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. 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. And Plato remarked, ‘Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history’.
I’ll 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 times give you magical things that your senses can sharpen to find, especially through the troubled world that often surrounds us. Thank you for supporting Acumen.
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.
Neil Elder
Neil Elder’s ‘The Space Between Us’ won the Cinnamon Press debut collection prize in 2018. His pamphlet ‘Codes of Conduct’ (Cinnamon Press) was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award. Other works include ‘And The House Watches On’ and ‘Being Present’. His latest work is ‘Like This’ was published by 4Word Press. This poem is from Acumen 114.
Anne Stewart
Anne Stewart’s latest of 5 poetry collections are ‘The Last Parent’ (SLP, 2019) and ‘any minute now’ (bi-lingual, Eikon, Bucharest, 2023). Her awards include a Hawthornden Fellowship, The Bridport and Southport Prizes and Poetry on the Lake’s Silver Wyvern. She created and runs the poet showcase site www.poetrypf.co.uk, is the Poetry Society’s North West Kent Stanza Rep and President of the Shortlands Poetry Circle. This poem is from Acumen 114.
Chloé Parekh
Of Ukrainian, Indian and French descent, Chloé Parekh is a Junior at Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry is about adolescence, childhood, womanhood, body issues, the war in Ukraine and her Indian heritage. She attended Bard College Young Writer’s Workshop and the 2025 Kenyon
Review Young Writers Summer Residential Program. She is a recipient of Scholastic Art & Writing ’25 Gold and Silver Keys in Poetry and Painting. Her poetry has appeared in Apprentice Writer (Spring ’25), the Young Writer’s Anthology (Boston, Spring ’24), American High School
Poets ’24, and Poetic Power: A Celebration of Poets ’24. She won the ‘Once Upon a Dream’ Award from Young Writers USA and the “Inside of Me” contest by the American High School Poets ’25. Her work was published by the Marble Review. ‘Childhood’ was selected by The America Library of Poetry for publication in their poetry book Excellence.
Sreeja Naskar
Sreeja Naskar is a young poet based in India. Her work has appeared in Poems India, Crowstep Journal, ONE ART, Ink Sweat and Tears, Delta Poetry Review, The Chakkar, Trace Fossils Review, and elsewhere. She believes in the power of language to unearth what lingers beneath silence.
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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