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Poetry
A space for poems, spoken pieces, and collections shaped by pressure, memory, fracture, and feeling.
Browse by collection, spoken work, theme, or recency.
Editor’s picks and special spotlights: the poems, sequences, and craft notes we think deserve your front-row gaze. Rotating highlights, seasonal themes, and one-off gems that show the range of our community.
A procedural surreal poem about overloaded cognition, delayed meaning and the search for one sound worth trusting.
A contemporary poem about when the figure moves, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A body exists before classification, and the speaker confronts the violence of naming too quickly.
A contemporary poem about a line between brightness, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a room with the wrong proportion, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about an ordinary portal, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
An explanation fails at the edge of an experience, leaving the speaker with a more honest and less complete language.
A contemporary poem about the image after its meaning, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about the strangeness of staying, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about the window refuses the view, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about the world tilts towards the hand, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about what the quiet thing knows, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a body beside the answer, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a lamp refuses the corner, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a little wrong in the morning, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a stranger scale, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a tool for no repair, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a tool for the unplanned, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a useful thing goes quiet, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about a visitor with no shadow, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about an answer out of frame, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about domestic impossible, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
Looking away does not restore the ordinary; absence becomes another way of seeing.
A contemporary poem about measure me by the detour, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
Poetry themes
Each stream gathers poems by mood, music, pressure, and the kind of attention the piece asks for.
Poems that walk the fault lines: grief, rupture, war, urban grit, and the mythic underbelly of the everyday. Expect charged images, stark music, and hard turns that don’t tidy the mess so much as name it.
Editor’s picks and special spotlights: the poems, sequences, and craft notes we think deserve your front-row gaze. Rotating highlights, seasonal themes, and one-off gems that show the range of our community.
Where verse meets melody. Poems arranged as songs, chants, and soundscapes—complete with audio players, lyric sheets, and credits for collaborators. Expect live takes, studio mixes, and experiments that let the poem sing in new registers.
Field notes of the inner and outer world: weather, seasons, land, and the quiet revolutions of thought. Lyrical attention, ecological awareness, and a contemplative pace define this stream.
Wit with teeth. Irony, parody, and mischief aimed at power, pretence, and the status quo. Formal play and punchy line breaks welcome; the laugh should leave a bruise.
Work of resilience and renewal: poems about survival, kinship, faith (in any form), and the long arc of becoming. Clear cadence, steady light, and endings that open rather than preach.
Dream-logic, fabulism, and mythic visitations. Reality bends, symbols speak, and images carry more than one meaning. The goal is wonder and unease in equal measure.
Poetry in isiZulu, alongside careful translations where offered. A home for imagery, izibongo (praise poetry), and contemporary voices that carry rhythm and story. Submissions may appear bilingual to welcome wider readers.
56 entries across poetry.
6 entries across poetry.
6 entries across poetry.
13 entries across poetry.
3 entries across poetry.
255 entries across poetry.
Poetry began here as play with words, fragments, and unlikely connections. Over time it became a record of feeling, then a way of making sense without forcing neat explanations too early.
Some pieces are more instinctive. Some are more controlled. None of them are interested in pretending the human experience arrives tidy.
These poems are not written to hand over a single fixed meaning. They are written to hold image, pressure, contradiction, and the parts of experience that resist summary.
Read them slowly or read them in a rush. Read them in sequence if you want to notice how the voice shifts over time. Read them out of order if you want the cleaner shock of recognition.
If a poem leaves you with a clearer feeling rather than a cleaner answer, it has done its job.
Some poems also live in voice.
Where a spoken version exists, it should feel like an extension of the page rather than a separate performance layer. The voice is there to carry the pressure of the line, not distract from it.
Collections gather poems by atmosphere, season, pressure, or recurring thread.
Enter a collection when you want a more sustained mood than the main archive offers, or when you want to stay with a particular register a little longer.