering wheel, snuggled down in the cosseting seat, told it about its engine, how big, how many this, how many that, I looked in my pocket and found […]
Sammy Loehnis
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Of All Colours
Parading down the streets of Russia in silence, it’s 1993 and to be or not to be is whispered from balcony to balcony, corner shop to corner shop and the husky has chewed the newspaper. He’s ripped the headlines to shreds and the woman, in a multi-coloured bobble hat, she sits on a bench. Fingers […]
Angela King
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
House with Missing Teeth
Imagine you are faceless and double-bodied, and your mother doesn’t look at you until the moon tinfoils you both, because you are only loved when in the dark and half-forgotten. This is a law of the universe, everything most beautiful when leaving. Your mother has taught you to love a body less body and more […]
Olivia Hu
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Snakes and Ladders
There’s a house in America full of children Who like to play games Like Snakes and Ladders in their white Walled rooms. If they lose they act Up. But they’re children, what do you expect? Winning makes you feel powerful. Their parents are powerful People. They are expecting A work call right now, they can’t […]
Suki Datar Jones
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Mr Sigiriya’s Weird and Wonderful Talents
My dad always told me Never to speak to strangers, So I always ended up Just speaking to my friends. I heard about him first from Tommy. We were walking home from school, Our backpacks heavy, Sweat dripping from our spring brows. “Mr Sigiriya can tie himself in knots you know!” I didn’t believe him. […]
Maiya Dambawinna
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Mrs Richards’ Year
The chairs – They were blue and curved and scratched your legs in the morning chill. But they were snug; A familiar, unchangeable presence, Despite the fact you would swap them like secrets. So really, it was a new chair every week. Then there was that odd sensation when you found your very first one […]
Caitlin Catheld Pyper
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018.
Mathilda Armiger
Mathilda is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018, and is the second-prize winner in the Golden Shovel challenge on Young Poets Network, judged by Peter Kahn.
Lobster Shift
i want to mummify your flesh you’re ablaze beside my bag of bones so i can’t sleep you’re so still and i want to burn your gold wreathed limbs for slipping so swift into the dripping deep i want to kick in your soft brinks if you breathe so loud one more time lining your […]
Em Power
Em is a commended Foyle Young Poet in 2017 and a top 15 winner in 2018, 2019 and 2020. She is also commended in the Timothy Corsellis Poetry Prize 2018 on Young Poets Network; commended in the meme challenge, written and judged by poet Rishi Dastidar, with a poem she wrote jointly with Elizabeth Thatcher; […]
Lydia Wei
Lydia is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019, and wrote and judged August challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected on Young Poets Network in 2020. She is the first-prize winner in the tree poetry challenge, the Thinking Outside the Penalty Box challenge and the 2018 […]
Mukahang Limbu
Mukahang was a commended Foyle Young Poet in 2016 and 2017. He is also a winner of SLAMbassadors 2017.
a futile endeavour
it transpires that telling your GP you are concerned with your ephemerality will not accomplish a great deal. there is no prescription currently available to cure such fears and any decent psych would be too much of the same mind to help. moreover the doctor’s surgery only exacerbates the problem, after all – in what […]
Topography of an Apple
It perches there, ripe and globular; knitted together from the pinks of the world, orbiting its own red roundness like a planet collapsing; […]
Lyra Davies
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
One Day
His hellos like snow in the desert like gulping air after five years under. Him saying your name like first summer rain like sunset orange like tumblers in a lock like you might be his.
Suzanne Antelme
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Awards 2017, 2018 and 2019.
St. Helens, Washington
Under 17 days of ash, Robert Landsburg rises and wipes dust from his backpack. Unwraps his camera; unwinds film from its casing. He’s up on shaking legs; begins to click the shutter release, as the cloud of black and heat recedes, and the air shrieks. He stands and watches as the mountain implodes.
Ruby Evans
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
A High
Just sort of floating. Letting everything become a carousel. It comes in waves. It runs to the moon of the wiretrap nervous system and nudges you into a black hole. […]
Neave Scott
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
secrets
secrets are sticky rice packages tied with coarse string. they sit in red stomachs swallowed in black pulsing lungs under a yellow gravestone.
Natalie Perman
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017 and commended in the 2018 Award, Natalie is also the first-prize winner in the Civilisation and Its Discontents challenge on Young Poets Network, inspired by Freud’s work of the same name; and the first-prize winner in the first Bloodaxe Archive challenge, The […]
The Sorrowful Man
The man’s crippled dog sat silently, it was white. The man was writing, the paper was white. The man’s face was sorrowful, his face was white. The ink spilled, the paper was still white. The clouds overhead floated, they were white. A plane soared over, its belly was white. The ink is soaking in the […]
Max Dixon
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
Wormwood
mama, remember your cool hand on mine. remember, I was twelve and consumed with thinness. remember you lay beside me on the starchy sheets and talked about healing. about your own mother, how you became a kite, straining away from her. about the summer your hair knotted up like moss in the shower drain. mama, […]
Margot Armbruster
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
the parents anniversary
that on the last day of july my father would tell the story of how they had met so young in photos i once saw of an eighties blurred with rain and home haircuts how easily she had made her impression and left it there that years later he […]
Tracks Take 2
My book of Blake slid unnoticed into the tracks. As the train skidded in, I climbed on, unaware. Later, as my fingers rooted for it, too sick of watching The landscape blur stickily by, I noted my loss. I pressed my forehead against the lukewarm pane, and thought. Thought of the pages slicked back with […]
Irina Petra Husti-Radulet
A top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.
unwritten letter from my great-grandmother to my great-grandfather, 1930
In 1927, the Chinese Civil War broke out between the Nationalists and Communists. Peasants joined the fight, not knowing nor caring which side they fought on. They often joined the army for the meals. Many perished, trying to escape starvation. the last hen died / fourteen days ago / while you puffed your chest / for faceless […]