Editor's Comments
Welcome to Issue 36 of Allegro Poetry Magazine which, as usual includes a wide range of poems, from the reflective to the light-hearted. I hope you enjoy reading them.
Poems
Not Being Orpheus
The phone buzzes in my bag
but I miss the call, nor
think to look behind me
to see how close you are,
not being Orpheus. The phone
again and I miss you.
You’re nearer to me than ever
yet still I haven’t noticed.
Almost at
the gates,
turning from the thick
Greek city walls
into our hotel, I hear
a panting
as I enter
the old hunting lodge
of Duca Marigliano,
and it’s you, outpaced
at
Paestum. Only then
I hear your last message,
see your hand reach out.
Is that a pomegranate?
John Greening
Your Cat
Your cat surely likes me.
She offers me a well-licked paw
to gently hold and snuggles on my lap with a purr
like a newly serviced Daimler.
In fact she reminds me of a girlfriend
I used to stroke—she liked her cuddles too
and cherry brandies in the snug of our village pub.
She wore mohair sweaters with rolled-up sleeves
and she used to tease the local boys,
bending in so low at the pool table, smashing reds.
She won at everything that mattered—
ciggie smoke-rings, spit-bubbles, strip poker.
Of course, she never would submit to stay with us;
she left one day for London on a bus.
Ah yes, now cat hops down and sashays to her little door.
You make your move and take her cozy place.
Clive Donovan
We Come From Bombed Buildings
A straggle of grubby kids
photographed knee-deep in rubble.
Tank-top home knits and ration knees,
scabs, Spam and evacuee stories.
Months later, the bulldozers came,
demolition balls flattened what was left
as whole streets were transplanted to high rise blocks,
new estates on the edge of the city.
There we grew, had our own kids,
worked to chase down our dreams
while the lives we knew were buried
beneath concrete shopping precincts
modelled on council planning tables.
Ben Banyard
Records
For the past eight years
I’ve kept a logbook
now six volumes long.
It distills the day into
bullets: Those essays
I graded and emails replied to.
Sometimes, it notes the successes
of writing, of publications, of going
to the park and eating donuts with my daughter.
I imagine her, after I’m gone,
sorting through my vinyl and books,
finding these journals and
seeing how little life
changes most days, how its
a culmination of completed tasks
and the occasional break in
routine, when everything goes
wrong–or one thing right.
Christopher W. Smith
Coming
home for the afternoon
The day
after his death
the day
before my birthday
my father
comes home.
His coffin
is where the coffee table
usually
is. The paintings he left me
bear
witness on the walls.
Light
flickers across him as
the ake
ake waves in the wind
and
filters through the mānuka.
My father
floats in a sea
of white
satin gathers and folds –
his hands
left out to hold onto.
I gaze on
his face
amazed at
how much more
he looks
himself than in the hour after his death –
Coming
home for one afternoon only, since
he did not
want to be embalmed, he left
before his
sons and grandson could come.
mānuka and ake ake
are the Māori names of two trees in Aotearoa New Zealand
Jane Simpson
Carpet Weaver, Delhi
Line after line, thread after thread
the loom is set again,
vertical rays a spectral display
of centuries old tradition.
Time after time, the back and forth shuttle
adds more depth to the breadth,
carefully knotting, hands together,
unending repeating skills.
Weft to the warp, child after man,
until red or blue is the field,
with flower shapes, dragon tongues
or historical mosaic pattern.
Carpets for parties, or underneath prayers,
unchanging forever looms,
for mantras, chants, or Buddhist wheels,
the web of life is spun.
Lavinia Kumar
The Albert Plantation; Sprotbrough
A place of disorder,
ashlars tumbled from ruined walls
choke inside nets of brambles.
A place of uproar,
the motorway hammers one edge flat,
brakes squeeze to a slowdown.
A place of chiff-chaffs,
where light spreads mossy shadows
through nettles, over angled trees.
A place once inked
by Victorian cartographers,
a Sunday’s stroll from the Big House.
A place abandoned,
to a new empire of foxes and rooks
where navigation fails us.
David Harmer
When to Whitewash a Kiln
A dirty, unspoken secret nosing out
from overgrown banks
of elder and ash,
cold stone and sodden brickwork:
the stubborn remains
of a mouldering lime-kiln.
All that intense heat and toxic fumery,
white-washed away by decades of frosts,
snow, winter fogs and sluggish summer rains.
