Poetry
STAR POems: Logology
An Isogram is shy of icons It only likes sole runes alone No want for right or for wrong And a word as bare as bone Pangrams, however, need them all: Judge my vow, [… read more ]
Poetry
Poetry
If You’re Leaving Montreal, Take the 401: Reflections on a Friendship with Gareth Rees
Regular readers of S&C will be aware that our much-loved Contributing Editor Gareth Rees sadly passed away in April of last year. Portsmouth-based poet Richard Peirce has written this poignant tribute in verse to Gareth. [… read more ]
Culture
Portsmouth Festivities Twenty Love: Turning Poetry into Film
The closing event of this year’s Portsmouth Festivities was themed around Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The event showcased a series of new interpretations of Neruda’s work from leading poets, [… read more ]
Poetry
STARPOems: Foundling 453
A boy admitted 7th October 1748 When she dropped him at the hospital she tied a yellow ribbon around his tiny wrist with – My name is Andrews written in dark [… read more ]
Poetry
STAR POems: HMS New Zealand
I tell my children you are here because in 1913 a Maori chief gave the captain of HMS New Zealand a piupiu, a skirt made from flax. A ceremonial gift with the prophecy [… read more ]
Poetry
STAR POems: Finding Home
A trolley bus clatters on sparking wires, the bowling alley echoes through thick smog, cathedral with no roof but bell and spire, school dinners all year round, Noggin the Nog. A concrete slab, a prefab, [… read more ]
Poetry
STAR POems: The Plot
By Helen Salsbury I went in search of the plot, in the metaphorical forest, where all the trees looked the same. I went with an older, American Writer, who’d seen it all before. ‘The story,’ [… read more ]
Poetry
STAR POems: Mark My Words
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. I will build a great, great wallaby on our southern bore, and I will have [… read more ]
Poetry
Star POems: The Sweetness of Clay
By Amanda Garrie We used to stand on street corners watching old men, fit for the slag heap, wondering if that were it: destined for the pit. We’d smoke our shag, curse everything and spit. [… read more ]
Poetry
STAR POems: Breaking the Silence
Breaking the long black silence they shyly call darkness be gone darkness be gone ancestral melodies stir the still damp air light is coming light is coming tiny shining eyes watch [… read more ]