Poet and English teacher. Words in @amethystreview, @theprimerco and The Journal. MA Creative Writing @OpenUniversity.
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ALT Green book cover with a drawing of a heart in the centre, the heart is made up of mondrian style pieces.
ALT Foreword Since starting my artistic career, this project is the one that I spent the least time deciding on whether or not I wanted to be a part of or not. For me, masculinity is in need of a new narrative, an empathetic and emotionally open, and vulnerable narrative, that embraces the multitudes of manhood and what that might mean in a non-toxic future, and that abandons the unreconstructed and restrictive definitions that have gone before. A chance to contribute to that, in even a small way, was too good an opportunity to turn down. The call went out, and the quality of the work submitted was genuinely stunning, it seems that many poets writing today, felt the same as we did, and selecting pieces from the hundreds received was a Herculean task. I am incredibly grateful and thankful to Aaron and Stuart for allowing me to be part of this team and it was heartening to see how closely we marked pieces
ALT Green book cover with a drawing of a heart in the centre, the heart is made up of mondrian style pieces.
ALT Foreword Since starting my artistic career, this project is the one that I spent the least time deciding on whether or not I wanted to be a part of or not. For me, masculinity is in need of a new narrative, an empathetic and emotionally open, and vulnerable narrative, that embraces the multitudes of manhood and what that might mean in a non-toxic future, and that abandons the unreconstructed and restrictive definitions that have gone before. A chance to contribute to that, in even a small way, was too good an opportunity to turn down. The call went out, and the quality of the work submitted was genuinely stunning, it seems that many poets writing today, felt the same as we did, and selecting pieces from the hundreds received was a Herculean task. I am incredibly grateful and thankful to Aaron and Stuart for allowing me to be part of this team and it was heartening to see how closely we marked pieces
ALT Title: Nighthawks at the Library. An image that looks like Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Nighthawks’. Four figures are in a brightly lit library with large windows. Three of them read, hunched over at a a curved bar. The fourth figure says “It’s closing time folks. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t read here”.
ALT From the editor by Chris Evans. Nearly four million people in Britain are claiming out of work sickness benefits… You can use the calculator below to find out exactly what it is costing you.
ALT Win 30 books for your school!
ALT Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World To train myself to find, in the midst of hell what isn’t hell. The body, bald, cancerous, but still beautiful enough to imagine living the body washing the body replacing a loose front porch step the body chewing what it takes to keep a body going— this scene has a tune a language I can read this scene has a door I cannot close I stand within its wedge I stand within its shield Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world. —Katie Farris
ALT Alone I never thought Michiko would come back after she died. But if she did, I knew it would be as a lady in a long white dress. It is strange that she has returned as somebody's dalmatian. I meet the man walking her on a leash almost every week. He says good morning and I stoop down to calm her. He said once that she was never like that with other people. Sometimes she is tethered on their lawn when I go by. If nobody is around, I sit on the grass. When she finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper in her soft ears. She cares nothing about the mystery. She likes it best when I touch her head and tell her small things about my days and our friends. That makes her happy the way it always did. –Jack Gilbert