There's more here than meets the eye.
Deer and goats never graze nearby,
neither rabbits nor badgers burrow.
Do they hear murmuring voices,
see the furnace-ghosts aflame,
shrink from the memory of pain?
Not everything can be
white-washed away by frosts,
snow, winter fogs and sluggish summer rains.
Mick McGann-Jones
When Storm Eunice Unravelled the Sea on
Lee-on-the-Solent Beach
Isobars
easing apart on weather man's chart, but still I walk
into punches
of air: ears sting, nose drips, eyes blur. Last night
Mid-Atlantic wind had Eunice unravelling her
mischief
along a mile of
bay: almanac, middle aisle bargains, dossier
flapped
open, Amazon doorstep dumped, split charity bags spewed.
Flotsam,
too soft to say.
They
crunch underfoot like little blames: straws, bottle tops, golf tee,
stirrer,
cotton
bud, Biro, doll's leg, spatula, hair clip pink and
glittery with blonde hair
attached,
polystyrene chunks, exhausted puddle of mauve balloon.
Wind,
uncertain of its dwindling role, flings haphazard waves at shingle,
congested
wheeze of khaki moil. I angle forward into my walk, past
snagged
plastic bags that bulge and gulp, packets and paper jigging.
Twine,
orange float and fishing line snagged in pink-tinged bindweed;
better
here than prising open a shark’s mouth.
Distant
horizon glides its freight of ship-cities towards new greed.
Five
trillion reasons why a tube of glue is swallowed by a tuna,
a seal
pup dies with cellophane in its gut, an oystercatcher seeking
lugworm
pulls a rubber band from the sand.
Another
coastline and riverseep of chemicals, oil slick with fulmars tarred
like
outcasts. Spillage of nurdles insinuate oceans pose as tasty fish eggs.
A
bycatch lure jammed in gull's throat. A Canada goose with skewered beak,
dredging
this memory: smiley yellow plastic ducks floating their doughnut
of
water where I hooked a prize every time. Innocent back then.
One
year on, having watched the black-binned, scavenged,
beach-combed,
whisked and washed but still trifling beneath my feet,
reduced
to colourful beads that catch the sun, now ready for gathering
to be
threaded by small hands and held at the throat of a grown-up.
Eve Jackson
Finished
Today is the day when the past
folds itself up like laundry and
stows itself in a drawer
you will never reopen.
Robert L. Penick
Bay of Bengal
The night you leave on a native bark
on blind waters at the edge of day,
faith alone may pierce the dark.
Wandering won't exceed the mark
of dried footfalls in river clay
the night you leave on a native bark.
When you can no longer hark
the compass of your familiar bay,
faith alone may pierce the dark.
Provincial pleasures of this lark
must have lost their long-held sway
that night you leave on a native bark.
The waters trace a knowing arc
about the shoreline of the bay;
faith alone may pierce the dark.
The night your heart thought to embark
on the deep, it would not still or stay
and broke out on a native bark.
Faith alone could pierce the dark.
Arman Chowdhury
Death in Venice
Robert Browning died in Venice in 1889.
No big surprise there – he was resident
in Italy for twenty years after his wife died
in Florence (that’s Elizabeth Barret – maybe
you’ve heard of her). He was holidaying
in the palace his son owned on the Grand
Canal, the Ca’Rezzonico. It’s a museum
now. And Browning? He’s in Poets’ Corner.
Where will you go when you die? The local
crem? I saw my solicitor last week, about the will
and funeral. Westminster Abbey, I told him.
So, is there much money in poetry? he asked.
He’s on £350 an hour. I don’t get a shilling, me.
Stop it, I said. My aching heart. You’re killing me…
Al McClimens
A Sonnet and a Villanelle Walk Out
A Sonnet and a Villanelle
were arguing one day
walking through fields of verse
in a literary way.
There you go repeating yourself
said the sonnet.
Stop being so Shakespearean
said Vi. adjusting her bonnet.
Or is it some other Elizabethan
today or maybe an Italian?
Why can’t you be more like me?
I’m such a reliable companion.
The sonnet and the villanelle rambled
on, unable to talk at random.
But this is how they’re made
as if someone’s planned them.
Charles Pankhurst
Blackberries
The field path cracks like crazy paving,
fissured clay fired to dark burnt-orange
with grasses — brittle, golden — standing speechless.
