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Tear the pen,
to pen
this yet-seen draw
words cut across. Continue reading “The Dissection (aelindrome in ρ, the plastic number) by Anthony Etherin”
A list poem is a litany of lines
A list poem is the sum of all its starts
A list poem listens to itself
A list poem lines up in more than one line
A listing poem protects itself historically
A list poem is recursively defined
A list poem never forgets its shopping Continue reading “List Poem by Mike Ferguson”
First Miracle
A burning log fell through the air like a ship, a plank
fell onto a field of black and tinged it blue.
If the field is a meadow, count its little black hairs,
if the field is a flag, count its violent stars.
Renounce all forms of sex unless it’s with a landscape.
Second Miracle
A blue snow arrives in a meaningless landscape.
It isn’t snow, it is a cloud of letters. Bloodhounds
pursue the letters through the whitening fields.
To kill something, say its name. No new sentences,
a gunshot remarks from the edge of the forest.
Anna primal like ma, da, stretched & mirrored in a lake of unwise Homo sapiens
Beatrice in Italian, a tenderness, caressed
California long, narrow, the n a pass momentarily freezing paradise
Diego weight of lead, syllabic four-way stop, digging into earth, Ray Harryhausen tortoise
Ebenezer bless you
Francine 50s bouffant skirt, pink Aqua Net smile, a bitter grit
Giovanni vibrating toes Continue reading “Book of Names by J.A. Pak”
author’s description
“Je l’élève sur mes pensées,
Et je vois éclore au milieu
De la fuite du cristal bleu,
Les feuilles des douleurs passées.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck “Verre Ardent” from ‘Serres Chaudes’, 1889“I hold the glass to my thoughts
and see in that crystal labyrinth
the petals of old pain bloom
as if they were not things of the past…”
― Maurice Maeterlinck ‘Serres Chaudes’, 1889 / “Burning-Glass” from ‘Hothouses’ translated by Richard Howard
Continue reading “Serres Chaudes, a series of visual poetry by hiromi suzuki”
The Listless
A world with no lists.
Nothing is catalogued or ranked.
One
Thing
Does
Not
Come
After.
Above,
Below
Another.
10 things I notice on my run
- true size of a horse reinforced
as it philosophises over the gate - full stop mouse stretched
to a hyphen - butterfly trying to overtake
me whilst drunk driving
(The general public’s attitude to poetry is a bit like it is with taxes – they have a sense there is something good about it, yet they still try to avoid it)
Don’t get sent down. Don’t stand on picket lines.
Don’t listen to Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
Keep away from aftermaths. Don’t teach.
Don’t have children, don’t have children
that teach. Keep off that Internet. Don’t
watch regal celebrations, war centenaries,
or Presidential inaugurations. Good luck
with christenings, weddings & funerals.
Keep your head down on the underground,
doctor’s or hipster cafés. Avoid canal boats,
gardens, community centres & play areas
as well as newsagents’ notice boards.
What do you think the B stands for?
“I’m not one of these people, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, there are some gay people that won’t like you comparing being bi to the same as being gay.”
Good observation. However, I specifically said non-heterosexual in my poem, or did that bewilder you? Besides, I thought it was LBGT? What do you ponder that B stands for?
after / the divider / and yes the birds
darkness trying to claim us and i shivering and fuck me and wondering about everything in the world and i figuring it all wrong and tapping this shit out to make as much as i can of nothing or something into light so i can see it and if i can see it maybe i can bring it back with me when i leave here and my girlfriend wakes up and i am still talking to god with my hands up over my eyes cos fuck me the light is splitting my head into fragments and they are not speaking to each other and it’s like being in a fucking cathedral and the stained light is all over the bleeding place and she’s looking over me like i’m something else compared to what she was falling for
Continue reading “Two poems by Brendan McCormack”
Shadow
I’m an optimist with a shadow who pops in now and then
Just to let me know he’s still around.
He lies dormant like a bindweed vein in winter,
Waiting,
Watching for that glimmer of light
Always looming,
Anticipating his chance to make an entrance Continue reading “2 Poems by Fay Deller”
The silence of grammar. The silence of morning fog. The silence of a tiger’s paw. Wandering silence. The I told you so silence. The silence of violence. The silence of the catacombs contained in a sheet of paper. The shimmer of summer night stillness silence. The ruins of love silence. The silence of God.
On the release of her latest poetry collection – blud – Adrianna Robertson interviewed Rachel McKibbens for Burning House Press.
