How on earth did it come to this, a state enshrined in a word he would never know,   wouldn’t even come to him on his walks to and from the Cribbwr Seam’s defiant face?   ‘Enshrined’ wouldn’t either, though she’d seen his finger with its arc of black dust glide   at random across…

Our Poet of the Month for March is Nigel Jarrett. Here, Jarrett discusses his approach to the creative process. It’s often easier to define what poetry is by adducing examples of what it isn’t, or what one believes it isn’t. According to Oxbridge MAs who taught the critic Hugh Kenner when he was a schoolboy…

Through the window and as still as a fist pulled and held in abeyance, the old pithead is an ink drawing beside her framed print of Klimt’s The Kiss and above that photo of the survivors he’d dragged from the roof fall, the matchstick props.   No-one mentioned what lay behind the icon, the history…

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For March, we are delighted to publish three new works by Nigel Jarrett. These poems are all meditations on the theme of marital disharmony. ‘Deluding the Hens’ is published today, with the next two poems to follow throughout the month.…

From beneath the cliff, a sudden din and these flattery-chatterers take off, thicken the channel with threads. A black lace veil lifts, swirls in the glare, risks scorched edges. From somewhere a cue to change tack. Flourish of a return. A wait. Then, with a phoosh they go again, a synchronicity of stretched spans widens…

I broke a dish today, a little blue dish just large enough to hold in the cupped palm of my hand.   The colour, soft aqua blue. A good colour, cool yet warm to receive yoghurt, soup, all kinds of pureed fruit.   I loved this dish not least because my son bought it for…

Our February Poet of the Month reflects on the composition of her piece, ‘Wolf Moon’. Interesting to come back and close read this poem. Written a year ago, it could have been written in the last couple of weeks: same place, same focus, same me. This makes me smile, not least because the poem concludes …

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For February, we are delighted to publish three new works by Amanda Rackstraw. The first of these, ‘Wolf Moon’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.    Wolf Moon   It is a clear, cold…

I was a documentary maker for decades – images and truth my daily concerns in the business of representing the lives of other people. The three poems in my Poet of the Month feature appear in my new collection, Exposure: war, media, democracy. The book responds to journalistic reports of conflicts – the first half, Soldiers and Civilians engages with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel / Gaza war; the second, Citizens and Politicians with the operation of democracy, its institutions, its weaknesses and the crucial issue of how the individual can participate.

The air has changed. It shrinks from us when we emerge – the sun a shrivelled leaf, the air thinning. Even the ants limp and the cats are eating their own paws. Buildings lean on one another like exhausted beggars; salvage – an obscene dream.   This morning I wondered, Is it time for me…

A crucifixion but the cross is a threatened man. A bleeding victim clings to him. In the foreground another sprawls, nearly dead, trying to rise. The painter positions us face on to them in the final moment we could intervene before the irreversible end. Night in a stony place. Flaring torches, from the right, cast…

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For January, we are delighted to publish three new works by Angela Graham. The first of these, ‘A Plan for the Development of Gaza’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.    A Plan for…

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish three new poems by Jack Houston. The third of these, ‘for a few dollars more’, is published today. (Note: if reading on a phone, please read in landscape format)   i have been trying…

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish three new poems by Jack Houston. The first of these, ‘magic city’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.   magic city   it sure seems as if…