Rogue tangles of berries hang, precarious
and fat too soon. Not all are out of reach —
a yoga-stretch, a tiptoe balancing,
and down they come. Their silence presses
hard in the hedges’ testaments of doubt.
Today’s task: harvesting. Its stickiness
is purple on my hands and weighing heavy.
But still some left, shares for those winter visitors —
field-fares and redwings — flying the new codes
of changing weather, of uncertainty.
A branch snaps back. I pray there will be birds.
D.A.Prince
Peregrine Webcam
Spring tricked us well that year, lulled her to lay
four eggs before the record rains that fell
and April winds blew colder every day.
She lay low on her ledge far from the fray,
heart beating bright despite sub-zero hell.
Spring tricked us well that year, lulled her to lay,
as seasoned mothers do, a fine array.
Seized by the sudden wicked-weather spell
when April winds blew colder every day
her wings spread wide, her brood patch on display.
She mantled, snowbound, ate each precious shell.
Spring tricked us well that year, lulled her to lay
up in the drifts while cameras relayed
the loss of one, then two, then three. Farewell.
Though April winds blew colder every day
her first-born won the fight; this bird of prey
would fledge. We watchers named him Storm to tell
Spring tricked us well that year, lulled her to lay;
how April winds blew colder every day.
Anne Eyries
Turbulence
ferns, you told me, smoothing fronds
with slender fingers, enchant without
flowers, spores like sparks of woodland
fire
to be caught and carried on a breeze
your studio was filled with nature’s fractals
patterns found in shells or leaves
pencilled, modelled, etched
the images return to me
with music too you tuned your ear
to the score, let the echoes and re-echoes
of Mozart’s fractals flow, the repetitions
an everlasting encore
then we talked about the fractal
patterns of your cells, the storm
turbulence within an endless mirroring—
such is nature’s symmetry, you said
I think of this when looking at your gift:
fern leaves pressed in porcelain
pinna, frond, stipe— iterations
derived from shadows and sunlight
Catherine Glavina
Interdisciplinary Indiscipline
A lifetime ago, back in seventh-grade band,
“The Bullwhip” had all us kids pledge to expand
Our goals for our music. He went on to ask us
To double our time spent in personal practice.
The girls—mostly woodwinds—were eager to please;
Ol’ Bullwhip could always control them with ease.
We boys on the trumpets and trombones, however,
Were harder to handle—we thought we were clever.
We readily signed when the sheet came around—
Exploited a loophole that one of us found.
Response to the ask had just turned on a dime,
And some even wrote that they’d triple their
time!
Now no one could say that we out and out lied.
A math rule we’d learned was defense on our side:
Go multiply zero as much as you will—
The answer you come to remains zero still.
Wm. Walters
With Wang Wei
We take the shore path
to the nearby village
Along the way
taste of blackberries
tart in late autumn
Above us, rumble
of gale force wind
Last hour of light
a hundred gulls glide
among cirrus clouds—
from the north
brent geese will return
with this winter chill.
Wang Wei- Tang Dynasty
poet
Tim Dwyer
Beyond The Old Stone Wall
A song from a hidden bird.
I approach the wall slowly
and the bird goes silent.
Now the notes arise
from another tree.
I try to memorize
the whistle and trills—
though I easily learn human song,
this melody will fade
before I reach home.
At the last moment
a shadow darts from the tree
tucks itself among whin blossoms
and sings again.
Tim Dwyer
Losing
It
He’ll tell
you repeatedly
about the
family boat trip
from Lee
Bay to Ilfracombe
on a
roughening sea
and about
collecting
auger and
razor shells
on Formby
Beach
until the
tide came in.
But he
can’t remember
how to
turn the TV on
and
sometimes forgets
where the
toilet is.
Insidious,
the withering:
as verdant
earth turns arid,
its
deepest-rooted trees
are last
to die.
Mantz Yorke
Having a Shay with you
(Inspired by Frank O’Hara’s ‘Having a Coke with You’)
is even more beautiful than listening to Fairuz on
a Sunday morning or visiting the shores of beach
Batroun, Byblos and Sidon. You look like the kind
of man who built Damascus overnight.
You like the way I cannot hold a stare. The acoustic
performance of Abdelhalim makes this right.
I never knew until now that a secret first date
ends with Surah Maryam being recited by you.
In the rain, I look at you (eventually). I would rather
look at you than at the roadside of begonias and jasmine.
I’ve never been picked before and burdened
with so many butterflies. You are not so affected,
hookah pipe in hand, the broadest shoulders
taking up all space and time.
