Editor's Comments
Get out your deckchair, sit in the sun and enjoy reading these poems. Our poets have warmed to this month's theme and I hope you appreciate their gardening endeavours!
Sally Long
Poems
Rhubarb
Last April we sat in your
conservatory
every Thursday, from 2 till 4.
We’d talk of your past,
of the heat. I’d make us tea.
You were the still point in my
restless week.
When your rhubarb came you
insisted I picked it. You
taught
me to pull it, soft, so it yielded,
and watched, from the window,
as I severed the leaves
straight into the compost heap.
The last time I left you, my arms
were
full of stalks – you told me to take
the lot,
every last one.
And now, the rhubarb I planted in
memory of you
is shooting, lurid and strong.
I will pull, cut, roll in sugar,
mix flour, butter, oats,
cook, pour cream,
sit,
and eat.
Miranda Day
The Garden
Open Gardens, Crickhowell
a panache of roses
is the type of exuberance I like in a garden
the fat
buds that rupture along the stem in clusters
stealing the light
from the humped ground dwellers (lesser columbine)
extras
who pad out the scene with tiresome gestures of seasonality
my garden
is an extended plot of beautiful intrigue, technical vigour
where the leading man
leads you to the arbour, where anything might happen,
beneath the swag
of petals
the odour of orange-scented blossom, the soft cushion of
morning
grasping
amongst the sudden red of leaves, the urgent snow falling
that thorns are tragic, flowers comedic
and a garden
is nature
in a costume, thrown onto a stage and told to play herself
(only better)
Gareth Writer-Davies
At the Window
Oil painting by Richard Edward Miller
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Encaved in the chill of the museum,
I forget time. Can’t tell the hour
or season in the programmed winter
dusk. Entering this gallery, I catch
light pouring in the open window,
smell the garden’s invitation
to step outside.
A woman already stands at the sill.
Sheathed in a meadow of silk,
she leans into the breeze,
closes her eyes. I can feel the sun
on her face just as she must feel
the artist’s gaze. She steels
herself to stay with her guests
in the parlor. Like me, she must
wait for spring.
Oil painting by Richard Edward Miller
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Encaved in the chill of the museum,
I forget time. Can’t tell the hour
or season in the programmed winter
dusk. Entering this gallery, I catch
light pouring in the open window,
smell the garden’s invitation
to step outside.
A woman already stands at the sill.
Sheathed in a meadow of silk,
she leans into the breeze,
closes her eyes. I can feel the sun
on her face just as she must feel
the artist’s gaze. She steels
herself to stay with her guests
in the parlor. Like me, she must
wait for spring.
Alarie Tennille
First Night in the Garden
All that first day
a brilliance danced
greenly on the leaves.
In the warm confusion
of colors on flowers
he didn’t notice
that eventually he had
to squint
to go on with his naming.
But when the sun
began to dip over the rim
of what he hadn’t named yet
the horizon, he grew afraid.
Then when he was plunged
into absolute darkness,
he closed his eyes in despair
never dreaming of dawn.
Sarah Brown Weitzman
Composing the Garden
The woman who
lived here before us had everything
trained – the
espalier apple, the trellised
wild
dog-rose. Ox-eye daisies and lank pampas grass
she pinched
into their own plots. Weeds
were not
permitted, and shrubs went shaven-headed.
She read
where her tulips would come. She
counted
them. Yet, despite her strict upkeep, the grass
grew
constantly back – and, as she wearied,
her tidying
mood slipped and slipped
until her
hands gave a final flutter of helplessness.
If, since
then, our neglect’s let wildness run,
we still
wonder what she would make of this plum tree
whose harvest
strips the branches down,
or this
stop-gap furze gone spiking out of bounds.
Maybe she’d
approve what’s won – thrush, blackbird,
wood pigeons
cooing the sun, even the grey
squirrel that
visits on autumn evenings and reminds us
of the woman
herself, in spirit restored,
sowing
sidelong glances among leaves and windfalls.
Patrick Deeley
Cradle Falls
From Ephesus I travelled east
and in ten days reached Persepolis,
joined ambassadors from many lands
lining up along the blue-glazed steps,
all bearing tribute for the perfumed king
who dined within. He continued to feast
while we lay face down on the marble floor
of the throne room, our different gifts
of gems and silks spilling out in front of us.
