Issue 22 September 2019

Editor's Comments

Welcome to the September 2019 issue! It is good to see some familiar names among the contributors and also to welcome poets publishing in Allegro for the first time. I hope you enjoy reading their poems.

Sally Long




Poems







Fox At Night

What is his purpose, dodging bright lights like a drunk
Man, hedging here and there, guilty as sin?
Walls and wire reinforce his lunatic determination
He’s a crack-head using the high for bravery, or he’s a murderer
An insane lieutenant or a wife-beater,
A sower of bombs watching the clock, a cute-faced suicide
Or, to be generous, a loner cursed with insomnia looking for
A twenty-four hour supermarket –
He gets away with it, the unspoken crime or violation
Or the brazen stroll among knife-children
Or angry wheels: he wants to drone missiles into weddings
But this is the limit, cruising for scraps, patrolling
Black bin-liners full of kiddy-shit, tampons and empty tins
The cruelty of that, the rage, the insult
The price on his head, the label of vermin -
Like thirst, a need to be numbered among the righteous.



Fred Johnston




The Shipping Forecast

She would listen to the shipping forecast
Before she went to sleep, North Utsire,
South Utsire, Fisher, German Bight

He had become accustomed to the low,
Tremulous names and imagined each
Of them on a map, some desolate stretch

Of water that rose and melted away,  
Rain furrowing the swell, hail, and
In the more northern reaches, snow

Cast across the wintry sea in vast columns
Of light and dark.  Cromarty, Hebrides,
Bailey, Rockall, Shannon

And lying there he had become aware
Of some strange tide that was taking
Them both deeper out,

Out where the trawlers would not dare to
Go even the in the hardest of seasons,
Where bouys clanked ceaselessly

On their ropes.  And he would turn to her
And murmur in her ear,  Sole, Fitzroy,
Biscay, Trafalgar

But she would be gone and beyond all
Of his familiar frequencies.

Grant Watson




My Mother's Ashes

Throwing up my mother's ashes
To the careless, indifferent, winds,
I watch them make their last adventure,
Fetching over the cliff.

Some deposit in fissures and cracks
Where the rock roses and samphire grow.
On this scorched powder they will thrive,
Fed by my dead mother's history.

Some prefer the wet froth of sea;
One final romp on crystal surf:
Their dryness slaked, they will compound
With that drowned antique sludge
All life are emerged from.

And yet others dance, refusing to land,
Intent on observing a holiday...
But one flake lodges in my eye
Just to remind me:

Of impermanence of steady vision,
Of my mum's fierce love for me
And, that there are many ways
To cry.

Clive Donovan 




The Kite

Bamboo. Desire of engaging
the wind, skeletal but sturdy
as the morning. Cloudless sky,
paler than Japanese paper.
Gluing my intuition to what
might work, knife trimming
hard strips, scissor cutting
blues. I’m open as the field.
I thread and reach out, love’s
skein uncoiled. Trusting the
wind, weight in my hands.
It swerves left and right
as it rises. In time it stills.
I leave the taut line to feel
grasses on my back, to watch
with a blank mind till sunset.

Jonel Abellanosa





In the empty woods 

I walked my wakeful body 
through the moor outside,
to some thicket’s edge.
My lantern of thoughts, 
swung sideways by the wind,
by the mind, dimmed 
against walls of thunders.
I looked above my rattles. 

An axe for wood, 
a word for death:
as my father’s hand 
slipped from the last grasp, 
what emptiness widened 
between our two hands?
Did the Universe expand 
or crack? What vein did he follow
in his aggregate of thoughts,
once seeds of early life? 

The virtue of the dead tree
my winter muse.

Federico Federici





Heron

A grey ghost ship glides
over the estuary sheen
parting the airwaves
with a slow
rhythmic wing beat.

Its hulk rises above
the water’s edge
haunting me
with a promise of passage
to the unnamed.

Hélène Demetriades





Arnside Knott


The lane disappoints. Last year, cascades of blackberries
ripe for picking: today, most are tight-fisted green,
the crop perhaps three weeks short of its peak. 
The road to the Knott yields only scrawny fruit –
less than a pound in my box, against last year’s six. 

