Richard O'Brien Death grabs me by the ponytaillike Opportunity in reverseand pulls my head back till my neck is taut. Like this, he says.Like a bow across a fiddle.I do not want to turn around and face him. At night,on my own in the tentat the summer festival, I shiver in the dark,I slide into … Continue reading Emblem

            Bea Bacon Look at us going to Argos. Look at us buying a telly.I can’t believe it. Have you heard of this?It is like rebirth. It is rebirth. Look at it. Look at usbuying a sofa, a nest for conversation. It will grow crumbs.Do you know them? Look at every stitchof the sofa being caressed … Continue reading Hello, from Joyland

In this new essay, Caleb Leow traces the different uses of the word 'earth' in the work of Theophilus Kwek and the ways in which the 'local' and the 'global' are necessarily folded into one another. Kwek's poems, Leow argues, ask us to consider the layers of global history – both human and non-human – … Continue reading To Sway the Earth: On Theophilus Kwek

This is the first of the ‘in conversation’ pieces that we hope to host on And Other Poems over the coming months and years. The idea is a simple one: two poets talking about poetry. This conversation between Maria Sledmere and Oli Hazzard, which took place via email in June 2025, revolves around the relationship between poetics … Continue reading Pop-Ups from Elsewhere: Maria Sledmere and Oli Hazzard in Conversation

“essay” (n.), 1590s, meaning "trial, attempt, endeavour," also "short, discursive literary composition", from French essai, meaning "trial, attempt, essay", derived from Latin exagium, meaning "a weighing, a weight," from Latin exigere, meaning "drive out; require, exact; examine, try, test.” And Other Poems is now accepting submissions for a new prose feature. We hope to publish individual … Continue reading Prose Submission Guidelines

            John Crick and when God hammered out silver and goldhe made swordfish dance on Harlech sands took snuff for the first timeand made sirocco and simoon, levanter and mistral shook out his feather dusterand made a thousand ostriches moult with fear dropped sweat with the effort of creationand made tarns and meres, loughs and fjords … Continue reading And What God Made

            Karishma Sangtani      after Wallace Stevens and Temsula Ao I On my sister’s roadin Birmingham, the oily lightof laburnum flowers. II Yellow tongues surroundedby bees. Pollen collectingon statically charged fuzz. III A terrier runswith the stamina of firethrough a laburnum arch. IV A sister and a sisterare one.A sister and a sister and a laburnumare one. … Continue reading Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Laburnum

            Blossom Hibbert Look, the hole in my heart is  beginning to fill with wet concrete  Look, it is overflowing, a street has been built, won’t you walk over it before you get buried like a small death in an  apple orchard? Won’t you ask around first, to find a maid who will      keep me safe in my elaborate, often  … Continue reading Poem for Sam

            Lucia Dove Mid-March I'm on my feet and running. I have been living with the spidersI used to be scared of but now they are companyI don't mind them so much.I wish writing poetry came as easily as it used to. I think this is not a poem but shame. Some would arguethat shame makes … Continue reading The spiders

            John White She lives with us now so I take her to church.It’s not the one she knows, but the going reassures or the memory of it. With her faltering graspI turn the hymnbook pages back for her, an act on both parts – I can’t sing, nor she decipherwords that crowd and jostle, never … Continue reading Way of Going