Not until we saw the glint of his sceptre
did we dare approach with our tribute.
I saw the gardens he had fashioned
in desert sand-- fig and olive trees, date palms,
mulberry bushes of many colours, streams
of sunlit water moving up-hill, falling in swathes
from terraces, bathing flowers and shrubs.
By his grace, were made oases of green shade,
and if obeisance is the price of miracles, so be it.
But that jealous Macedonian cur, later
misnamed Great, used his destructive
force, and in a fever of war and hate,
burned the city of wonder to the ground.
Michael G. Casey
Ghiberti’s Eve
The hands of God and
His angels raise her
from darkness, the
still form of Adam,
the deep, secret pool
of that body.
Eve shivers, flickers
like forked lightning.
Fingers, long and
molten, do not lose
their grip, drawing
her into the cool air
of the garden. But
where is Paradise,
now that she is left
cold and quivering,
touched only by the
new sun as Adam sleeps?
The shadow of the
serpent undulates
and fruit glows so
softly overhead.
Mist clears. The dew
of morning vanishes.
She will not be
grateful, born of need,
and not for her own
quiet good.
Dan MacIsaac
Japanese Tea Garden
So many Buddhas!
I wander through
cherry trees
spilling pale
blossoms
into green ponds,
feel your hand
enter mine.
M.S. Rooney
Wales
in October
Nothing but wind and sky, the dark mountains
of Snowdonia, sporadic bursts of rain that gust
across our windshield. In the wild air over
a drop-off next to the road a bird hangs suspended,
immobilized in the headwind, gray wings
pulsing like a steady heartbeat. It’s ten a.m.
and we’re adrift in Britain, the day too blustery
and raw for our planned garden visit, so we follow
this coastal highway and our well-thumbed guidebook
toward Gwynned’s Penrhyn Castle, expecting
its ponderous gloom will match the skies. And we reach
the battlements and lofty keep as the sun slices
through the clouds only for seconds, just long enough
to set ablaze vines dense with scarlet leaves scaling
the stone walls, rippling in a gale. Purple and white
cyclamens tremble in the grass beneath hemlocks
and sequoias. Come for the shelter, we stay
for the grounds, suspended in awe by the savage wind
whipping our hair, churning the ashen-plumed grasses,
the untamed heartbeat of a garden finding us after all.
Nothing but wind and sky, the dark mountains
of Snowdonia, sporadic bursts of rain that gust
across our windshield. In the wild air over
a drop-off next to the road a bird hangs suspended,
immobilized in the headwind, gray wings
pulsing like a steady heartbeat. It’s ten a.m.
and we’re adrift in Britain, the day too blustery
and raw for our planned garden visit, so we follow
this coastal highway and our well-thumbed guidebook
toward Gwynned’s Penrhyn Castle, expecting
its ponderous gloom will match the skies. And we reach
the battlements and lofty keep as the sun slices
through the clouds only for seconds, just long enough
to set ablaze vines dense with scarlet leaves scaling
the stone walls, rippling in a gale. Purple and white
cyclamens tremble in the grass beneath hemlocks
and sequoias. Come for the shelter, we stay
for the grounds, suspended in awe by the savage wind
whipping our hair, churning the ashen-plumed grasses,
the untamed heartbeat of a garden finding us after all.
Carol Grametbauer
The Gate
Too much still in your garden
to shut the gate on, to walk off
with a dull shrug
of defeat
through residual
light
and all that it has
promised.
Never too late for
the heart to open
like a gift delayed
or a thornbush
blossoming
that
you thought was dead
but were painfully
mistaken
so stay where you
are
with your gate
thrown wide
and bend to the
task
of preparing new
ground
for hope to discover.
for hope to discover.
John Mole
another rainbow -
in my mother's garden
wisteria in bloom
Goran Gatalica
Blackberry Smoke
Blackberries plump the hedges,
beeches curving across the trail.
A dried milkweed pod caught
in the underbrush shifts shape,
mist closing in.
I heard your voice yesterday so clearly,
I turned around.
Dusk hushes the hills,
thrush hiding in the hedgerows
swallowing her song.
Doves applaud the air.
