La Piccioletta Barca

George Eliot calls Silas Marner ...

Three poems by Martin Corless-Smith

Martin Corless-Smith

ouvrir ouvrir the nightingale / how has it come to this? / love a severed foot...

three variations on a metaphor.

imagine looking back each moment passed as one tear marking one current through an ocean of vast possibility a whole

collision of tangled paths.

when we walk we think to walk away from it all it is then of course we come across a path

  two collisions with virus at the center.

when your loved one in the passenger seat turns over after crossing the second state line

An Understatement, to Call Him Quiet

April Lindner

If a particle moves along a line

Danilo Lopez

According to the law s = f (t) where S represents the position of particle P On a line at time t, then the velocity v

Citizens of The Persistence of Memory and Other Poems

Alex Starr

Bleeding Branches

Jakob Brønnum

Two prose poems seek to reimagine the setting and circumstance of bleeding vegetation in Dante and Virgil.

Hymns in Heavy Monsoons

Jose Varghese

Monsoon rains take away / the reflections / of the greens, blues and whites / from the river

Tears and Pearls

Lia Park

The poem, "tears and pearls", is based off of the Korean account of dragons.

Ulises

Antonio Melloni

In the eighth circle of his Inferno (the Malebolge), Dante places the sinners that committed fraud in life...

How We Remember The Dead

Oisin Breen

The poem is inspired by the tale ‘Tochmarc Étaíne’, meaning ‘The Wooing of Étaín'

There are certain verses

Andrea Divus

There are certain verses – sometimes poems in whole – / Whose meaning I do not know. Yet that which I do not know

Beyond The Sun-Drenched Roadside

Kimon and Myrtias

Beyond the sun-drenched roadside / Past snowy caps and barren lands / Lies a small stone cottage

Photographic Memory and Other Poems

The lighted window across the street, is inverted in this nocturnal puddle.

100 Summers Ago

Mark Millicent

New houses, cold and stark. / I like old wood scratches, gouges and marks / Leaded windows draughty damp and dark

If I Have The Words & Late Plays of Yeats

A woman with a small fox on the lead / Walks into La Boulangerie des Invalides / The terrace of which I am having...

3 Poems

At that time of the afternoon when things wear out, / The labyrinths of six strings were drawn by the fire.

Invocation

Francis Ittenbach

Sepulchral Jerusalem, lay to rest my / Empty songs and promises, the last / Light fading out on the horizon

An Object to an Orbit & Boat Going Through Inlet

Helen Hawley

I remember when / Jupiter and Saturn / saved each other / from a fiery death.

Dried Paint

Dmitri Akers

Mummified like the Pharaohs of yester, / Old black, red, yellow, brown, bright green, old blue…

The Evenness of Trees

Brian Muriel

Apology is a sideways glance / against a flash of shame. / In the late night, in the early morning

A Book of Thoughts

Roisin Ní Neachtain

Once I had a book of thoughts / But somewhere between my 18th year / And the present

Petrifaction

Andrew Lobel

Hold and hold and / hold onto memory, leave / only space for absence

Play On Words

There are sounds we carry / Like hidden larks in our chest: / Larks that fly over underground streams.

How Quickly A Year Can Die

Francis Ittenbach

In transition, the night’s edge / –Sweat-soaked, barren room, light curling / Around the untouched corners like...

Three Poems

Dmitri Akers

The room is sparse, five people reside there, / And they do work on their theses, slowly, / Yet the only male there...

Course Catalogue LTR 207

Andre Peltier

As Professor Stein started / her lecture, / I sat in the back, / quietly flying under / her radar.

A Donation of Cypress Trees

Allison Palmer

Into a segment of darkness, two figures slowly emerged. The evening was still new, and yellow lights promising a...

On Memory: Triptych in Conversation with Yosa Buson

Sarah Yost

light flashes through glass / moves shapes across her face / pine trees glide past my window

will you be alright without me?

Royston Tester

it was enoch, though, who got the surprise. / squeak-squeak. urgent … someone’s heel on a toy, over and over.

