Issue 38 | June 2019 |

Full of Ears and Eyes am I by Lauren Suchenski Finishing Line Press Price: $14.99 US ISBN-10: 1635342430  ISBN-13: 978-1635342437 https://www.amazon.com/Full-Ears-Eyes-Am-I/dp/1635342430 Full of Ears and Eyes am I is an attractive...

“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two...

“This is the American Dream in action! We’d be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.” I...

My life is a dance of suppression. Every morning when I leave the house I must perform my lie. I’ve grown...

Introduction Patrick Hamilton is probably best known for his plays Rope and Gaslight. Alfred Hitchcock turned Rope into a feature film of...

Hedgehogpress.co.uk ISBN 9781999649231 When I opened Raine’s submission for review, I had recently read a review of a book by an Oxbridge graduate of Romany descent...

Two years ago, at age fifty, I started to explore my sexuality in therapy. I experienced a wide range of emotions in the process;...

Celeste Aida The rain falls with blunt determinationbut there’s a sun behind the flat white skywhose intangible glow glosses the wet pebble edgingand in-your-face green bushesoutside...

RELENTLESSRounder and deeper than the line, the soundbreaks up through dry leaves.Meandering, the river,  through you. Branded, you, with even the bitterness that brandsthe Western range.THIS IS...

Frogs Occasionally, country roads back home allowed a quiet somewhat-peace after we quarreled. Bodies loosely swaying in their seats, words hurled to pothole rhythms, lean gravel shoulders. We’d push through...

A whisky grace I raise a glass to you, Lord: there is no fountain, no breath-taking conceit of ornamental marble spouting perfectly orchestrated jets and arcs of...

The notion of ekphrasis as a distinctive genre of writing in relation to images arrives in the mid nineteenth century (Webb 1999). John Keats’...

William Derge Poetry - Derge won the $1,000 2010 Knightsbridge Prize judged by Donald Hall and the Rainmaker Award judged by Marge Piercy. He has received honorable mentions in contests sponsored by The Bridge, Sow’s Ear, and New Millennium, among others. He has been awarded a grant by the Maryland State Arts Council.

B. ANNE ADRIAENS currently lives and writes in Somerset, Britain. Her work often reflects her interest in alienation and all things weird and dark, as well as her concerns about pollution and the environment in general. She’s written several dystopian short (and not so short) pieces and is putting together a poetry collection exploring the many places where she’s lived. She attended the Poetry Summer School at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, in June 2017 and the following July, she was awarded the title of Frome Festival Poet Laureate. Her work has previously appeared in Helios Quarterly, B.A.D. (The Bees Are Dead) and Harpur Palate, as well as on several online literary platforms.

Helen Boden is a Yorkshire-born, Edinburgh-based writer, educator and editor, with poems in magazines and anthologies including New Writing Scotland, Mslexia, Lighthouse and Butcher’s Dog. She also collaborates with visual artists to make responsive poems and place-specific text.

Kitty Coles lives in Surrey and works for a charity supporting disabled people. Her poems have been nominated for the Forward Prize and Best of the Net. She was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2016 and her debut pamphlet Seal Wife, which was published in 2017, is available to purchase on Amazon or via Indigo Dreams

Sandra Arnold lives in New Zealand. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, Australia and has published two novels and one non-fiction book. In 2019 her third novel Ash is forthcoming from Mākaro Press (NZ) and her first flash fiction collection Soul Etchings from Retreat West Books (UK).

Guest Judge Helen Mort comments on the entries to Chapbook Contest 4.

Another Pause among white tussocks a sun-doped song-thrushspreads her wings  /  and opens her feathers  /  to be ant-cleaned nearby shallow ponds and pools are alive...

Patrick Wright has a poetry pamphlet, Nullaby, published by Eyewear in 2017. A full collection, Shadows on the Ceiling, will follow in 2019. His poems have appeared in several magazines, including Agenda, Wasafiri, The Reader, London Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Iota. His poem ‘The End’ was included in The Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2018, judged by Maggie Smith. He has also been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. He currently works as a Lecturer at The Open University, where he teaches Arts and Humanities, including Creative Writing, and as Contributing Editor at Write Out Loud. He is also working on a second PhD in Creative Writing at the Open University, on the ekphrasis of abstract and monochromatic paintings, supervised by Siobhan Campbell and Jane Yeh.

Pym Schaare, linguist and poet, explores how language forms alter socio-sexual-cultural boundaries, as in fantasy, fairy-tales and poetry re-purposing thought and form. Author of Since Then: Poems and Commentary; The Poetry of Performance; and The Mutual Orgasm: A Clitorocentric Manifesto: Shadows under her Shoes. Robyn Mathison Poetry Award, 2017, longlisted & shortlisted: Fish Publishing.

Marilena Zackheos’ debut poetry collection Carmine Lullabies a little like walking around a familiar room in the dark. The furniture is all there and the same, but the walls and floor are bent and there is a dangerous, insidious, leather-clad voice whispering at you from the shadows.

Big Bad Wolf I watched a veteran teacher With unwavering words, underlined in anger Address a crowd of 5-year-olds Asking questions about the big bad wolf And how to...

Tins of Dust They say you should change your spices every year or they lose potency and aroma but in the back of my spice cabinet behind the cinnamon-sticks and whole...

Confessions of a Circus Performer Poise is all - even when sleeping - there is memory in musculature. From girlhood onwards nights without ceasing I have fine-tuned my...

EYES ON THE ROAD It’s this winter sunrise spiking my eyes as I drive. It’s morning’s red-fingered goriness dazzling, as I pull the sun shield down and...

On the ward this is about a pad. a thick one, hospital-walls green. I’ve run out. a one-day mother in pink pajamas with out-of-season snowmen. Don’t you have your own? a piece-of-liver...

Ruth Gilchrist is a Scottish based writer. A member of EyeWrite and Dunbar’s Writing Mums. “Writer of the Year 2015” Tyne and Esk. Ruth collaborates with museums, photographers, film poems, radio and musicians. Poems published in Snakesin and Scrivens webzines and the SouthBank poetry magazine Southlight and The Eildon Tree. Also in various anthologies, including the Federation of Writers Scotland.

In Praise of Grey Far from black and white now the season of grey in all its rainbow light sea grey, rain grey wet granite day grey pewter, silver and...

Diarmuid Fitzgerald was born in 1977 in Co. Mayo, Ireland. He grew up in Co. Cork and currently live in Dublin. He works as a school teacher and is a poet and prose writer. Thames Way was his first collection of haiku poems and it was published in 2015 by Alba Publishing

Fiona Sinclair's poems feel as if you've sat down in a crowded, friendly cafe and can't help but listen in on the conversation at the next table. They are chatty and welcoming, but not frivolous.

With his latest collection, Paul Sutherland confirms his status as one of Britain’s most important and original poets. It comprises a sequence of 124 very short, intense, delicately crafted, haiku-like stanzas: one with two lines followed by a three liner – and so on.

Empire is the third collection of short stories published by Mary O’Donnell. These are accompanied by seven poetry collections and four novels

“River Hoard by Neil Leadbeater” is split into three parts, “Nights we Tricked the Corncrake”, “Fen Country” and “Objects at Upper Ludstone” plus a sequence “North Aral Sea”. As the titles suggest, it is mostly concerned with nature and human interaction with it.