Tilaka I'm thinking about that last time I saw you, a posy of flowers in a twist of silver foil on your chest, sheet up to your chin. It...

Poems are made out of words. Get them wrong – miscalculate their weight and heft – and you're in danger of becoming "a lout with...

Paper What form would you take? part of a glossary in a book about birds, page three of an introduction to Heart of Darkness, an origami...

Myriam San Marco is a poet, promoter and creative writing facilitator. As the Bournemouth Poet Laureate, she has been leading a creative...

Spider Sestina In the garden – a country to the spider – crouching at the edge of her web, her brain ticking silently, watching, her...

A play without my voice (after Under Milk Wood) Somewhere between the fishing boats, up a lane you do not mention, in the terrace with no...

It's so Good to See You, How Long Has it Been? Uncle Beany on the highway with a cart-full of ice water in plastic buckets. Slow summer...

Chiaroscuro In the fractured dark we're all doomscrolling before dawn, lit up like Caravaggios: arms stretched across burning beds, brows...

Night's Take The night has crept into our dreams again, has fussed and fidgeted around the edges of what seemed awake – was not – but...

Packing my Sea I cannot conjure a suitcase big enough to hold my sea, unable to stretch brown reinforced corners as wide or high as...

Perseverance From a distance, the red planet's craters must come into focus like giant "o"s shaken loose from an optician's chart. I...

Drawing Mark me Outline my boundaries I will shift Someday or another you will return The task will require renovations Revisions,...

Dr Fran Lock is a some-time itinerant dog whisperer, the author of seven poetry collections and of numerous chapbooks, most recently...

Josephine Balmer writes: "After hearing his nephew sing one of Sappho's lyric songs, the Athenian lawgiver Solon ordered the boy to teach...

Fishing You look into the stream for your reflection But the water flows to spite you, gathering white foam. What did you expect to see –...

House the house isn't there anymore torn down for a hospital carpark the house they struggled, early on to pay the mortgage for the house...

Alistair Noon writes: "In 1934, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam was sentenced to three years' internal exile in the central Russian city...

Photograph by Dels Richter Nut, the Sky It would be easier to be a cow or a sow of many dugs, nursing the stars. Only the tips of my toes...

Orienteering outside Jedburgh Wildcat Cleuch is still full of snow but each virtual contour is marked with bunting white feather gauges...

Tempo In Mr Montano's room I learned the violin. Holding the bow, pressing taut hair against the string. The sound should be mahogany. My...

Image by Veronique Brosset Iridescent Someone was at the door. A peafowl. A hen. I didn't know her, but let her in. Her green and gold...

Roles You have to stand, talk, move, insofar as you can move, in front of it. Tend to glance at, lose yourself in its green, floating,...

Author's note Baba Yaga is a witch from Slavic folktale. Sometimes seen as dangerous and violent, she is also a healer and a wise woman,...

Moments from Thumbelina's Other Life Author's Note Tiny is another name for Thumbelina, the protagonist of Hans Christian Andersen's...