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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.
A crossing-at-night poem about moving when the signal changes and choosing action over waiting.
A platform-side poem about a last train, a softened ticket and the light of other lives moving beyond reach.
A late-night road poem about taking the wrong exit, leaving an old stopping place behind and continuing without a map.
A reflective poem and dark alternative folk-rock lyric from the perspective of a child soldier, tracing obedience, hunger, survival and the right to remain human.
A contemporary poem about the space between breaths, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A contemporary poem about distance has a heartbeat, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A silent shape outlasts the speaker's interpretive impatience and turns waiting into a form of encounter.
The familiar cannot be used as a permanent refuge once the speaker has seen its hidden instability.
An object out of place becomes more truthful by refusing to return to where the speaker expects it.
A contemporary poem about the farther room, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
An unscheduled shape interrupts a plan and creates a different kind of time around itself.
An unlabelled form interrupts an ordinary day and makes the speaker question who was expected to arrive.
A contemporary poem about what the distance carries, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A distant hinge suggests that the world is opening somewhere beyond the speaker's control or explanation.
The field resists a single interpretation, and its disagreement becomes a more honest relation than forced agreement.
A calm surreal lyric about an impossible object that shifts a person’s name and makes an ordinary street arrive from elsewhere.
A surreal & fantastical poem about hinge, door, frame, light, where attention changes the scale of the ordinary.
Looking away does not restore the ordinary; absence becomes another way of seeing.
The ordinary waits at the edge of strangeness, but returning no longer means going back unchanged.
A surreal & fantastical poem about hinge, door, scale, where attention changes the scale of the ordinary.
A small displacement changes the speaker's sense of direction and leaves them with a new, incomplete orientation.
A contemporary poem about near enough to hear, using a concrete image system, a pressured turn and a restrained open ending.
A darkness & chaos poem about glass, light, meaning, where attention changes the scale of the ordinary.
A satire & subversion poem about instruction, distance, silence, where attention changes the scale of the ordinary.
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.