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.
Online Fiction & Poetry
‘Absence’ by S. C. Flynn
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…
‘Emotional Support Poem’ by S. C. Flynn
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.
‘From Shattered Silk to Sleight of Hand’ / Linda McKenna
‘Trompe l’Oeil’ also starts with an old object, in this case a piece of embroidery that will be framed to make a fire screen. I have one like this a peacock on silk that screens the fireplace in my sitting room. The one in the attic that I keep meaning to ‘do something with’ has a piece of tapestry featuring a huntsman in a red coat. I love the combination of skills in fire screens; woodwork, glazing, sewing and the way they show us what can be achieved with left-overs, remnants, scraps. I wanted to create something that paid tribute to that and that echoed how I think poetry often functions, taking fragments and cast offs to create something that covers and comforts a gaping open hearth and heart.
Story of the Month, July: ‘Bread and Death’ by Tadgh Muller
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For July, we are delighted to publish a new work by Tadgh Muller. And the dog started barking, charging around like she might rip down a curtain or knock over the table. My missus went…
Poet of the Month, July: S. C. Flynn
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.
‘Coping with Anxiety’ by Cath Barton
Cath Barton on the creative process behind ‘A Suitable Feast’ from Issue 14. You can also listen to Barton read the story below. My story ‘A Suitable Feast’ was essentially a response to my anxiety during the COVID pandemic. When Italy was locked down in early March 2020 I had no idea that would happen…
Read by the Author: ‘Little Dancer, Fourteen’ by John Freeman
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,…
Short Story of the Month: ‘Fallen Rocks’ by Aideen Henry
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For June, we are delighted to publish a new work by Aideen Henry.
‘Peppino’s Thinking Reed’ by John Freeman
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,…
In Conversation with Nigel Jarrett / Cath Barton
Welsh writer Nigel Jarrett is a winner of the Rhys Davies Prize and the Templar Prize, both for short fiction. He’s published nine books, two of them poetry collections. His latest book of poetry, Gwyriad, is published by the Welsh independent, Cockatrice. Nation.Cymru said its poems rewarded close reading by their ‘ingenuity and range of cultural allusions’, while Acumen magazine remarked on the collection’s ‘perceptive meditations on many of the key moments of human existence, expressed with humour and insight’. Cath Barton met Jarrett to discuss the collection and his approach to the creative process
Where Poems Come From and Where I Want Them To Go / Tony Curtis
In Darkness in the City of Light, there’s a poem in the narrative called ‘Taking Line 5, January 1945’, where one of the disappeared men comes back to Paris. The Germans took a million and a half Frenchmen away – I didn’t know that – and the survivors dribbled back and they were broken. At first, people didn’t want to look at them, they didn’t want to look at their own defeat. In the Metro carriage, it takes a while for a woman to get up to give him her seat – but then everyone finally acknowledges he’s there.
Poet of the Month, June: John Freeman
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For June, we are delighted to publish three new poems by John Freeman. The first of these, ‘Experience at Merthyr Mawr’, is published today with two more to follow over subsequent weekends. The accompanying photographs are by Peter Sedgwick, who…
Ritual Glitch by Morgan L. Ventura
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.