Acumen 115 – June 2026

Issue 115 of Acumen, to be published during June 2026, gathers poems and prose alive to water, memory, peril, renewal and the wider universe. There are stars, planets, astronauts, trees, plants, fellow creatures, cities and rural landscapes; there is also the human weather of endurance, displacement and return. The issue includes a new interview with Nick Makoha on The New Carthaginians, inhabiting belonging, ‘double ekphrasis’, and the influence of Eliot and the metaphysical poets. It also features a searching account of the nature and history of tanka and a rediscovery of the modernist Joseph Macleod. New writing includes poetry by Elizabeth Cook, Kim Waters, David Sergeant, Denise Bennett, Philip Dunkerley, Claire Booker, David Ball, Alwyn Marriage and Robin Lindsay Wilson, alongside many others. Poetry in translation includes work by Anne Broeksma and Salgado Maranhão.

The reviews section includes assessments of recent collections from across the globe, alongside a powerful Comment on three collections by poets caught in the epicentre of persecution, displacement and war. The issue also marks forty years of Poems on the Underground. Preparation was delayed by the Thames Water Ltd trunk main burst that flooded Acumen’s London base; a fuller note appears on our news page. Thank you to readers, contributors and subscribers for your generous patience.