My senses are hunkering down. I scrutinise
your lashes, your hands, your shape.
There is no use looking around,
but we do—
Maryam Alsaeid
Did We Ever Discuss Distance?
Yes, for income taxes, the miles
I drove to this gig or that workshop.
Yes, with children, miles and miles
to grandmother's house, sun sliding
down the blue sky to blind us,
the beef noodle soup my mother had waiting,
and on to Wyoming where your mother
with her cats and difficulties
did not seem happy to see us,
where were anti-depressants then?
Yes, distance might have made her life
bearable on the interstate.
Yes, your parents drove east—once—
photographed themselves entering every state:
South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and then our
Hopewell
where your father remembered far news—
the Lindbergh baby.
It was all he talked of that week—
Lindbergh and the fireflies he had never seen.
Your mother made sun tea
and hid the pitcher behind the kitchen curtain.
Yes, it was before I traveled far enough
to understand who she was or might have been.
Lois Marie Harrod
Jane and the dove
the day that Jane died
was the day I went out to empty the compost
and my eye caught fluttering movement
along the far fence
was the day I walked down the garden path
to see what it was
and a cooper’s hawk flew up
leaving a wounded dove flailing on the ground
was the day I bent to lift her gently
but then saw her back was ruined
and lowered her again
and left her where she was
was the day her upturned ruby eye met my face
or maybe the dimming light
as she lay on a bed of soft grass
under cottonwoods she knew as home
was the day I recalled Jane’s words
about the necessity for hope
because without hope we are left with apathy
and then we are lost
was the day I returned to the house
and watched from the window
as the hawk returned to fill his belly
sleek and dark in his terrible hunger and beauty
was the day I wondered
when we crossed the line
when starving children and terrified migrants
and military in our streets became the norm
was the day I realized
we must fight for something better
flail our wings as we rest on the soil of home
and fix our eyes on the light even as it ebbs
Barbara Parchim
August Sunday
It is as if only certain sounds are invited
to the warm yellow pools of light –
the blackbird’s ecstatics, the linnet’s
cloth bag of whistles, and something
whooping and wooing in the rowans by the stream.
Water flows there as through moving fingers
over stones bright, clean, smooth as porcelain.
Around me the breeze carries half-heard gossip
between trees; tingling their canopies.
A dog, light-filled, aloud with gladness, ineptly
declares war on a squirrel beyond its reach –
pulping purple berries, lunching on their wine.
Eugene O'Hare
A Chat With Marguerite Patten
You’re faded now and tea-coloured
with dog-eared corners. Your jacket
disappeared many years ago.
You would crumble like fallen leaves
if I turned a page too rapidly,
but I never would because you’re special.
The inscription on your inside cover
has faded but can still be read:
‘Love from Dad’.
I guess your role was to teach me
how to entertain: chicken in wine,
beef wellington, pavlova. I did try
but we failed at the feast-making, you and I,
which doesn’t make you any less special.
One day I’ll pass you on to my daughter,
not for her to use – she knows all that by now –
but to save you from the recycling.
You see, my Dad was rarely a gift-giver.
After life, the last morning
He gets up and pulls on Y fronts, a suit
(crumpled from being folded in a plastic bag
and squashed in a cupboard) and knots his tie.
He slips the change, lighter,
old bus tickets into his pocket
and asks Do people still wear clothes like these?
Rebecca Gethin
Dachau
In formation they march up the bark of the birch, ants,
spindly legs navigate the silver trunks, tall like
chimneys.
Since early morning, I travel on iron tracks in a dusty
train.
Outside I hear the high-pitched horns of twin-cab lorries
their exhausts bellowing thick, grey-black smoke.
Inside the gate I press my lips to the cool fountain of
Dachau.
The day is hot, there is silence in the air in Dachau,
tourists move mutely around the square, only the ants
are in a hurry, on a mission, oblivious to the smoke.
In the distance, almost out of sight, tall chimneys;
women must have seen these first from overcrowded lorries
while their families spilled out from teeming
trains.
In 1935, snow fell heavily in Germany, choking roads and
train
tracks heading from Munich, along the Amper river, to
Dachau.
Cold cut deep to the bone as old men squeezed into lorries,
stripped of dignity, they move in lines like swarms of
ants,
unaware that their journey will lead them to a room with a
chimney,
their lives, hopes and dreams gone up in ashy smoke.