I climb to the top of the rock-strewn slope, stopping at the trees
where we scattered ashes. Little time for remembrance, though:
rain’s grey drapes are closing on Morecambe Bay. I descend
a harebelled field, exchanging wary looks with Highland cows –
this time, there’s no white bell striking amid the blue. 

The rail-fare’s been poor value as far as blackberrying goes,
but there’ve been compensations: a hedge’s mauve-hazed sloes,
peacocks on knapweed’s magenta tufts, meadow browns
flittering between bushes on the limestone screes,
robin’s pincushions burning amongst barbs of rose.

We’re told a couple of hours exercising each week
will keep us fit: this walk has been better than going to a gym,
pedalling vigorously on a bike, and getting nowhere fast.  



Mantz Yorke

Though Arnside Knott is a relatively small limestone hill (522 feet) it commands great views all round, in particular over Morecambe Bay. My friend’s ashes were scattered at the summit.





Jutai


for Scott Wallace

Scarlet macaws were a sign that flécheiros
were near the river looking for dugouts
from a tribe near Jutai where men from
Leticia were clearing the forest. You had
much to gain after you settled a claim for
the Yagua scout who paddled down Rio
Negro to the reservation while gardía
patrolled the boundary, enforcing contracts
between chiefs, preventing barter sanctions
between territories while miners in Belém
waited at the metal exchange for news about
the price of gold. You are the largest exporter
in Brazil, seeking global markets for gems
mined by Indians who no longer till soil—
or pray to gods for rain.



Clara B. Jones





January litter


like a broken umbrella
tossed in the trash

Christmas trees in driveways


Simone Tropea 






They Turned to Me and Gave

the same fake smiles / laughter / conversations / disturb the music / the melody of voices
in every coffee shop the same drinks / the same fake smiles / laughter / conversations
in every coffee shop the same drinks / disturb the music / the melody of voices

tongues of fire / burning wings / children grown weary of ruin / death & denial
this dreary century suffers from madness / tongues of fire / burning wings
this dreary century suffers from madness / children grown weary of ruin / death & denial

there’s a special on for lunch / wine /a bottle / they don’t care what happens to the world
it’s for crazy people / the ones with gold / there’s a special on for lunch / wine / a bottle
it’s for crazy people / the ones with gold / they don’t care what happens to the world

Rodney Wood





Iphis Becomes
after Ovid, ‘Metamorphoses’, Book IX, ll. 666-797


The joy was the strange and terrifying,
                                                             when
I took the Temple steps and, fresh from prayer,
found my stride lengthening, my shoulders square,
a deepening in my jaw unknown till then.

I marked the earth more heavily. My skin
was scorched by loving breeze, exposed and free.
I feared the face I would show to Ianthe
at the altar, true as I’d ever been

and still undetonated, unconfessed;
feared bringing her into the sacred lie
that freed me of a learned monstrosity.
I breathed; praised Isis; overstepped and blessed

the ruined expectations of my world.
The man performs the promise of the girl.


Tim Kiely






Nostalgia


Self-pity disguised as love tiptoeing in with the plash, the smell of rain, or a crosshatched ink sketch of a gaunt pier, or the sky’s famous late fade from blue, regret resonating deep in the maw, hens scratching, a flagged kitchen floor.  Sounds prompt it; think foghorns, the knelling of distant bells, listen to One Fine Day, or Satie’s lonely piano.  Love’s old dance induces it, too; those movies over the years with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy ageing like once good ideas, and certain books, always.  Enter an attic’s dead air, or stare into firelight’s glimmer alone of a winter’s evening.
School yearbooks, citations of success, stained letters, attract its churn, the scent of lavender, birthday paper lanterns strung between pale birch boughs.  Solitude fertilises it; a friend’s caravan, the bliss of footprints tracking a beach; expired passports, even quiz questions can draw you towards its abyss.  As for the dead’s origins, tread with care venturing there.  Journeying to rooms left behind invites it of course, so linger on streets busy with strangers, ambushed by tears’ pricking, the past’s fierce heat reduced.  Within silences’ enclosures daydreams frolic and frisk, time’s trips seductive, robbing you of here, right now, memory the culprit, that faculty so dear.



