While the more experimental pieces leave a lasting impression, this is dependent upon the success of the writer negotiating a hybrid form. At best, it is liberating; at worst, it becomes an exercise in navel gazing. Andrew Melrose’s compelling essay opens with the clever lines, ‘I can’t write poetry. Or perhaps that should be, I don’t write poetry.’ However, while it may fit thematically, the hyperlink to him singing is a little self-indulgent. David McCooey’s poetry soundtrack and links to SoundCloud are slicker. Antonia Pont reinvigorates the dead art of ‘learning by heart’ by arguing for the ways it can ‘act as provocation to thought’, and essays from Dan Disney and Jessica Wilkinson are fresh and rigorous. Philip Salom’s brilliant ‘freewheeling reflection’ on heteronyms concludes with the pertinent line: ‘Knowing through poetry is why I am a poet.’

Many of the best poems contemplate mortality, like Peter Rose’s suite of poems, which read as memento mori. Kevin Gillam’s, Marcella Polain’s, and Tracy Ryan’s poems are haunting, and Will Eaves’s witty line ‘I should stop writing / about my childhood and move on’ is a lesson many writers should heed. Poetry is solicited by the journal’s editors, but I would like to see the process opened up for general submission.