The stench still hangs in the air though there is no smoke
today. It looks like any other German town as I step down
from the train.
People sitting outside drinking coffee in cafés under the
shadow of chimneys
that stand tall as black swans on the outskirts of a town
named Dachau.
There is a hollow in the silver birch inside the gate, I
watch lines of ants
march into the void, they do not return to the yard, the
train or the lorries.
There were poets, scholars, musicians and thinkers on board
those lorries
in their free world they could not have known the
significance of smoke.
They did not follow the rules blindly like this procession
of ants
they rode the tracks of rebels, questioning, writing, until
they came to a train
that would take them to a place far away from books, music,
ideas, to Dachau
where their words would spew in ash from tall, noxious
chimneys.
There is silence in the square, we wander around, see the
chimneys,
feel the heat, the fear, the desperation of overcrowded
lorries.
There is no birdsong, no swallows flying with forked tails
in Dachau.
A sign above the entrance reads; work sets you
free, another, do not smoke,
the irony almost lost on those who travel to this place by
coach and train.
We file past, buy our tickets, obey the rules, follow the
arrows, like ants.
Dachau is quiet. Its tall chimneys no longer spew the smoke
of hate. In a world, as we look on from passing lorries and
trains,
we must not forget or walk along the same path, like black
ants.
Mary Howlett
Dzit Count?
Dzit count as a productive day
if all I wrotes a sonnet?
Whyz anyone complaining ‘Hey,
youshd put more polish on it!’
So frinstance it may be you’ve heard
that I’m known as a cheater
for shortning the occazhnal word
for thstrengthning of the metre.
Robin Helweg-Larsen
Contributors
Rosalind Adam, a Leicester writer, has had 23 poems
published in a variety of magazines including Allegro, London Grip, Amethyst
and Under the Radar. In 2018 she won the G.S. Fraser prize for poetry
and was awarded a distinction for her MA in Creative Writing at The University
of Leicester.
Maryam Alsaeid is a poet with an MA in Creative
Writing, tutored by Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew McMillan, and mentored by Julia
Webb. Published in Poetry Ireland, The Phare, and Eche, she designs workshops
using poetry for healing and is writing a collection of poems inspired by
Arabic songs.
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, on the North
Somerset coast. His three collections to date are Hi-Viz (Yaffle
Press, 2021), We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Communing (Indigo
Dreams, 2016). Ben edits Black Nore Review (https://blacknorereview.wordpress.com).
Website: https://benbanyard.wordpress.com
Arman Chowdhury is an editorial assistant working in
book publishing at a university press. He graduated from the University of
Connecticut in 2022 where he published work in the Long River
Review and worked for three years at the student-run newspaper The
Daily Campus.
Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The
Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing
2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published
in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Allegro, Crannog, Pennine
Platform, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK.
He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.
Tim Dwyer’s current collection, Accepting The
Call (templarpoetry.com), has won the Straid
Collection Award. His poetry appears regularly in Irish, UK and international
journals and anthologies, and previously in Allegro. Originally
from Brooklyn, NY, he now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.
Anne Eyries has poetry published in various journals,
including Amsterdam Quarterly, Consilience, Dream Catcher, Dust, Humana
Obscura, London Grip, and Paperboats. She lives in France.
Rebecca Gethin has written 5 poetry publications
and 2 novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Her
poems are widely published in various magazines and anthologies. She won
the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages.
Catherine Glavina enjoys writing about the natural
world. Plants, animals and a sense of place feature strongly in her poetry
which has been published with Littoral Press, Apricot Press, The
Passionfruit Review and is forthcoming in Dream Catcher. Her
work has also been recorded with Coventry Talking
Newspaper.
John Greening is a Bridport and Cholmondeley winner
with over twenty collections, including The Interpretation of Owls:
Selected Poems 1977-2022, he’s edited Arnold, Grigson, Blunden, Crichton
Smith and Fanthorpe, plus several anthologies. Latest books are A High
Calling (Renard) and Rilke’s New Poems.
David Harmer, born in 1952, lives in Doncaster and is
best known as a children’s writer with publications from McMillans Children’s
Books and Small Donkey Press. A lot of his work for the Grown Ups is published
in magazines. He also performs with Ray Globe as The Glummer Twins.
