Oxford Poetry Spring 2023 (95)

In my last editorial I talked about closure, and in the one before that I talked about paper. But perhaps I shouldn’t have. Because just before we sent our previous issue to press, the mill that supplies our paper closed. Like, forever. Which is why, as you may have noticed, the cover suddenly turned a darker shade of blue, and the dustjacket became a little thicker and smoother. Eleventh-hour substitutions that, actually, I think came together pretty well. If I were clever, then, this editorial would be about inheriting bucketloads of cash from an estranged aunt. But actually it’s going to be about coincidence. Or maybe luck. Which reminds me of an old notebook I found recently in a drawer, from when I was probably about twenty. It’s filled with…

The editors would like to congratulate the winners of the 2022 Oxford Poetry Prize, judged by Emily Berry. Dominic Leonard received first prize for his poem ‘My Grandfather Goes to the Bathroom’, which you can read on page 32. Second prize went to Linda Ravenswood for ‘Elementary School’ (page 50). And third prize went to Caleb Leow for his poem ‘Tongues’ (page 48). There were also special commendations for Kizziah Burton (‘The World She Crossed the World to Find’, page 52), Jay Gao (‘Split Ends’, page 29), and Brian Gyamfi (‘Horseradish’, page 45). Reflecting on the process of reading this year’s submissions and selecting the winners, Emily writes: ‘Dominic Leonard’s winning poem caught my attention early in the process for its unexpected title, which turns out to be gently humorous…

The week of the wildfire T tells me he is going through something and he says it just like that, in italics. The air is thick with smoke, foaming into a new word, haze, until it does what only haze can do, hangs. See? Everything can be untangled into figures of speech. The cloud talks itself back into its own prosopopoeia. At least going recalls motion and motion a journey. You can’t hang through something, only hang onto or off of, which can only be worse. And something is only a noun, like a kettle or a body, although it can’t be as certain as illness, not something you can get over, no fence to clear in one clean leap. Unnamable, yes, but unnamable. Think of the fire, 30 miles from here,…

Because the soul is only language worked into a body, thus Adam, thus me. Because we laid down bare, flesh by flesh, in thick darkness & felt almost holy. Because this story, already a blade, cuts me every time my mouth moves. That I scribbled poems & thought it a way towards healing. Help me believe. That grace coincides with mercy. That my aunt did not lose her son but laid him to sleep. That the silver-black crows circling the town are nothing but angels disguised as birds disguised as nothing. That a stray bullet lodged in the forehead marks the end of a body’s sentence. That the blood coursing this map has led me here. That this priest, mid-air, between thumb & forefinger, lifts the Eucharist like Van Gogh…

I. We have been warned not to walk our dogs. The water here is carcass. Do not drink from the neck of the animal that died an animal. II. Heat around a wound may imply: – cause of death (infection) – signs of life (infestation) III. Creation myth: lemons, almonds, the dissipating heat of a doe. IV. The red fish in the trough boil over each other to escape. To what? V. To love is to dance in the shadow of grief ’s pergola, of night jasmine, honeysuckle, whatever flower this is. VI. Language is what comes after, when the mouth waters or is dry and aches to water again – that is when language comes like burying an empty coffin or throwing a baby from a burning building into…

Ones you stumble across, right there looking stony. Humble stones, standing alone. Take stones in Umbria where summer intones without umbrellas. Stonking stones drunk on sun, in their oneness stunned, a stone stoned. Stones like nests for pebbles that revel in the stonic quality of their cold. Your toes reading out sentences of stones, hitting low notes of stones, soles flat and stoical on a senate of stones, palms stocking up for windowsills, paperweights. Nasty stones. Oiks of grey and unrounded. Stones of undone. Onus on stones. On tonnes. On tonnes to stones. Stonnets.…