Illustration Phil Hall Dustin Pickering is an autodidact, and a noteworthy figure in contemporary US literature and the arts. He is a poet, visual artist, publisher, interviewer and workshop leader. His poetry explores love, faith and cosmology. He also creates satirical cartoons that gently spoof religion and politics. His writings have appeared in Huffington Post, Los…

Photograph by Shubham Thakur on Pexels From the working collection, The Stories That Repeat Us A child to be ignored for collected poems (For Imtiaz Dharker: “It is too early for your Collected Poems”) there are a few a petrified child inheadmaster’s officechaddies ready to get wet frosted glass on his doora greatness of…

Author photograph by Sudeep Sen John Webster was born in 1953 and lives in Oxford. Involved in independent publishing and music since leaving school, his work in music has produced an album of songs with lyrics by the Romantic poets Keats, Shelley, Byron and Leigh Hunt called The First Fab Four and an album…

Photograph courtesy of the poet Valentina Rojas was born in Envigado, Antioquia, in 1998. She is a poet, editor, teacher, workshop facilitator, and cultural promoter whose work has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and digital literary outlets across Colombia and beyond. Her poems have been translated into English, Italian, Arabic, and Portuguese, and have…

Umberto Eco in 1984. Photograph Bogaerts, Rob / Anefo Public Domain by Abraham Chinchillas The starting point is the point of no return. It is the reaction that germinates while the action is brewing. It is the dress rehearsal with lights and an audience. It is number zero. First published in English a little…

Photograph by Corentin Henry on Pexels Sonnet Mondal’s poems are remarkable for their ability to express profound truths through clear, simple language, avoiding the obscurity that often alienates readers from modern poetry. In Hungry Faith, the image of a fisherman struggling against an unyielding river quietly captures the relentless weight of poverty, where hope…

Mussolini in his pomp The three poems that follow, drawn from Peter Cowlam’s forthcoming collection Sonnets and Sennets, offer a sharp and sardonic look at power, identity, and the language that sustains them. In Commander-in-Chief, the speaker exposes the isolation and betrayal at the heart of leadership. The Adoration of Belonging questions our deep need…

Fernando Pessoa in Lisbon. From Fernando Pessoa, Obra Poética, Vol. I, Photographer unknown. LISBON NOTES Between 1888 and 1935, the photographs of Fernando Pessoa follow one another and do not resemble one another. Few writers have left to posterity so many portraits that have nothing in common but the name. Which one is really…

Artur Skoniecki and Virvoreanu Laurentiu under the Pixabay Content License Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Ivan Petrov North Ossetia10 January 1944 13:45 The men tell me they have found a foreign spy. I think they are drunk. The two privates who came to me are gibbering bizarrely. One minute they tell me the man is a…

– A ‘story’ by Tina Bexson Prologue She’d been back in the city for four days, photographing his film crew at work. From the Pyramids to Downtown’s delights, and the Nile’s exclusive floating restaurants. So, what if it was the height of summer, pollution at its peak, sweat clouding her vision, dripping into the…