Ian C Smith





Cleopatra’s Siamese Cat


The moon’s louvered 
clouds shutter 
a Siamese cat’s 
piano-lidded eyes.  

If all nightwalkers 
were accompanied 
she might 
then
be inclined 
to cease 
her invocations 
to the spirit world - 
but where,
pray tell,
would that leave 
the Other?  

Cleopatra’s cranial shell 
would shatter 
into a thousand and
one nights 
at the very tinkle 
of her collared bell.


George Beddow






Sentimental
 after Giazotto (Adagio in G Minor) 

Today is the day that has always been,
I hear your voice in the wind.

Your face appears as it has always been.
The silver needles of the rain

pierce the leaves, and in defeat
flat red hearts fall quietly to the street.

There is so much I can’t explain—
why piano keys clink in the rain,

or how fragrant the rouge, always there,
attends your laughter in the autumn air.

I feel your breath warm on my cheek.
I hear your voice in the wind.

You are the letter that arrives each day,
the day that has always been.

We walk along the bank of maple leaves.
You are the image I see and re-see,

There is so much to explain—tonight—soon
will be the night of the poet’s moon,

and tomorrow you will be the letter
that arrives again, and will contain

the day that has always been.  The wind
and the rain, the leaves on the street

in the cold autumn air cannot explain
the day you have always been.
 
Michael Gessner





Pillage


I admire the intricate, formidable architecture
Of spiders, but when I found a daunting web
Erected between two pillars of my front porch
Blocking passage to the steps, I hastened
To sweep it away with the stroke of a broom
And in so sweeping I thought of the ancient sackings
Of temples throughout the ages by barbarians.



Louis Gallo





Commuting


Lungs and chest and even
elbows heaving, like an
almost-fit thing; an
active/vigorous human. A
feeling of pushing.
Stretching. Someone with a
regular history; someone
with their starched suit and
pocket tablet and weekends
stowed away like
gemstones- out of sight.
Someone with expensive
baubles on an inherited
sideboard and a King
Charles spaniel they walk
briskly on a Sunday morning. 

Gathering my breath I realise
how far I have come. From
the drinking day and night,
and complete depletion of
energy-and-will times. The
loss of striving and desire
and even pleasantries
sometimes; sound and
optics and internal
chronometer broken;
ostensibly beyond repair. But
now, on a commuter train to
Reading, I feel free enough
to ask another commuter -
‘Can I sit there please?’

Thinking that I deserve that
seat. That I deserve to
occupy that place as much
as that woman’s raincoat
and banana. And that life,
even in this minuscule way,
has meaning and value
again. 


Claire Sexton






“Difference is the ionic bond of marriage” 


said my father, a chemist. 
He would talk that way
about disagreements, anger, 
the electrostatic attraction 
of oppositely charged ions.

Mom belted out I don’t wanna play in your yard
or fingered a delicate Moonlight Sonata 
while he couldn’t sing Happy Birthday
except monotone. Deaf to music.

She died. 
He conducted research in blood clotting chemistry 
so when his transient ischemic attacks began
he understood perfectly. 
Told no one.

After, I found lab notes, self-observation 
he’d jotted on a yellow pad with shaky hand:
TIA # 4 Date: 09/09/75 Time: 17:45
Music: — / / ... / / — ... / / —

Near death came music 
which he jotted as dashes and slashes and dots.
Then no jotting for the fifth and final attack
but that night as he died alone in his bed
by moonlight surely she sang 
Welcome, come play in my yard
and he heard.



