The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For September, we are delighted to publish three new works by Chrissie Gittins. The first of these, ‘The Islands of the Bahamas’, is published today with more poems to follow throughout the month.
Our Poet of the Month for August is Shauna Gilligan. Here she discusses the creative process behind the three poems we have published throughout the month.
In the prison yard burst footballs still trapped in barbed wire, a grey watchtower still against the winter steel sky above the visiting room where his rough lips give way when we kiss pushing the loneliness down. At night cries ripple through the landing; I shut my eyes, dream of outside. My girl:…
‘Daughter, Frizzante (In Padova)’ In my candy-floss mind where everything sticks: our fingers are entwined, your plump baby hand still curled tightly around my hair. These days our rushed goodbyes push us to let go, bid farewell to the mess of childhood and the hot smothering of raw motherhood. What sticky…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For July, we are delighted to publish new work by Shauna Gilligan. ‘Self-Butchery in Two Parts’ is published today with another new poem to follow on Sunday.
Absence The town lies baked in dust and dejection; today belongs to the ant masters of the chemical trail. I walk, feeling as though I’ve lost someone and not knowing where to find them. An ugly harmless lizard lies by a fence, tongue flickering in blue primordial patience while a dog barks its warning…
S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish
origin and now lives in Dublin. His collection The Colour of
Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) was The Observer Poetry Book
of the Month. An Ocean Called Hope (Downingfield Press, May 2025) is
forthcoming. His poetry has been published in more than a hundred
magazines around the world. He has been highly commended in the
Erbacce Prize and nominated for Best of the Net. He has very recently
given readings at the Waterford Gallery of Art, Ardgillan Castle and
Notre Dame University.
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For April, we are delighted to publish new work by S.C. Flynn. ‘Uploading the Impossible’ is published today with another poem to follow on Sunday.
Listen to our Poet of the Month, John Freeman, read ‘Little Dancer, Fourteen’. You can also read the poem below. The Lonely Crowd · ‘Little Dancer’, Fourteen’ by John Freeman A particular young girl at ballet class adopts the classic pose she has been trained in, head up, shoulders back, arms down behind her,…
I’d heard the words before, but I shall hear them forever, or what passes for forever in human life, and as I’ve heard them now for years, as Peppino said them, with a ponderousness which was disarming if you chose to find it so, as we did, his friends, his fellow-students and I, the tutor,…
A child uncovers an effigy of the rain god. They drive their shovel down into its head.
Hairline cracks
pour down Cocijo’s face, trembling tears, as screams from the kitchen signal fire.
Tonight dinner is smoke.
The mountain swooned in its strangeness, storm above pink in celestial tension. How I’d like to be buried here, I thought, unsteady but rooted in natural chaos. To have spent a lifetime trying to control it, taming passions and longings, feuding with ecstatic idiocy. To know love might transcend elements, cut…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For May, we are delighted to publish three new works by Morgan L. Ventura. The first of these, ‘Desert Talk’, is published today with two more poems to follow at the weekend. You can also listen to Morgan read the…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For April, we are delighted to publish three new works by P. C. Evans. The last of these, ‘The Resurrection of the Lord‘, is published today. The accompanying photographs are by the photographer and artist, David Street. The Resurrection of…