Lois Marie Harrod’s l9th volume of
poetry The Bed the Size of a Small Country appeared October
2025. Spat appeared June 2021. Woman won
the 2020 Blue Lyra Prize. Dodge poet. lifelong teacher, she has been published
in journals from American Poetry Journal to Zone 3. www.loismarieharrod.org
Robin Helweg-Larsen, Anglo-Danish by birth but
Bahamian by upbringing, has lived and worked in the Bahamas (bank clerk),
Denmark (factories and janitorial), Canada (prison guard, bookstore owner),
Australia (restaurant work), USA (25 years of developing and teaching business
simulations around the world). Now working on his poetry at formalverse.com
Mary Howlett lives in Waterford, Ireland. Her poems
are published in Southword, The Honest Ulsterman, Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light
Press, Poem Alone, Steel Jackdaw, Swerve Magazine, Poetry Bus 12, The Get Real,
Frogmore Papers and elsewhere. She is Highly Commended in Cathal Buí and 12th Bangor
Poetry competitions.
Eve Jackson lives in Lee on the Solent. Her work
has been published in a wide range of journals, magazines and anthologies.
Winner of the Frogmore Poetry Prize, The Vole Prize x 2 and a runner up in the
Manchester Cathedral Poetry competition. Three non-fiction books (J Kingsley).
Lavinia Kumar’s latest short-prose book
is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, &
Activists. She’s published 3 poetry books & 4 chapbooks. Poems
and flash fiction appear in a variety of poetry journals, & 3 anthologies.
She’s received four Pushcart and one Best of the Net nominations.
Al McClimens is an unemployed waster and over- fond
of a claret. After an undistinguished career in H.E. he took early retirement
to polish his sonnets. Don Paterson has never heard of him. He lives in
Sheffield where he plans to grow older disgracefully. He will work for food.
Please give generously.
Mick McGann-Jones is a former orchestral viola
player with the BBC in UK, whose varied musical career took him through a
diversity of pop and rock bands before turning to music education as his
primary focus. He relocated to Kerry in 2004 and has become a regular contributor
at poetry and arts events across County Kerry and beyond. His poems have been
published in a number of Irish Journals including, Boyne Berries, Skylight
47, Poets Meet Painters and A New Ulster.
Eugene O'Hare recently won runner-up for the 52nd
Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the poetry prize at
Belfast Book Festival. His poems appear, or forthcoming, in The Frogmore
Papers, Stand, Poetry Ireland Review, Acumen and others.
Charles Pankhurst, originally a Man of Kent, now
lives in Lancashire where he sometimes reads his work. His writing has appeared
in several magazines and he won his first poetry competition in 2021. He has an
M.A. in Creative Writing.
Barbara Parchim lives on a small organic farm in
southwest Oregon. She is a poet, gardener, naturalist and wildlife
rehabber. Her poems have appeared in Allegro, Cirque, Pedestal
and New Verse News among others. Two books of poetry have been
published - What Remains, 2021 and Muscle Tree, 2024,
both by Flowstone Press.
Robert L. Penick’s poetry and prose have
appeared in over 200 different literary journals, including The Hudson
Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford
Magazine. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is now
available from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net
D.A.Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her second
full-length collection (Common Ground, HappenStance, 2014) won
the East Midlands Book Award 2015. Her third collection, The Bigger
Picture (also from HappenStance) was published in 2022. Her
most recent pamphlet, Continuous Present, was published by New
Walk Editions in 2025.
Jane Simpson, a poet and historian from New Zealand,
has three collections, A world without maps (2016), Tuning
Wordsworth’s Piano (2019) and Shaking the Apple Tree (2024).
Her poems have most recently appeared in Allegro, London Grip, Poetry
Wales, Hamilton Stone Review, Meniscus and Poetry Aotearoa
Yearbook.
Christopher W. Smith is a Dr. Pepper addict, teaches
English at a Georgian university, and runs the micro-press, Quarter Press. They
have had stories, poems, and nonfiction published in various venues and live in
a 125+-year-old home with their spouse, kid, and too many cats. IG:
@quarterpresspics ; Bluesky: @quarterpress.bsky.social
Wm. Walters has been a professor of English and
linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, Illinois (US), for the past
thirty-seven years. He played trombone in many music groups in high
school and college, and he's the bass trombonist in a college/community band
even now.
Mantz Yorke is a former science teacher and
researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems have been published
internationally. His collections ‘Voyager’ and ‘Dark Matters’ are published by
Dempsey & Windle, and ‘No Quarter’ by erbacce Press.