Joe Cottonwood 




 
Lorca’s Grave Cannot Be Found
Federico Garcia Lorca is a lizard slipping
through clapping flamenco hands
trying to catch his duende by the tail
and his grave for the night
is a tiny hole inside a cactus
on the Sacromonte hill.
He is a feral cat lapping up
fountain water in the Generalife
before domesticated cats
chase him out of paradise
and his grave for the night
is in the lap of a statue on the Gran Via.
He is a word chopped quick al granadino
and served hot with fried anchovies
and his grave for the night
is the mouth of the young man he noticed
in the café rinconcillo.
Historians who seek out his grave
only have rumors,
eighty years of indigestible words.
They do not know graves in Granada
are held only as long
as the branch desires to hold the olive.
They search behind stage curtains in the olive groves
and find only dead actors.
Chris Pellizzari





Alabaster


When he got ill, she took to carving things:
a fallen branch became a Gothic saint,
black stone, a pair of eagles.  He could walk,
but slowly, from the door to the front gate.

Sculpture was all removal, hollowing out.
A carer came to take him for a bath,
dress him and shadow him around the house.
It was less shaming.  She began to sand

and polish alabaster, first a form
like a Cycladic goddess, then a bowl.
He had come home again from hospital,

but not for long, they said.  The open shell,
fluted, transparent, needed hours of work.
She sat beside him and he fell asleep.


Ruth Valentine






Dressing Dolls

my  mother married a sewing machine
was pregnant with fabric
spewed it forth
gorgeous
by the yard
from paper patterns
pinned to lengths of cloth
she cut two daughters out.

the first she made 
from  fabric that would last
her stitching was uneven
the placket gaped
the buttons dragged
the seams unravelled
the hems came down
there remained
an inheritance 
of skill and faults.

next she chose  lighter stuff
thinking it easier to manipulate
pink and blue and yellow striped
she gathered it into narrow tucks
smocked it
stepped back
to gaze at it
gave a contented sigh
it pirouetted
curtseyed 
paid homage to her feat 
she didn’t see 
that  gauzy wings had grown
she glanced away
the  doll was gone.

Judith Russell





The Greengrocery’s Dropped Tears

The greengrocery wreaks of pagan earth –
idolatrous grapes, heretical dates, faithless plums –
fruits dropped upon the ground and
plucked up again. In the shiny moment before
decomposition, they are a display of fallen tears –
fig sorrow, cherry hate, lemon envy.
In the greengrocery next door, they offer
edited religious fruits – apple pie
is the default selection
.
Jane R Rogers




 An increase in bears

There has been a sharp increase in bears
on our streets. There have been sightings 
near the station: bears hunkered on steps, 
grizzled and matted with rough sleep, paper  
cups dunked with change. Best to look away;
it’s dangerous to stare. What use, anyway, 
can bears have for your coins? They are not
even real bears. Button eyes that don’t blink
and can’t cry. Footpads unstitched or lost.
Most have a cirrus of stuffing torn from joints,
but that is all put on you see, for sympathy.
They were worn, no doubt, before they took
to these streets, their balding fur patched off
by small hands holding and holding. How
could they let go? I, for one, take care of 
my bear. I expect they just took off one day.
You never see them move; of course, by night 
it’s another tale. I never give anything: doubtless 
they operate in gangs, or are taking something. 

Alexandra Melville





Loitering Above

The boom of the construction site
has become a soft din along the Charles
where my wife and I are strolling, flanked
by daffodils and blue bells and departed
friends loitering above the treetops or sailing
the river, dressed up in the most colorful
outfits, brasher than they ever were in this
life, bobbing calmly with the ducks
and the geese massing upon the waters,
my wife and I sadly with no bread to give.

Tim Suermondt





My Mother’s Flashbacks


I saw your father last night
                                                           
Two years have passed
since his demise shook me,
waves radiating from my epicentre.

In the aftershock, I whispered to her
of his slipping away, but she was lost
in a mass of tangles.

Aw - he looked so handsome

He wore a flat cap in winter
to warm his shiny pate.
Now, it rests at the back

of my reminiscence drawer
with her dragonfly brooch
and snapshots of their life.

Their wedding photo, eyes smile, lips
say Cheese. His dark waves intact, yes
he was handsome, her unending heartthrob.

