Coming soon!
Acumen 112 – May 2025
Order now for dispatch early May. Acumen 112 presents a rich and varied selection of poetry, interviews, translation, and reviews, featuring both familiar and fresh voices across generations and geographies. Poets in this issue include: Seán Street, Gill Learner, Fred Beake, Caroline Maldonado, Chris Hardy, Diana Pinto, Mantz Yorke, Daljit Nagra, Michael Jennings, Denise Bennett, Simon Richey, Kathleen McPhilemy, Christopher Levenson, Rachel Mann, Jeremy Young, Wendy Klein, Jim C. Wilson, Jeremy Page, Peter Sutton, Wendy Webb, Sue Hubbard, Annemarie Austin, John Daniel and Philip Gross.
Interviews include an insightful conversation between David Perman and Daljit Nagra, who discusses his poetic approach, recent collaboration with Koleka Putuma on a war memorial project in Cape Town, and his work on BBC’s Poetry Extra. Perman also interviews Rachel Mann, exploring her creative influences and recent success with Eleanor Among the Saints, a collection shortlisted for the 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize. Duncan Forbes revisits the life and work of U.A. Fanthorpe, whose poems graced early issues of Acumen. Thoughtful reader responses to Acumen 111 appear, while Poetry in Translation includes works by Paul Verlaine, Miguel Otero Silva, Anna Akhmatova, Chen Que and more.
Themes of history, mythology, and legacy thread through much work, alongside reflections on memory, ancestry, family, and identity. There are natural, coastal and city landscapes, with poems featuring herons, egrets, swans, swifts, wetlands, coral, horses, rain, snowdrops, canals, and Japanese ghosts. Reviews from Belinda Cooke, Parvin Loloi, Fred Beake, Rosie Jackson, Nigel Jarrett, Glyn Pursglove and Andrew Geary offer insight into recent collections.
An annual subscription to the Acumen Journal covers 3 issues packed with great poetry, plus stimulating reviews and essays. It represents great value for money for either yourself or as a thoughtful gift for a poetry-lover.
Editorial
Welcome to Acumen. Do check out our pages and great poems.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF ACUMEN. And a special thank you to those of you who have renewed your subscriptions and have added a donation, so that we can keep the price lower. If you haven’t renewed your subscription for Acumen, please do so here.
Thank you to everyone submitting poems and prose. Acumen has been experiencing a wonderful increase in submissions lately, and we’re grateful for the interest in our magazine. Thanks for your patience while everything is carefully reviewed. Please remember we do not accept simultaneous submissions, but we consider postal and electronic submissions. We do, however, encourage contributors to carefully review our submission guidelines to ensure their work aligns with what we publish – poetry and prose on poetry-related topics, and not short stories. To prepare your submission and for more information please see here.
We’re excited to share the latest Acumen with you, though we must apologise for recent postage issues. Unfortunately, some issues of Acumen have disappeared in Royal Mail. If you’ve experienced any delays or problems, please do let us know. Despite this, we’re committed to ensuring that everyone can enjoy the exceptional work featured in the latest edition. PDF copies are available, plus a very small number of printed copies which we are sending to those whose copies have gone astray. Please contact the Acumen editor for more information.
Thank you for your continued interest in Acumen and the world of poetry. As Emily Dickinson said, ‘I dwell in possibility’ – and it is through your support that we continue to explore the endless possibilities of poetry.
I end with lines that have been attributed to Yeats, but more likely originated from English author and playwright, Eden Phillpotts: ‘The universe is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.’ I hope that the coming months give you magical things that your senses can sharpen to find, especially through the troubled world that often surrounds us.
Guest Poems and Young Poets
Acumen’s aim is to be wide-ranging, publishing contemporary poets both known and unknown, relying on the strength of the poetry rather than the name behind it.
Selected poems from each issue are posted on the website as guest poems for the week. We add photographs and very short biographies – a thing we don’t do in the magazine, preferring at that stage to let the poems speak for themselves.
Steve Denehan
Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. He is the author of two chapbooks and six poetry collections. Winner of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award and twice winner of Irish Times’ New Irish Writing, his numerous publication credits include Poetry Ireland Review and Westerly. This poem is from Acumen 111.
Elisabeth Murawski
Elisabeth Murawski is the author of Heiress, Zorba’s Daughter (May Swenson Poetry Award), Moon and Mercury, and three chapbooks. Still Life with Timex won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. A native of Chicago, she currently lives in Alexandria, VA, USA. This poem is from Acumen 111.
Cassie Whyte
Cassie Whyte is a 25 year old poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Emma Ingledew
Emma Ingledew is a poet and playwright based in Bristol. Raised in Bath and a graduate from the University of Exeter, her poetry is a product of the South West.
We love to publish new and established writers, in our journal and/or on our website and we are proud to have discovered many new voices.
We welcome unpublished poems, translations of poems, articles and debate on poetry covering a wide variety of topics and with different writing styles.
Find out how to submit your poems.
Poetry and Prose
Books and publications
We have a range of quality poetry publications for sale which we hope you will enjoy reading including hardbacks, paperbacks, pamphlets and single issues of the journal.
Electrifying Announcement!
Acumen is among the longest-running literary magazines today.
Patricia Oxley started Acumen in 1985 armed with only an electric typewriter, and without subscribers or contributions. Since then it has grown to one of the country’s leading literary journals.
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