Nights like this – coffee filmed with chill
while you strummed the guitar, hummed
as the moon echoed its light
into mounting shadows.
KB Ballentine
Blackberries plump the hedges,
beeches curving across the trail.
A dried milkweed pod caught
in the underbrush shifts shape,
mist closing in.
I heard your voice yesterday so clearly,
I turned around.
Dusk hushes the hills,
thrush hiding in the hedgerows
swallowing her song.
Doves applaud the air.
Nights like this – coffee filmed with chill
while you strummed the guitar, hummed
as the moon echoed its light
into mounting shadows.
KB Ballentine
November Wind
November wind speaks to
windows,
to trees as leaves
drift by in handfuls,
caressing porch
furniture, filling
rocking chairs,
sneaking under
pillows. They make a
painted carpet
for the yard, then give
up to decay.
My rake longs for me to
hold it.
The empty wheelbarrow
feels
abandoned, wishes to
fill and roll.
A season’s change has
charted
my jobs since
childhood—
planting, weeding,
watering, mowing,
harvesting, raking,
burning—labor
still a blessing at
sixty-six. Sore
hands, back and knees
beg for
a hot tub. Little pains
whisper
you ain’t dead
yet, as our sun
and planet swirl the
Milky Way.
World ends when the
heart stops,
brain cells ordained to
silence
in death’s monastery.
Just pour
a glass of wine tonight
and sleep,
if you can shush your
brain,
let the wind be a
mantra, pray
for those who, over
time, have no
simple tasks to shape
their souls.
Bill Brown
Jerusalem Artichokes
I dig holes fifteen centimetres deep
in well-turned earth, and try to
teach my son
the heady scent of well-turned
compost heap —
it does not work; he has not long
turned one.
He toddles off to dig some other
patch
a little close to the asparagus,
meanwhile my daughter laughs, running
to catch
our poor old chooks — it seems
superfluous
to tell her she should not. The
artichokes
wait by the fence; I walk over to
them,
say to the air, "These
are not artichokes,
nor were they ever from
Jerusalem".
I turn, laugh at my daughter as she
stands
in well-turned earth, a chicken in
her hands.
John Newson
Below the Mountain
A rat scuttles across the garden,
fat and tailless, it heads into the
chicken coop,
rolling so much as running.
At church a lady talks of her work in
an addiction clinic;
the Reverend speaks of God upon the
mountain.
A partridge limps along the fence
line, spasms
with each fall of her left leg.
I try to conclude if I am the
convulsing boy
at the foot of the mountain or the
father
begging for the life of his son;
we are each one or the other.
A blackbird thumps into the window
leaving a greasy wing-print.
There is another hole to be dug;
the climb will have to wait
or God descend.
John Newson
Broccoli
A white Cabbage butterfly
licks around the broccoli stalks
whose crowns are ripe enough to cut.
We've waited all this wet summer
for fresh broccoli. Root rot stunted
tomatoes and egg plant, strangled the
beets.
We fertilized and planted and weeded,
hoping for a bounty as bright and full
as seed
packet photos on sticks marking each
row.
But the calendar has grown unreliable.
We waited until May to put in the
tomatoes
and expected June and July sun to plump
them.
Then came clouds and rain, the garden
so soggy it was hard to walk between
Even the pests got bogged down. We
didn't
dust the plants with diatomaceous earth
because worms hadn't laced the leaves.
The butterfly's white wings flicking
the bulbous green heads raise an alarm.
But it's just one, the first we've
seen.
Washing a cut head flushes out
a green worm. The knife uncovers
more. The butterflies were hungry, too.
Eric Chiles
A Nine-month Haze
My hair was growing back
when we moved in
on a short-term tenancy.
The bare shrubs outside promised
little.
I stood on wet grass in need of a cut
early in the year
and watched the plants move time
forward.
Birds sang the truth of it.
It could only be a dream of life
after months of fear and nausea,
but half-way down was an apple tree
as solid as an old recipe.
We hung a swing from one of its
branches.
Then there was snow in April.
I'd survived for my small son
who pressed his mittens to the ground
and tried to taste white stars that
fell among the blossom.
I planted sweet-pea
and love-in-a-mist in the lean-to,
as a wholly-miraculous,
shouldn't-have-been-this-easy
seed grew in me.