The Girl in the Red Cape

The girl in the red cape is still where she was. / On the island of Miyajima, on the planks of / The first Noh theatre.

Concentric

Proust described À la recherche du temps perdu‍ / As concentric. So is any good poem, / So is life. The look you gave...

Nonverbal and Lost in Grief

Caitlin Mitchel-Markley

Such sorrowful glances, never seen, but always sent / with longing / in seclusion / hidden, but not lost.

His Name Was Leandros

Konstantinos Doxiadis

There once was a man who dreamt of being alive. Who dreamt of pain, and noise, and light.

On Poetic Subjects

In the middle of a night walk, / A bolt has retrieved the light of the streets; / And out there, in the abysmal strait

And Here Do I Marvel

Jonathan Chan

that she should bid the clay and plaster sing: / the chorus, draped in gowns, by height ascending

Child Ruqayya’s Hexachord

Tamam Kahn

You’re held inside this story. It repeats,‍ / child witness of the snipped-off lives, / malicious massacre at Karbala.

Beirut Raining & Jumeirah Beach

Adele Ne Jame

Ah—Beirut, they say, / is like a bride in a white flowing dress / running along the Corniche

The Day After a Spontaneous Trip With Friends

Ayokunle Falomo

Still it weighs on me—this life—but thank you, what now makes me attend to it.

Softness Serves No Master

Samantha Cramer

This labor began in love- / scars carved into earth flesh and / stone, its carcass laid down

Plate of Roses

Geraldine Clarkson

My sixteenth winter achieved a plate of roses, / more precisely a rose plate, / composed of pressed petals

On Winter (Isaiah 1:18)

S.J. de Matteo

Tonight my soul feels desolate and isolated, roaming aimlessly / through the winter of my life.

Malum

Dmitri Akers

Tell me, O Muse, of the devastation wrought on / That ruined, lost citadel—its council led by / Men of high standing

Once Upon a Carton of Amber

Devon Brock

Mellifluous these bowered years: / honeysuckle on a young boy’s tongue / unaware that each pulse lapped

Schoolyard Memories

S.J. de Matteo

As children we roamed wild, / covered in soot and dust, / baking cakes with mud and / donning crowns

On The Arrival of Spring

The blaze of a hummingbird hints in sweet shade, / Among brief petals that the year has brought, / Rolling out

Consolation

Cynthia Andrews

The church is dark and / quiet except for a woman who / looks to be about ninety years / old, kneeling and sobbing

Three Seasons

Diane Thiel

When I first heard the story, I was Persephone, / feet in the blossoms, oblivious, / on the edge of another world.

The Middle Years

Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney

Faster, says my soul, but it is not my soul / Which says it. The soul knows; the brain / is Only an accoutrement.

Spaces Are Like Silk

Olivia Loccisano

Spaces are like silk, / and silk is spun / like a delicate wire.

Second Lament

Alani Hicks-Bartlett

o child, all the chances that you have / to cull these smooth, white days / are fouled by the winds. this is a velocity

Sailing Away

Under morning's glowering sky

Three Poems

O! King of time and fortune, / Listen, for I’m losing sanity / In seeing how, to a face sculpted

Imbolc

S.J. de Matteo

Cast a circle, burn the sweetgrass, and raise a cup of wine.

Endless

Gavin Bourke

Empty rooms / and corridors / apart / from the furniture / unmade bed

Elegy to an Iceberg & The Barbarians

Carmine Di Biase

Two poetic responses to Auden and Cavafy.

Writing searches for a homeland. Behind a poem or a story is a landscape, or several if there is a journey. The setting may be in a wild, remote place. Or it may be in a city.. Or it may be an imagined place, like Xanadu.

Meditations From A Restless Night

For a restless soul, the night is an endless possibility. A stage upon which experience and imagination collide. How different would be the day if just one thing only changed? If everything changed but only just? Countless are the variations that one might imagine. These poems welcome what arrives when rest is unwelcome and restlessness embraced; when one learns, perhaps, to stand on stage between the infinite collisions, letting each one try itself out.

