‘Teach me how to forget the colours of the city as we saw them, just as we left them, bright and full of drowning.’

Nina Powles, from ‘What it tastes like’

 

Sweet Mammalian Issue 4 is out now and it is a terrific read (almost finished!).

 

The magazine is edited by Hannah Mettner, Magnolia Wilson and Morgan Bach – three poets whose work I admire. Here is their goal:

‘We are all sweet mammalians.

This publication comes out of a wish to see more good, new writing out in the world. Our aim is to provide a fresh space for poetry that comes out of the complex, the absurd, the warm-blooded. Our aim is to provide a space for all kinds of writing.’

 

I got goosebumps reading these poems and I kept reading when I should have been doing other stuff. It felt like I entered a magical music palace where, whichever way I turned my ear, I would hear a different melody- heavenly or sharp. Plus there’s lots of colour!

 

 

Clare Jones muses beneath the surface of exquisite detail.

Manon Revuelta, lyrically adroit, employs colour hinges and fertile juxtapositions.

Elizabeth Welsh delivers a lyrical echo chamber, again vibrant with colour, with intense realism giving way to strangeness.

Rata Gordon delivers a surprising narrative coil. I want to read her first collection!

There is the acidic bite of Freya Daly Sadgrove that moves you by surprise.

Tayi Tibble catches a nostalgic light to the point her poem glows.

Nina Powles‘ evocation of memory, in its tilts and slips, is infectious.

There is sheer beauty when you read Chris Stewart.

Louise Wallace dedicates her poem to Rachel Bush, and I am hooked on the way expectation tricks, the way you can hear a hydrangea voice and the way a duet might stumble at the bridge.

Anna Jackson produces sunlight and dark, the easily viewed and the hard to see, yet there is a melodic lift.

 

You can read the latest issue here.