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…
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…
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. …
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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.
Day One From nowhere a displaced, Cloven, braced in the shallows Marmite eyes unanswered He vaults over the ford Interrupted. Day Three A puppet under the hedge Tiny antlers once sculpted of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, vessels. Uncalled-for on grass verge of death Eye: quill in a bloodwell Back end: velour peeled already…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For June, we are delighted to publish three new works by Melanie Marshall. The first of these, ‘Dark bordered (Epione vespertaria)’ is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. Dark bordered (Epione vespertaria) Repelled by cedar,…
Separate episodes at the panelbeater’s left his ninety-eight Fiat Punto a particoloured motley: red body, black bonnet, right front hub blue, the other cowled under dinted dirty white. A Ferrari sticker on the boot emblem, the interior a snug perfection: flossy tassel bobbing by the mirror, seats of crimped satin. Once, red early, his iceburn…
Stood, leadenboned, before the bed-length grooved barrows. Lit rainwater brimmed there: the tombstone’s saddle-gloss became a font, and anima reglossed itself as that instant in the top room of the tower’s grey file when her studious concentrated hush pulled all space as tight to her as the pith lagging snug around a chestnut. * Chains…