poetry

Welcome to The Caterpillar ‒ an art & literature magazine for children aged 7‒11 which we have been publishing since 2013. The spring 2023 was our last, but we continue with The Caterpillar Poetry Prize (judged this year by Kate Wakeling), as well as The Moth Poetry Prize, The Moth Short Story...

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. Leonardo da Vinci

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it. Marilyn Hacker

Just a bit of fun with colour. It benefits from a fast, out-loud read, if you can. How Blue Do You Do? Incorporating every colour on the Wikipedia page Shades of Blue. Periwinkle, manganese, cornflower, smalt, Liberty, blue bell, savoy and cobalt. Uranian navy, International Klein...

Make of this what you will. I'm not sure what to make of it myself. It's possible someone found it in a chest in the stone-walled basement of a dusty library. It might be a dream. Or perhaps I just made it up. There's a story to tell, I think, in the world of the poem. -- Tärsél’s grief she...

New blog post by Rachel McCarron The Untidy Desk In an effort to repossess the poet’s soul I sold to Reality thirty years ago, I decided to tackle a form with some constraint. Like a penance for my neglect all these years. So, here’s a Villanelle, initially as perplexing to me as her...

“If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.” Shane Koyczan

“My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.” Anne Sexton

https://mariaedgeworthcenter.com/maria-edgeworth-literary-festival/maria-edgeworth-literary-festival-competition/

“Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.” Rainer Maria Rilke

The only problem with Haiku is that you just get started and then Roger McGough

To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth. Paul Valéry

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” T. S. Eliot

New blog post by Vagabond Heart WTF, Will! The poems 1 – 5 Well, I’d just read all of Shakespeare’s plays and I was feeling extremely showy-offy. And yes, I’d been totally mind-blown or singularly unimpressed and all the stops inbetween. But I couldn’t say I’d read the Complete Works until...

New blog post by mickleinapickle Don’t Call On Me Cold winds blow through city streets as winter’s grip takes hold and grey souls in downbeat worlds retreat to lies untold. . Rain-lashed pavements now are bare, the forecast speaks of snow, but in grim northern climates an oasis starts...

Subscriber OnlyOpinion We are up to our necks in a rising tide of AI-generated slop A person who thinks a book can be ‘edited’ by a piece of software is a person who simply doesn’t know what editing is Expand A majority of the study’s participants preferred a poem generated by AI in the style...

Whether it’s poetry or short stories, [I’m writing] because I am really consumed with some question or series of questions grouped under the same obsession. I keep writing until I’m sick of exploring that question . . . I think that every writer should have a question they can ask that there is...

New blog post by mickleinapickle – discussions in this thread, please --- We gazed from Cardiff’s seafront as the diamond radiance of a million stars glittered in autumn’s midnight. . I spoke of my soul’s breech by the songs of Bassey, Jenkins and the Jones’ boy, . of my tears’...

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear. Frederick Seidel