I think he might take me back

When their marriage fractured, a tug of war
stretched me until I split into pieces.
Although middle-aged, I was a child.

He embraced a new wife for twelve years.
Even if his life had extended, he could not
 - would not return to her empty arms.

He gave me a beautiful brooch

Her smile was wide -
unaware the broken dragonfly would
not settle on her breast again.



Eira Needham





Assisted Living

For my mother 

You’ve found a rhythm, you tell me, a way of parceling out the day,
        measuring it in blocks of time: morning scripture, lunch, afternoon

walks to the mailbox. And now that spring is here, it’s the wrens
        you love, their shallow ticking through the mulch outside

your window, opened again to the world, winter already receding,
        its crisp linen returned to the parlors underground. And the hymn

you play each night, lying in the dark before sleep, imagining the lift
        and fall of your hands, your day fastening in a ligature of sound.

This pattern you tell me of waking each morning to the same light.
        And the birds at the feeder, you explain, rousing you with argument

and hunger.

Adam Chiles






small losses
 
I lately have begun a habit
of losing things
small objects of attachment
familiar to my body
an earring    a necklace
my mother’s ring

this skill in losing
is not an expertise
I need
thoughts run unthreaded
beaded words fall from
their cat-gut string
 
it’s contagious –
but I’ve had time to practise
small things I can handle
my body buckles
at the thought
of losing more

Diana Cant




Contributors

Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including New Verse News, Poetry Kanto, The Lyric, The McNeese Review and Star*Line, nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars awards. His poetry collections are, Meditations (Alien Buddha PressSongs from My Mind’s Tree  and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), 50 Acrostic Poems, (CyberwitIndia), and his politically-progressive collection, In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art). His first speculative poetry collection, Pan’s Saxophone, is forthcoming from Weasel Press.

George Beddow’s debut collection Out Of Kilter was published in 2012 by Lapwing Press. The Bitter Lemons Of Nerval was published in 2016 by Original Plus Chapbooks.  He is working towards a new collection.

Diana Cant is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, currently a student on the MA in Poetry Writing from Newcastle University, studying at the Poetry School in London. Her poems have been published the NHS Anthology, Humanagerie, and Eighty Four, and in Ink, Sweat and Tears and Nine Muses.

Adam Chiles’
first collection of poems, Evening Land (Cinnamon Press) was nominated for the 2009 Gerald Lampert Memorial award for best debut collection in Canada. His work has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2006 (Samovar) and has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Cumberland River Review, Connotation Press, Cortland Review, The Moth (Ireland), Terrain.org and The Threepenny Review. He is professor of English and Creative Writing at Northern Virginia Community College. 

Joe Cottonwood  has built or repaired hundreds of houses as carpenter/contractor in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. joecottonwood.com

Hélène Demetriades studied English at Leeds University, went to drama school and worked as an actor.  Later she trained as a transpersonal psychotherapist.   She has had poems published in Reach Poetry, Sarasvati, The Dawntreader, Anima magazine, several anthologies and The Curlew, (September '19).Online in Clear Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Eunoia Review and Allegro.  She lives in South Devon with her family.
  

Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines, print and online, including Allegro, The Journal, Agenda, Acumen, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Stand and The Transnational. He lives in the creative atmosphere of Totnes in Devon, U.K. often walking along the River Dart for inspiration. He has yet to make a first collection.



Federico Federici is a physicist, translator and writer. His works have appeared in Jahrbuch Der Lyrik 2019, Raum, Sand, Trafika Europe, Magma and others. Among his books: Requiem auf einer Stele (2018); Liner notes for a Pithecanthropus Erectus sketchbook (2018) with a foreword by SJ Fowler.