Ambivalence

Micaela Brinsley

Somewhere in between knowing, ambivalence is a feeling that never quite acts like one. It’s more of a filter, that blurs reality until the moment it snaps, cracks under its own ephemerality. Here you’ll find a drive between prose and poetry, effort and surrender, loss and its clarity.

Out of the Woods

Civilisation and Nature often have a difficult relationship. Writing about Nature seeks harmony between town and country.

Follies

Ian Fisher

These three linked short stories anecdote the cosmopolitan fictional Fielder family: Ira, wife Nessa, and son Rónán, from the mid-eighties—which Rónán likes to call B.R.—to summer 2021.

Seoul Metal

Michael Howarth

'Seoul Metal' explores the Mullae Dong district with a series of ten photographs. Visit this neighbourhood in Seoul, with an eclectic mix of metal workshops, artists’ studios, bars and restaurants. Join this loud, boisterous and very industrial trip with Michael Howarth.

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Yvonne Jowell

"All that glitters is not gold” is a three-piece story that examines a woman’s abortion from three overlapping angles. "The danger of the child in your head", “Mozart assassinated” and “Playing your cards right” each explore the pains of an abortion, crumbling relationships and the pursuit of hope.

L'Escargot

Geoffrey Heptonstall returns in the Thread with a collection of essays inspired by Henri Matisse’s L’Escargot. Go down into the labyrinth. You will find a discussion about art, darkness, tragedy and memory with Francois Gilot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Cocteau, Horace and Aristotle amongst many other guests.

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage)

Joe Wagner

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage) is a three-part essay that revolves around the author’s experience in Warsaw in 1980 and 1981 as a twelve-year-old boy, as well as the life of Anna Walentynowicz, the Polish activist who inspired Solidarity. It explores notions of memory, language, history, and labor unions with several literary references along the way.

Way Out in the Old West

Sam Price

Stories of the American West have largely been relegated to the past. Reading about gratuitous, racially-charged violence in a world brimming with gratuitous, racially-charged violence -- most readers are wise to pass. Yet, something gleams in those far-off hills, gems like True Grit, Warlock, and Lonesome Dove. These genre classics remind modern readers the stories we construct about our own pasts are, like the legends of old, more mythology than history.

Digital Truth Serum

Mulan Fu

How does the virtual world control how we perceive ourselves and can animation help us identify how we unknowingly subject ourselves to its terms? Constructed in relation with artist Mulan Fu's visual language of abstraction, this is a record of the development of a work of animation from conception to production. A simulation.

700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante

Antonio Melloni

Seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri died in Ravena. Broadly read and criticized, his Comedy has been – and still is – a sea in which many have ventured to find poetry, philosophy, history and religion. Some, moved by the Italian, attempted their own creations inspired by such waters. Here, two essays and a poem intend to be, if nothing else, a compass for an eventual reader to find his way towards Dante´s work.

Animal v. Human

Luke Davies

Two miniature collections of short stories and a short essay on the theme of animals and humans, written by a human.

Dream Journey

Dream Journey is an account of the images that a mind encounters on first waking. It begins with a city walk at night. Before nightfall, there is a strange feeling that the world is neither light nor dark. The noise of the day gives way not to silence, but to the sounds of the night. In the early morning at first light it may seem that the stones come alive. They may appear to move or to speak. Of course it is only the mist of a grey dawn.

Dostoevsky is 200

Jakob Brønnum

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, turns 200 on November 11th. "Dostoevsky is 200” is a quartet of short essays that explores the writer’s understanding of the problems of Russian society and his characterization of human nature. His vision of the human person is so strong and pure that there is much to be learned from reading him.

Through the Lens

Through the Lens offers a reflection on photography, memory and identity through essays and poetry. You can expect to encounter Bioy Casares, Manoel de Oliveira, Joaquín Sorolla, Nacho’s friend Simón, as well as others along the way.

In Constant Motion

This collection of essays investigates the poetic form, the life of poets, familiar streets and places of learning. A journey within the mind, with language and within the world at a moment of transformation. You can expect to meet T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sally Purcell, John Wain, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop and Amanda Gorman along the way...