Butterflies angled their haphazard
trajectory
and for them all past seasons didn't
exist,
as if there were no such thing as
withering and frost
and they flew with the first bees
that ever buzzed.
My mind slowed with scent and heat
and the successful sweet-peas hung
their twisting blowsy blooms.
I began to dare to believe my life
was not knitted
from misfortune.
Kitchen herbs in pots by the back
door.
The coriander bolted so I collected
the seeds
and with wonder I let the
not-full-stops
roll round my palm.
Tree leaves turned gold as proof of
change,
the second baby came, the tenancy was
up,
I was back in the midst of life
and the spell of the garden was
broken.
It's work for a season was done.
Claire Temple
Deus ex Machina
Not dreaming, but the strange simplicity
of that chairlift rising slowly up the hillside
one Mediterranean morning in September,
carrying you – ludicrously like a god –
mere feet above the tiny gardens whose
crops, in bunched and ripe abundance, lay
under both the cloudless sky and gliding
immortal you going by on your way
up the slope to the rocky top from which
bare outcrop, far above those offerings,
you looked down upon the little lives
that tiny island held, and the wee blue sea
that held it, small, beneath a deep blue sky,
and your great blue eye that held it all.
Craig
Dobson
"Oh, Mother"
It’s pushing up through the grass.
It’s going to come out, mother,
everything you did.
Our lovely garden will soon be
infested with
all those secrets stuffed into shoe
boxes,
shoved in the ground,
covered with dirt so they wouldn’t be
found.
I buried them for you under a
mid-summer sky.
Sweat dripping down my stomach, my
thighs,
knees sinking into the soil,
face red, round and shining.
Behind me sat summer’s fallen prey;
stinking wreaths in a three letter
chain,
the petals rotting in filial shame,
begging that I keep mum about days
long gone.
But you’re not here now,
no more time to hold my tongue.
I’m going to drag it all out, mother,
and watch it burn in the high noon
sun.
George Lacey
The House on the Olonetskaya
- They
said, here was the gate….
With closed
eyes, I stood with hand stretched out
And opened the
gate that was there once
In my aged
imagination.
And let it lead
me down the old path
As it was
before.
Where
Grandmother’s garden still bloomed
Although my
feet walked over the weeds in the kingdom of the forgotten.
This was the
room, what shall become of these corners,
Where the clock
stood and the samovar steamed.
I tiptoe here,
so as not to wake the years that are resting in peace.
In that dark
corner, where the shadow of the piano loomed
Like a mountain
of waiting music, for the touch of my young hand.
In that garden,
they had taken tea and discussed Lermontov over cards,
The poet had
read aloud on an eternal evening.
Coming to you,
is like rocking my childhood in a cradle
Peering down
upon it, with an adult face.
We could come
to stand here like a clump of old birches
At the bank of
the river we had loved.
So let us lock
the door of the dacha, even though it is now
So fragile that
it could come apart at our fingers.
Elizabeth Jane Timms
Blue Slippers
A woman wound in white cloths crouches by a
wall. She makes
no shadow; yellow heat hums. Beads fastened in
her hair smell
of lemon. Her nails are crimson scimitars
slicing the mortar
which crumbles at her touch like burnt
paper. Clearing a space,
miraculous as a tulip, she slides through. Beads
from her hair catch
in the mortar where they will germinate; trees will shade
the wall.
The wrapped and lemon-scented woman follows a path lined
with black
and crimson tulips winding through woods into
fog. A dog cries;
branches fall onto pillows of fog. The woman is
cold; damp soaks
into her bones, turning them to agate.
It is still and cool in the lemon grove when yellow sand
rages from the
west, flinging ashes against the wall. Women
ringed with children,
and scholars with dusty fingers, gather here for
tea. Seated on striped
blankets they drink iced black souchong from agate cups
while ragged
dark birds nag like brass bells in the curmudgeonly
wind. A boy
in blue slippers laced with silver bangles chinks up and
down the grove,
waving white cloths at the black birds. They
brandish their wings
like scimitars, open and close mouths red and silken as
petals.
Fragments of conversation catch in his hair like blown
feathers;
if he gathers enough he will understand the mystery of
rest.