I first contacted Rachel McKibbens because I had been—as I often am—considering what it means to write about mental illness. I wanted to have more conversation about why it matters to write poems about mental health, how it factors into one’s identity as a human and a writer, and what it is to attempt to put the experience of it into words. At the same time, I was reading more and more of Rachel’s work (I picked up Pink Elephant and couldn’t put it down) and I felt like I had to tell someone—or as many people as possible, that these poems were opening a door. The new poems in blud left me with that same breathless feeling. Again, I found myself reading them aloud, handing them to friends and my students. Yet, when I sat down to type my questions for this interview, I knew it was impossible to say all I wanted to say—how to describe all that these poems bring forth in me: sorrow, heartbreak, awe, kinship…and always surprise. Finally, I settled on some questions and what follows are Rachel’s eloquent and evocative answers, though they would have been this regardless of what I had asked. And, perhaps more important than any perfect word I could come up with to describe this collection, is this: we need these poems and I am so grateful to Rachel for writing them.
All we misfits, weirdos, black sheep, outcasts and witches who have managed to crawl out of the mud and hold our faces up to the light are family.
by Amee Nassrene Broumand
ANB: Autumn begins to pulse from leaf to flavescent leaf, beading—here and there—into cardioid splashes of pomegranate. The hum of the forest alters. Over the hills, in a dilapidated garden choked with honeysuckle vines gone wrong, sunbeams curve down upon a mud-eaten shoe. In places such as these, even saints grow timid.
EC: Currents of light and wind thread a passage. I trail my hands through the leaves, and they come away doused in bergamot, verbena, thyme, traces of care still scattered in this tangled place, death not reversed but charmed into a feral green. I crush rosemary needles between my teeth, think how I must have gone wild too early, trying to possess some other shape. The wind pushes me like a weathervane through the bramble, up to the hollow brink where a house once stood. A granite threshold left sunk in the ground marks where ghosts should step. How can it be the only things that seem real to me now are ruins. Continue reading “An Experimental Conversation with Writer Erin Calabria”
Burning House Press are proud/excited to announce our 2nd publication in 2018 will be the 1st poetry collection by the amazing Anna Wall. More details to follow shortly Xx
Hi-Vis Press interviewed Burning House Press’ chief Arsonist Miggy Angel – Covering the subjects of art, recovery, class, mental health and addiction, and his journey from South London to become a writer and poet – check it out here! Xx
Shrinking Ultraviolet
by Rebecca Bird
(Eyewear, 2017)
Rebecca Bird’s first poetry collection is a fierce, accomplished and empowering call to find your own identity.
What makes one writer different from another? As much as any poet is unique and their writing is particular to them, they still work within (and out of) forms and conventions.
For me, all writing bears the fingerprint of its author’s character, even though we are often using the same building blocks of language – and this is what I find most inciting and insightful in Shrinking Ultraviolet. Continue reading “Shrinking Ultraviolet by Rebecca Bird – reviewed by Adam Steiner”
Lydia Towsey interviewed by Trevor Wright for Burning House Press
We first met at the launch of the Refugee anthology, Over Land, Over Sea. Poems for those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Press 2015). What was that project like for you?
It’s been very positive – a great idea. As an ordinary citizen, especially, or even in our current political climate, it’s easy to feel powerless. Ambrose (Musiyiwa) whose poem The Man Who Ran Through the Tunnel stimulated the anthology) thought this would be a way to mobilise lots of voices, not just from Leicester but from across the country and the world. Continue reading “A Burning House Press Interview With Lydia Towsey”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 
An Interview with Poet Farah Ghafoor
by Amee Nassrene Broumand
Farah, welcome! Thanks for speaking to me here on Burning House Press. You’re seventeen and not only an accomplished poet, but also the editor-in-chief of Sugar Rascals, your own literary journal for teens. What is it about poetry that calls to you? What role does it play in your life?
Thanks for having me!
Poetry has always been the perfect outlet for my joy, anger, sorrow, and opinions. It means that I can come home after a long day, usually tired, and turn my emotions into something beautiful, something that other people can enjoy and connect with. A relief from the tedious busyness of life, reading and writing poetry forces me to slow down, spend some time in other people’s brains, and relish in the incredible complexities of language. Though it’s occasionally a little draining, if I don’t write for a week, I start to suffocate with words.
The adventure of poetry really calls to me, too. I love the tough questions, defensive answers, confessions, secrets, glorifications, histories, judgments, and other elements that poems can present in a condensed form. I love how you can control this kind of adventure. I love how you can use language to its limit. I love how this kind of raw, pristine communication is of endless potential. And I love how a poem can truly be anything.
Continue reading “An Interview with Poet Farah Ghafoor” →
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