Nothing so white as the reindeer’s flank
on which the child has rested.
This is the real world, or is it?
Once, on Harlech Crescent, in the room,
in the bed where my great grandmother
had dwelt, I read the Snow Queen.
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From Poetry
Books of the Year 2024
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of 2024. John Lavin The Letters of Seamus Heaney (edited by Christopher Reid) is surely an important book, giving the reader a more unfettered insight into the mind of the great poet than the equally essential Stepping Stones (Heaney’s autobiography-by-interview with Dennis O’Driscoll). Immediately the lapsed Heaney…
‘The Heart is a Security Risk’ and other poems / Patrick Jones
The Heart is a Security Risk Thank you for searching my suitcase As I left Palestine Thank you for your note you left explaining what you did and why A kind thought indeed So you felt the need to open my suitcase To go through my possessions As I was leaving the country…
‘Walking with the Weather’ by Medbh McGuckian
A grey light with a gossamer tinge
Through his eyes. Those diaphanous
Hands, on the dawn which follows
The midnight after a death.
Their nearness lent a new weight
To the interlocking between angels,
Blackmarket lemons on a forest day
When I cottoned on to this and ruled
The winter, in a sheltered river whose
Mouth is hidden, since death itself is
After all an angel.
A Tribute to Christopher Cornwell
Christopher Cornwell’s dazzling debut collection, Ergasy, was published by The Lonely Crowd. Here, his fellow writers pay tribute to an exceptional talent who will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
Christopher Cornwell Tribute: ‘Early Doors’ by John Goodby
Christopher Cornwell Tribute: ‘Incomplete Text’ by John Lavin
(For Chris) ‘Brilliance is a category of exclusion as much as any other abnormality’ – Christopher Cornwell I don’t complete poems very often – and never quickly – So please forgive me for writing in haste And for writing this kind of thing The sort of blank heart-on-the-sleeve verse That you hated…
‘Turning Saints into the Sea’ by Taz Rahmann
‘Turning Saints into the Sea’ is featured alongside two more poems by Taz in Issue 14 of The Lonely Crowd, which may be pre-ordered here. Turning Saints into the Sea Stubborn pink scales a cliff-face becoming heather, the sea crests hours instructing gulls to remember nothing, footsteps totter in throat knots like a…
New Poetry: ‘December 28th’ by Angela Graham
After Christmas – always – Childermas:* Slaughter of Innocents; Threat Neutralised. The Prince of War, glistening with success, allures us. This, he says, is what you want. Not a stable, sheep-herding losers, a star. [* In the biblical account of the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, King Herod has all…
New Poetry: ‘In Cardiff’s Shopping Arcades’ by Angela Graham
Books of the Year 2023 / Part Two
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose their Books of the Year…
Books of the Year 2023 / Part One
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose their favourite books of 2023. Part two follows next week. Mary Morrissy Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming is a portrait of Carel Fabritius, the Dutch painter whose reputation rests on the ‘The Goldfinch’ (a painting that formed the centrepiece of…
Dreams and Realities / Angela Graham
Angela Graham introduces her trio of poems The Magi Remember by reflecting on the link between dreams, imagination and action. In the Christmas Nativity story, the Three Kings, far from being wise men, display astonishing political naivety. They congratulate Herod, the local supremo, on the arrival of a superpower and expect him to be thrilled…
The Magi Remember / Angela Graham
Three poems for the season by Angela Graham: ‘Balthazar’, ‘Melchior’ and ‘Caspar’. Balthazar When the roads turned into streets and the streets to lanes and the lanes to alleys I became suspicious. I suspected … … something we had not prepared for. Our retinue had fallen more and more behind as…