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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.
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.
A first-morning Eden poem about embodied autonomy, privacy, reflection, naming and the first relation between two people who meet as unfinished equals.
A quiet Eden evening poem about trust, privacy, surprise, desire without possession, and the right of two people to rest without an audience.
A cosmological poem about light and darkness as complementary conditions, and rest as a necessary part of making rather than evidence of failure.
A departure poem about grief, memory, limits, inherited guilt and the uncertain work of carrying a damaged world forward.
A rain-dark underpass poem about misread permission, silence and the petrol-coloured reflection left beneath a bridge.
A wind-led landscape poem in which a woman's coat becomes a second body and the weather briefly takes shape.
A quiet landscape poem about a back-turned figure, geological scale, and a river continuing beyond the edge of the visible world.
A restrained free-verse poem about guarded contact, need, and the small courage of not turning away.
A reflective free-verse poem about leaving, inherited commands, fear, and the room that opens when obedience falls quiet.
A free-verse poem of ash, rain, and a stubborn seed, where survival begins not through pardon but through green forcing its way upward.
A sun-drenched free-verse poem where a sleeping body, a fan, and an orange room leave behind a halo of heat, colour, and absence.
A sensory free-verse poem about a photograph's missing weather, tracing heat, salt, an exposed ankle, and memory beyond the visible frame.
A free-verse poem that treats a battered phone and worn household objects as records of use, memory, and a life lived beyond warranty.
A free-verse poem celebrating the worn ladder, knife, pan, and nail, finding resilience in use, weather, and imperfect repair.
A quiet relational poem of keys, chipped mugs and blurred names, where a nearly spoken intimacy changes the grammar of self and other.
A dusk-bound poem of shadow, glass and one bent shard of brightness, where pain is faced without flinching and light refuses to leave quietly.
A reflective poem of hospital hours, rain-damp streets and brightness on loan, where care collides with the ethics of keeping what was borrowed.
A grief poem of ice-field anchors, timeline drift and a loved one called back through cold light, where mourning threatens to unmake the common world.
A long-distance poem of delayed letters and predictive completion, where authenticity is tested against the comfort of machine-smoothed love.
A delicate night poem of a cat in the garden, moonlit paws and a single drawn note, where darkness becomes stitched, poured and briefly held.
A lyrical poem of a bride, a groom and a giraffe beneath a storm, where vows are measured by height, weather and quiet attention.
A sensuous poem voiced from the lamp-seeking body of a moth, where hunger, light and brief ruin become a kind of doctrine.
A resilient poem of kitchen light, clock glow, and chair, charting self-possession and forward motion.
A navigational poem of fractured screens, midnight routes and a stubborn arrow, where direction matters more than certainty.
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.
Poems grouped by this theme.
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.
65 entries across poetry.
23 entries across poetry.
1 entries across poetry.
1 entries across poetry.
2 entries across poetry.
1 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.