Acumen 111 – January 2025

Acumen 111 highlights powerful new writing by well-known and emerging poets from across the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and beyond. Contributors include David Ball, Sarah Feldman, Gareth Culshaw, Julia Deakin, Wendy French, Steve Denehan, Myra Schneider, Colin Pink, Rosie Jackson, Martyn Crucefix, Patrick Osada, Isabel Miles, Jodi Cadenhead, Dinah Livingstone, Liam Aungier, Paul Surman, Caroline Price, David Sergeant, Jan FitzGerald, Chris Rice, Judith Skillman, Mike Everley, Tytti Heikkinen, Michael W. Thomas, Maggie Brookes-Butt, Toby Buckley, Linda Stern Zisquit, and many others.

This issue features an interview with Fred Beake, who examines the influences shaping poetry, including Greek literature, The Gawain Poet, myths such as The Cyclops, many British, French and American poets, historical events, and landscapes, including North Yorkshire on his writing.

Essays include Paul Gittins’s incisive study of working horses in poetry and Robert Griffiths’s exploration of the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Poetry in Translation features works by Ishihara Yoshiro, Anna Akhmatova, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Rudolf Leonhard and others. The Reviews section presents critical insights from Kathleen McPhilemy, Colin Pink, Susan Mackervoy, and Andrew Geary.

Full contents:

Editorial
Poems: David Ball, Sarah Feldman, James B. Nicola, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Sue Baker, Susie Wilson, Julia Deakin, Patrick Osada, Isabel Miles, Jan FitzGerald, Gareth Culshaw
Interview with Fred Beake – David Perman
Poems: Elizabeth Barton, Ken Evans, Wendy French, Steve Denehan, Robert Dorsett, Jennifer Johnson, Philip Dunkerley, Myra Schneider, Jodi Cadenhead, Ronald J. Pelias, Linda Stern Zisquit, Paul Surman, Shannon Clinton-Copeland, Oliver Marlow, Laura Seymour, Livingston Rossmoor, Mike Everley
Horses in Poetry – Paul Gittins
Poems: Emma Simon, Martyn Crucefix, Rosie Jackson, Toby Buckley, Alessio Zanelli, Michael Henry, Robin Lindsay Wilson, Oliver Marlow, Liam Aungier
Poetry in Translation: Ishihara Yoshiro (John Newton Webb), Anna
Akhmatova (John Gallas & Tamara Romanyk), Rudolf Leonhard (Dennis Tomlinson), Paul Verlaine (Francis O’Hare), Arthur Rimbaud (Francis O’Hare), Judita Kaššovicová (John Minahane), Miriam Drev (Miriam Drev & Barbara Siegel Carlson)
Poems: David Sergeant, Chris Rice, Judith Skillman, Oisín Breen, Rosie Hadden, Nigel Crisp, Colin Pink, Tytti Heikkinen, John Lancaster, Sam Cassels, Vivienne Tregenza, Marjory Woodfield
What A Poet Knows (That AI Doesn’t)? – Robert Griffiths
Poems: Catherine Fisher, Dinah Livingstone, Liam Aungier, Isobel Williams, Christine Tainsh, Phil Kirby, Michael Gittins, Chiara Salomoni, Nick Cooke, Elisabeth Murawski, Wendy French, Simon Maddrell, Julian Bishop, Winifred Mok, Colin Pink, Jen Feroze, Maggie Brookes-Butt
Reader Responses
Poems: Alec Taylor, Oliver Sedano-Jones, Caroline Price, David Thompson, Roger Harvey, Nigel Pantling, Sidney Lawson, Toby Buckley, Lori Drummond-Mundal, Nick Pearson, Duncan Wu, Doris Corti, Michael Tanner, Peter Boyle, Rex Wilder, Michael W. Thomas, Clive Donovan, Helen Overell, Paula Sankelo, Neil Reeder
Reviews: Kathleen McPhilemy, Colin Pink, Susan Mackervoy, Andrew Geary
Poetry Comment