A Page of Knots – Vona Groarke / Local Colour – Tim MacGabhann / Three Poems – P. C. Evans /  A Quiet Night – Alison Moore / Four Poems – Jacob Polley / The March of Progress – Richard Milward / Three Poems – Eleanor Hooker / Portrait Photography – Jonathan Gibbs / Two Poems – Lauren Camp / Sorrow – Naomi Kruger / Three Poems – Kate Feld / Phylogeny – Ruth McKee / Two Poems – Glyn Edwards / Double Pneumonia – Jane Fraser / Three Poems – Maeve McKenna /  It’s Just Not What We Do – Hugo Kelly / The Lonely Crowd Essay – Jo Mazelis / Alone, leaving the London Library – Adrian Masters / The Downs – Ben Tufnell / Two Poems – Aideen Henry / Laura, 1987 – Rowena Mcdonald / Three Poems – Caroline Stockford / Canal Stories – Neil Campbell / Three Poems – John Freeman / My Sweet One – Sarah Davy / Three Poems – Nuala O’Connor / Sea Light – Matt Rader / Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – Tom Vowler

Edited by John Lavin

Issue 15 will be published on September 30th. Special offer: UK customers can pre-order now and receive free shipping.

Note: this special pre-order option is only available to UK customers. Customers in Europe and the Rest of the World will be able to order upon publication.

Latest articles

‘Old White Horse’ by Tina Sederholm

The old white horse with nicotine teeth was tied up in the courtyard that summer. All day he stood on concrete. Head hung low in his halter, he rested one hindleg, then the other. The limestone wall lent him a roof for the morning, but as the day peeled back, the sun bore down on…

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Poet of the Month, October: Tina Sederholm

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For October, we are delighted to publish three new works by Tina Sederholm. The first of these, ‘Kill Your Speed: Working Farm‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.   Kill Your Speed: Working Farm…

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‘Needing No Right to Roam: The Red Kite’ by Toby Cotton

  Needing No Right to Roam: The Red Kite   rises as he hitchhikes a spiral of warm air; his driver is silent and he is carefree in the passenger seat.   Uplifted to the heights, he alights, gliding, black fingers splayed, his once hunched back, hoisting no pack, now stretched wide in flight.  …

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‘Ghazal for My Father’ by Toby Cotton

Ask them if there has been some mistake. A curtain of rain drawn over a lake. They close the eyes of a shape on a bed. He was buried at the centre of a beautiful lake. Bulrushes are like damp eyelashes gathering dust that would muddy a lake. An oak tree steps out of a…

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Poet of the Month / Toby Cotton

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For September, we are delighted to publish three new works by Toby Cotton. The first of these, ‘Summer on the Old Farm‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. Summer on the Old Farm Already…

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Notes on Three Poems / Rachel Burns

The poem, ‘Somewhere we are fifteen, dancing at the pub disco‘ is a subject I keep returning to. Early close friendships I suppose, but also a set time and place, the 80’s, and a small market town in County Durham. As teenagers we were desperate to escape the small stifling town, where the future felt…

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‘Moonlight Flit’ by Rachel Burns

the   knock    knock   of the rent man all the sorry excuses not to pay never enough never enough   leaving in a hurry things we left behind the baby’s blue rabbit things broken in transit glasses    plates the porcelain figurine who lost her head   not sorry to see the back …

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‘St Cuthbert’s School’ by Rachel Burns

  Bernadette Steel sent out of mental maths to see Miss Arrowsmith too dumb to do sums and me sat at the front of the class Sister Francis scratching fractions on the board the numbers jumping around like frogs in the jars from biology earlier before the chloroform cotton wool ball dropped and that girl…

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Poet of the Month, August: Rachel Burns

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For August, we are delighted to publish three new works by Rachel Burns. The first of these, ‘Somewhere we are fifteen, dancing at the pub disco‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.    Somewhere…

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Poet of the Month Essay, June / Melanie Marshall

My poems showcased here in this inspiring place are both typical, and, of what I write. I penned poetry prolifically from about the age of nine until my early twenties and then suddenly, once accepted onto the novel stream of a Creative Writing MA, everything I wrote was prose fiction (or shopping lists). I managed one sentimental poem after the birth of my son, and then, around ten years later the glimmer reappeared and I can’t stop pursuing it. 

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