On History

Dylan Howarth

‘On History’ comprises three critical reflections on the depiction of historical events in cinema, on the role of the historian in the study of history, and on the historical depiction of madness in American literature. Through this collection of essays, join a voyage through history, from the late Stalin and Khrushchev eras, to ‘Hitler’s War,’ and 19th and 20th century America.

Dreamland

Michael Shapland

December 2030. Tom is a young man intent on saving his older brother, who resides in ‘Dreamland’. Dreamland is a drug house for the rich, hidden underneath Soho Square. No man has ever left Dreamland.

The Muses of October

Michael A. Dann

This collection of essays offers a reflection on the decay of empires. From Ancient Greece, to the Roman Empire, to the Aztecs, the story of the fall of ancient civilisations in 'The Muses of October’ provides some insight into contemporary political developments.

Lockdown Meanderings

Eleonora Narbone

'Lockdown Meanderings' offers a critical reflection on some of the effects of the pandemic. This collection of essays and short stories explores the passing of time, the subtle beauty of routines, the importance of storytelling, and the immense joy of seeing people again after lockdown. From Boccacio’s Decameron, to running in Ancona, to the beauty of moka coffee, enjoy a virtual trip to the heart of Italy.

Singing Cicadas

Chariklia Martalas

According to Socrates in the Phaedrus, when the Muses were born, song was birthed with them. Some people became so intoxicated with singing that they forgot to eat and drink and so they died. These humans became the Singing Cicadas who sang until they died and then reported to the Muses which humans have honoured them. Chariklia openly admits that she wants the Cicadas to report to the Muses that she has honoured them, so she can give these pieces of writing as offerings.

The First Words

"When the first words were written it became possible…" This trilogy explores the role of writers and literature, as well as the art of writing; these notebooks filled with possibilities, improbabilities and nonsense. A true manifesto that explains why it matters very much how you say what you say, why nobody can tell you how to write and why the true self is the imaged self.

A Chapter in the Book of Existence

Colby Torbett

This collection of essays offers a reflection of life’s place in space and time through the physical environment of three different settings: Space, the arctic, and the jungle. A Chapter in the Book of Existence seek to express the beautiful, finite nature of our planet as it exists in the universe through the lenses of science, human nature, and exploration.

Celebrating Beethoven

Jakob Brønnum

Beethoven was born 250 years ago in December. We do not know his exact birthday, but records show that he was baptized in Bonn on the 17th. 2020 should be a celebration of his intense artistic and unswervingly humanistic musical legacy. “Celebrating Beethoven” looks at four large and well-known works, attempting to identify some ways Beethoven widens his time and his métier into matters relevant to philosophy, romantic spirituality, abstract art and the dawning of modern, personal identity.

On Voices

Myko Philip

Join the odyssey through the voices that one hears while deciphering Eliot’s The Waste Land. Are you hearing the voices? What happens when you don’t quite hear the voices that Eliot wants you to hear? What happens when you do begin to hear the voices? What happens when you mistakenly hear the other voices?

Some Notes from Chile

Joe Wagner

A trip to Chile, exploring its history and present, from Pinochet and the Chicago Boys to O-18 and Covid-19. Notes on political unrest, streets coming to life and creating a new social pact. Interventions by Neruda and references to Bolaño may shine light on the rebellion, or simply provide solace.

In Search of Lost Words

Zoe Fairtlough

A reflection on family legacies and the search for purpose, threaded through with the origins of Italian gelato and the etymology of related words.

On Poetic Creation

Embarking on a journey into the past – from ancient Greece, across the Seine and the Sistine Chapel, to Hollywood and America – this is an exploration of the intricacies of the poetic process, the interaction of poetry with history and philosophy and the uniqueness of different art forms.

On Loss and Solitude

Pamela Mandell

Ruminations on the natural cycles of life and death inspired by the bildungsroman of a life companion. The Noki Trilogy, named after the author’s canine companion, builds on casual conversations in the form of three short stories, stimulating all five senses, and exploring the depth and clarity of the perception of loss.

On Writers and Writing