…when we respond to a poem and some inner colour (or its other-sensory equivalent) blooms, what are we actually getting hold of? Rereading Sylvia Plath a few days ago, I was struck by the vividness of the colours in Ariel, bright slashes that seem to drain pigment from everything around them, and in me something began to concentrate too, a gathering intensity. Was I accessing the poems or were the poems accessing me – and what does that access entail?

from Emily Berry’s Editorial

Poems

Andrew Sclater, Ivy Drip at Warriston Cemetery
D.M. Aderibigbe, Letter from My Father, Odysseus
Daisy Lafarge, from understudies for air
Chelsey Minnis, from Baby, I Don’t Care
Allis Hamilton, Winding her
Kit Fan, The Painted Skin
Seán Hewitt, from Buile Suibhne
James Byrne, from The Caprices
Alison Winch, Marriage, The Song of the Patriarchals
Andrew McMillan, first time   sexting, first time   ‘posh’
Ahren Warner, from Hello. Your promise has been extracted
Dai Weina / Liang Yujing, Rangoon Lover, Hemingwayesque Kiss, Loving You at the Speed of a Snail, Travelling Around the World
Read Liang Yujing’s ‘Behind the poem’ article on translating Dai Weina
Elaine Feeney, Roethke takes the boat to Ballinasloe   Read Elaine Feeney’s ‘Behind the poem’ article on her Roethke poem
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Our Last WWF SummerSlam
Moniza Alvi, A Portrait of the World, Creating the Birds
Christine Gosnay, Divagations
Lindsay Macgregor, Dusk, Endearment    
Conor O’Callaghan, My Father Hangs Around the House Far More    
Patricia Tyrrell, Otherlessness
Laura Seymour, Gold watch soup
Julian Stannard, Boxing Day, Pigs in Suffolk

Enquiry

Kathryn Maris, Vahni Capildeo and David Wheatley on offensiveness, risk and the risqué    

Essay

“Dream” makes a giddy sound: Vidyan Ravinthiran on 100 years of Gwendolyn Brooks

Reviews

Helen Mort on collections by Simon Armitage and John Burnside
Bidisha on Joy Harjo, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley and George Szirtes
Alison Brackenbury reviews Elaine Feinstein and Shanta Acharya
Claire Crowther on Joanne Limburg, Fran Lock and Shara McCallum
Charanpreet Khaira reviews Polly Atkin and Richard Osmond
Will Stone on translations of Michel Houellebecq and David Gascoyne
Jennifer Wong on Ocean Vuong, Wayne Holloway-Smith and Angelina D’Roza
Joe Kennedy on poetic ‘artefacts’ from Holly Pester and Ed Atkins
Edwina Attlee delves into six new pamphlets

The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2016: Jane Yeh introduces winner Wayne Holloway-Smith

Cover image: Sophy Hollington