I shake sand from my blanket, fold it around me against a
gritty fog;
the stripes shimmer like noon on the
dunes. Severed tulip heads litter
the ground. A bell ringing, ringing its brassy
tongue, ringing in time
with my steps, pushes me on. Mist muffles like
the woolen hoods
thrown over the heads of those abducted on their way home
from market,
laden with tea and lemons. The bell fades,
my steps beat
forward, stones slice my soles. The path is
slick, blood on agate.
Fog-borne sand seeps through ears, eyes, into my skull
where it curls
and breaks, falls away, coating walls and ceiling with
shards of blue,
silver comets, dawn vibrating over the yellow
sand. On my feet
water falling, tiny bells, the footfalls of lizards come to
drink.
I hear fish finning translucent green water. The
black birds are preening
their wings onto the white cloths.
Charity Everitt
Derek Jarman’s Garden, Dungeness
For Keith Collins
The garden looks much as it did last
year –
tussocks and ruffles in a harmony of
greens;
circles of erected flint and
ground-down brick;
the decaying lapstrake with its
peeling paint.
A few
eschscholzia, luminously pink, outglow
valerian and
the more prolific orange; fennel,
heads already
dead, sways by the front door;
horned
poppies project their priapic pods.
You pull up
weeds, attuned to impermanence –
longshore
drift widening the gap between garden
and the sea,
giving rogue plants an opportunity
to sneak in
from the rougher ground inland;
the comet, once brighter than the
stars, curving
from an unruly sun to the infinite
beyond;
the tightening constriction of
terminal disease;
vision narrowing to blue, and finally
to black.
Lapstrake: a
clinker-built boat.
‘Unruly sun’ is a
reference to John Donne’s The Sun Rising whose words are
affixed to a wall of Prospect Cottage, Jarman’s property on Dungeness.
‘Blue’ acknowledges
Derek Jarman’s film made in 1993, not long before he died.
Mantz
Yorke
bananas in india
a wooden frame holds the picture of a garden,
a painting we will only see for four days;
heat covers the banana tree,
fluorescent leaves in the sunlight,
small green bananas turning to gold
across the wire mesh, a mango tree,
green mangoes the size of a child’s palm,
tears of jade hanging together,
unready,
and beside a pretty frangipani,
its yellow sun flowers
sweet with milky vanilla
below our balcony, three goats
step about in the damp earth,
the crunch of green as they eat non-stop;
a small white kid jumps along the fence,
then rests beside its mother
we sip masala tea, eat peanut chikki,
watch our host water her pot plants,
her chillis on show at the front door;
while across the street,
bananas rot in the back of trucks
and broken glass
edges stone garden walls
Lisa Reily
Contributors
KB Ballentine’s fifth collection, Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, was published in 2017 by
Middle Creek Publishing. Published in Crab
Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury
Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies
including In Plein Air (2017)
and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search
of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.
Bill Brown is the author of eleven poetry collections. New work appears or is forthcoming in Tar River, Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Worcester Review, Evening Street Review, Louisville Review, Southern Poetry Review, among others. The Cairns, New and Selected Poems is out from 3: A Taos Press.
Sarah Brown Weitzman, a past National Endowment for the Arts
Fellow in Poetry and Pushcart Prize nominee, is widely published in hundreds of
journals and anthologies including New Ohio Review, North American
Review, The Bellingham Review, Rattle, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Miramar,
Spillway and elsewhere. Her latest chapbook, AMOROTICA, is
forthcoming from Darkhouse Press.
Michael G. Casey has published four novels, a book of non-fiction and an award-winning chapbook of short stories. A poetry collection, Broken Circle, which includes several prize-winning poems, is due out in April (Salmon Press). Six of his plays have been performed by the Umbrella Theatre company, one, by invitation, in the Henrik Ibsen Museum, Oslo.
Eric Chiles is an adjunct professor of English and
Journalism at a number of colleges in eastern Pennsylvania. His poetry has
appeared in Chiron Review, Gravel,
Rattle, San Pedro River Review, Snakeskin, Tar River Poetry, Third Wednesday,
and elsewhere. His chapbook, Caught in
between is available from Desert Willow Press.
Miranda Day studied English at Oxford University and now lives on the edge of
Dartmoor. She has worked as a karaoke bar hostess, journalist and English
teacher. Her work has appeared in publications including Acumen, The Frogmore Papers and Mslexia.
