David, with proud members of his family. Photograph Margaret Yip by David Yip After seven years living in Gran Canaria, I returned home with a couple of suitcases to live in Barrow. Once again, I sold everything I owned—from my car to my TV and even a full tropical fish…

Renee Good, 26 seconds before the ICE agent shot her dead. Photograph Jonathan Ross – Alpha News, Public Domain R.I.P. | 1988-2026 by Sudeep Sen RENEE GOOD R.I.P. | 1988-2026 Minus one-degree centigrade    in the Himalayan Almora tonight — ICE predicted it would frost over.     I sit bundled…

Photograph by Coppertist Wu by Amal Chatterjee This is the story he told me. Exactly. I have changed nothing, except perhaps the names, places and the events. Otherwise everything is as he said.             I came to Amsterdam for love, he said, the gold ring on his finger glinting as…

Detail from William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808, Google Cultural Institute Public Domain Can we be bothered to save the Earth? by Pete Field If there is a personal deity then they (non-sexist pronoun) have a well-developed sense of humour. Is the old Testament the ultimate and funniest…

A few feet behind him, a bloke with pinched face and grey razored hair, flanked by two enormous bodyguards. Illustration WordPress by Craig Sterling Andy Harris woke to the tick of a heart-rate monitor. Must have been some night out. A hospital bed. A drip in his arm, bandages across…

Photograph courtesy of the author A GRINFUL OF DYNAMITE                                            (Letters to the World)                                                                                                                                 For Les Murray                                                 That round pointed fuse                                     several miles of raw earth in truth                                     you took hands full farmer shovels                                     and slowly that smile lit a grinful of dynamite bonafide stretched ear…

Sinai. Photograph Tina Bexson by Tina Bexson I slowly slide my head an inch across my forearm so I can see the three prisoners by the door. I do this in such a way to make me appear asleep – I do not want them to know I am watching…

 With potato grower Willie Scannell of Ballycotton Enough lessons. Come to the table! by Arun Kapil I didn’t understand Irish food by reading about it. I came to understand it by standing still – week after week – watching what people bought, cooked, trusted. For fifteen years – Dingle, Donegal,…

Night Jasmine. Photograph by Kamal B Nandasena Monsoon Apertures Each drop scripts a silence I cannot explain —the monsoon writes letters across my windowpane. Your absence is not void, but a humid breath —it stains my shirt-collar like turmeric or rain. Even the wind hesitates before touching me —a lover…