Louis Gallo’s poetry collections, Crash and Clearing the Attic, will be published by Adelaide in the near future.  A third, Archaeology, will be published by Kelsay Books.  His work has appeared or will shortly appear in Wide Awake in the Pelican State (LSU anthology), Rattle, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth,  Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, and many others. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

Michael Gessner has authored 11 books of poetry and prose. From the most recent, (Selected Poems, FutureCycle Press, 2016,) The Poetry Foundation chose several for its online archives (2017). His latest publications include those in The American Journal of PoetryInnisfree Poetry JournalThe Kenyon ReviewNew Oxford ReviewNorth American Review, (finalist for 2016 James Hearst Prize,) Verse Daily, and he co-edits Verse-Virtual.  His reviews appear regularly, and he is a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle.  More information may be found atwww.michaelgessner.com 

Fred Johnston’s recent work has appeared in The Spectator, The New Statesman, and a poem from his latest collection, Rogue States, was Guardian Poem of the Week a little while back. He was born in Belfast in 1951.

Clara B. Jones
is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is author of the poetry collection, /feminine nature/, published in 2017 by GaussPDF.

Tim Kiely is a barrister and poet from London. His poetry and criticism has appeared in: Ariadne's ThreadLunar PoetrySouth Bank Poetry; theMorning Star; and on the websites the Blue of Noon and Spontaneous Poetics. Most recently he contributed to the Emma Press anthology, Everything That Can Happen.

Alexandra Melville is a writer and educator living in London. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, Lighthouse, Brittle Star, Mechanics’ Institute Review Online, and Ink, Sweat and Tears, and featured in the National Poetry Library’s Instagram Poetry exhibition. She has been long-listed for the Poetry School’s Primers Prize and is currently an MA student in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths. She rarely tweets at @ADotMelville.

Eira Needham is a retired teacher living in Birmingham UK. Her poetry has been published in print and online. Some of her recent publications are in Green Silk Journal and Lighten Up Online. She has been Featured Writer in West Ward Quarterly and once came first in Inter Board Poetry Contest.

Chris Pellizzari is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Awakenings Review, BoomerLitMag, Good Works Review, Counterclock, Amarillo Bay, The Literary Nest, Ink in Thirds, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Eunoia Review, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Misery Tourism He is a member of The Society of Midland Authors and is assistant editor at The Awakenings Review

Jane R Rogers is a member of Greenwich Poetry Workshop and co-edited Magma Issue 65. Jane’s poems have appeared in Atrium, Prole, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Curlew, Long Exposure Magazine, Tears in the Fence, Obsessed with Pipework, Tate Gallery Website poetry anthology 2012 among others. Jane lives in London.

Judith Russell began writing poetry when she was 70. A retired English teacher, she wishes to leave a legacy of her poems to her daughter and granddaughter.She has studied with Liz Berry and Helen Ivory online with the National Centre for writing.She has not previously attempted publication.


Claire Sexton is a fifty year old librarian and writer, hailing from Wales, who has been published in magazines such as Ink, Sweat and Tears, Amaryllis, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Foxglove Journal, Amethyst Review, and Light: a Journal of Photography and Poetry. She lives with a very regal cat called Queenie. 


Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Australian Poetry Journal, Critical Survey, Live Encounters, Poetry New Zealand, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book iswonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.



Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest Josephine Baker Swimming Pool  from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Stand Magazine, Galway Review, Bellevue Literary Review and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Simone Tropea has a degree in Creative Writing from London Metropolitan University, and lives in London. She currently works in the bar of a Victorian music hall and has travelled extensively. Her work has been published in Lowestoft Chronicle.

Ruth Valentine's recent publications are Downpour (Smokestack), Rubaiyat for the Martyrs of Two Wars (Hercules) and A Grenfell Alphabet (self-published in aid of the Grenfell fund).  She lives in Tottenham.

Grant Watson is a playwright and screenwriter whose last play Perfect Blue was awarded three international awards.  He has written extensively for television including Holby City, Family Affairs and Doctors.  Grant is also a singer-songwriter whose EP Figure in a Dark Landscape is due for release later this year.

Rodney Wood’s poems have appeared recently in The High Window Press, Orbis, Magma and Envoi. His debut pamphlet, Dante Called You Beatrice, appeared in 2017. He is joint MC of a monthly open mic and the Stanza Rep for Woking.

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.