Patrick Deeley is from Loughrea, County
Galway. Groundswell: New and Selected Poems, is the latest of
his six collections with Dedalus Press. His critically acclaimed,
best-selling memoir, The Hurley Maker's Son, published by
Transworld, was shortlisted for Non-fiction in the 2016 Irish Book Awards.
Craig
Dobson's had poems
published in Acumen, Agenda,
Antiphon, Butcher’s Dog, Crannóg,
Crossways, The Frogmore Papers, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter’s House,
The London Magazine, Magma, Neon, New Welsh Review, The North, Orbis, Poetry
Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Skylight 47, Snakeskin,
Stand, The Poetry Village, The Rialto, Under The Radar and Wells Street Journal.
Charity
Everitt was born and
raised in Tucson, Arizona, and has come home after education and other
adventures in the Midwest. She is now happily retired following a career in
technical writing and engineering software design and development.
Goran Gatalica was born in Virovitica, Croatia,
1982. He was awarded both physics and chemistry degrees from the University of
Zagreb, and proceeded directly to a PhD program after graduation. He has
published poetry, haiku, and prose in literary magazines, journals, and
anthologies. He is a member of the Croatian Writers’ Association.
Carol Grametbauer is the author of two chapbooks: Homeplace, (Main Street Rag, 2018) and Now & Then (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in journals including Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Connecticut River Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and in a number of anthologies.
George Lacey is a poet from London currently living and working in Japan. They are a graduate of English and Creative Writing (BA) from Brunel University London. They enjoy writing about queer identity, mental illness, and wrestling.
Dan MacIsaac writes from Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in
many journals, including Magma, Agenda, Stand, and The Interpreter’s
House. Brick Books published his collection, Cries
from the Ark, in September 2017.
John Mole's most recent collections
are Gestures and Counterpoints (Shoestring
Press) and A Different Key (New Walk Editions ).Recipient
of The Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards, and The Signal Award for his
poetry for children, he lives in Hertfordshire and is president of Ver Poets.
John Newson has a wide variety of interests, ranging from architecture to zoology, and a corresponding inability to focus on any single task. He lives in Wiltshire with his wife and two children. John has work published with Anima Poetry, Avatar Review, Rotary Dial, The Lyric, The Moth and others.
Lisa Reily is a former literacy consultant, dance director and
teacher from Australia. Her poetry has been published in several journals, such
as Amaryllis, London Grip, Panoplyzine,
Magma Poetry and Sentinel Literary
Quarterly magazine. You can find out more about Lisa at lisareily.wordpress.com
M.S. Rooney lives in Sonoma, California with poet Dan Noreen. Her work appears in journals, including Leaping Clear, Panoply and Sky Island Journal and anthologies, including American Society: What Poets See, edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King, and Ice Cream Poems, edited by Patricia Fargnoli. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Claire Temple has had poems published in Fabric and The Delinquent magazines as well as appearing in the anthology Poets In The Afternoon. She has read at
various venues, but most often at the Poetry Cafe in London.
Alarie Tennille (Kansas City) was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, with a genius older brother destined for NASA, a ghost, and a yard full of cats. She graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. Alarie hopes you’ll visit her at alariepoet.com.
Elizabeth Jane Timms is a historian, writer, historical consultant and poet, based near London, UK. She is a member of Oxford University Poetry Society. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals and poetry magazines, including The Oxonian Review, Coldnoon: International Journal of Travelling Cultures, North of Oxford Journal, Nine Muses Poetry and elsewhere.
Gareth
Writer-Davies was shortlisted in the Bridport
Prize (2014 and 2017) Erbacce Prize (2014). Commended Prole Laureate
Competition (2015) and Prole Laureate (2017)
Commended Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) Highly
Commended (2017). His pamphlet Bodies
(2015) Indigo Dreams and the pamphlet Cry Baby (2017) His first collection The Lover's Pinch (Arenig Press) (2018) Hawthornden Fellow (2019).
Mantz Yorke lives in Manchester, England. His poems have appeared in a number of print magazines, anthologies and e-magazines in the UK, Ireland, Israel, Canada, the US, Australia and Hong Kong.
