Monthly Featured Poetry 2025
Many thanks to all the poets who continue to submit to Superlative.
Here are the fantastic poems we have selected as feature publications in 2025.
If you would like us to consider your poetry for a future feature, please submit here.
Enjoy!
Perfunctory
​​​(Inspired by Martha Collins's poem, 'The Story We Know')​​​​​​
The way we start is always the same. Hello,
Hello. Your hand, your name. So great, all’s fine,
and so long at the end. That’s every story we know,
and why playact? But eggs tomorrow? Yes?
No? Shoe shopping, Netflix, dinner at nine?
The way we start is prescribed, sound, Hello,
and then it’s Saturday, comics, crosswords, a low
key day indoors, brunch with white wine
and so long. In the end, this is the story we know
too well we don’t shut the book, or see below
the image, or follow the words to the next line:
the way we start is always the same Hello.
Then one dusk, from the old gazebo, rain
starts to tangle your hair, and bead on your spine.
So long is the end of every story we know
that dusk, and we stumble, stub our toe,
we clutch each other against that slipshod sign
of the way we all start and end. Hello,
So long is the only story. We know, we know.
​
​​​​​
By Grace Lynn
Grace Lynn is an emerging painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and investigating absurd angles of art history.
​The Conservatory
​​​
Gothic, century-turned stone like copper
clay, perfected toast. I sit on rounded
corner, Godfather collecting rent, souls.
My spiked wrought iron fence posts, menacing,
hold melodies inside forevermore.
It is here the living dance with the dead.
Fingers shuttle Chopin on piano,
black and white keys like fast paper planes in
the dark. Histrionics of soprano,
Queen of the Night, shoot painstaking high notes
straight to Heaven, Hell for my ears these years.
Clacking metronomes shoot off shelves, tired of
keeping time. No one listens anyway.
I’m the one who says who can stay and go.
Death and the Maiden, forced rest between
each stringed chord, then a resurrection.
People follow my sirens’ call. They twirl
endlessly in minuet with the dead,
unfurling together in orchestra.
Violins, oboes, timpani, French horns,
Stradivari and Guarneri cellos,
enter stages left and right, all silent,
filmy grey ghosts next to their counterpart.
The choir in black files in from all sides, sent
from afterlife. Beethoven—no longer
deaf—enters, looks toward God (me, really)
drops the baton on his Ninth Symphony.
Small death start playing onward joyously.
​
​​By Jennifer Newell​
Having previously performed as a violinist on Broadway early in her career, Jennifer L. Newell subsequently has spent over 20 years as an executive in both the nonprofit and corporate sectors. In addition to writing, she loves hiking, cooking, and trying to keep up with her dogs. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Business Administration from the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University.
LinkedIn: jlnewell
Facebook: jennifer.newell.1232
Well Haunted
​​​
When the train leaves Borth
I see ‘Welcome to Hell’ painted
on the side of a house. Is it hell here?
In the foothills of the Cambrian mountains
I now call home. Where mountain meets sea
an hour north. Of course there are ghosts—
the old woman at Devil’s Bridge,
who appears on the forest hemmed
roads, and footprints of forts with echoes
of the guards once housed there.
The electric buzz of the train builds,
sawing into my eardrums. Sharp
needle jolts against my neurons.
A sign at the other end of my journey reads,
‘Prepare To Meet Thy God’ in bold red,
and I know which of these haunts more
ominously when on the tube to my next
destination a man holds me in his gaze
for a second too long. I am perceived
in exactly the way I prefer not to be.
Even among the bustle of many others.
Uncomfortable in a city skyline
cage. Petrol fumes, fish and chip shop
fryers, the sea replaced with sewer—
lock me in. But if I close my eyes
it melts away. My ghosts join me.
The green hills of “Hell” remind me
it’s a pretty nice place to be.
​
​​​​​
By Katherine Garrison
Katherine Garrison is a private chef and baker originally from the mountains of Wyoming, now living in rainy rural Wales. She writes short fiction and poetry often exploring themes through nature, food, the weird, or some mix of these. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming with Elegant Literature, Trashlight Press, Baubles from Bones, fifth wheel press's effervescent anthology, and Variety Pack among others. When not cooking or writing she loves to go on long hikes with her partner and their dog, camping, birdwatching, foraging, gardening and being outside in general.
Bluesky: @katherinegarrison.bsky.social
Instagram: @kgwritesstories
Abstraction
​​​
Watery moonrise between mangroves.
All day cogs turn, roaring
to trap labyrinths of noise.
Our research is over, calibrated in shadow.
I was young and now I am not that old.
Because time was always and only time,
space always and only space,
which is true for one and only one woman.
The day affects me. The day’s face begins
to deepen. It sustains its stormy scrim.
I want to gaze instead of speak today.
On my canvas, a girl stretches her legs in sleep
by the shore. Potato sack races
on grass probably exhausted her; now she stills
where the silver spoon moon chased her, winded
in dreams. I sit, motionless, staring for a time.
Beyond my palette, it was blustery, rain
blew out of the valley and wind blew.
She waited with the world, peered
into the future: nobody there.
Back in the present, all loose ends,
the hills seem to roll down themselves.
We love disaster when it has nothing to do
with us. We run from the downpour
into a coincidence of black gravel
compressing our perspective, hurry
into a ditch before the sky is framed,
all cloud-strewn and brewing growling fists
of tough kids or soldiers sent overseas.
I look up into the unbelieving sky at the voices
that give me these words, the roads, the cellar,
the parlor that kept our secrets in its brick, the old
Walkman, static as a television in winter lightning,
every morsel of our laughter, everything going
on and on like a tribal song. At the edge of my eyes,
a lone loon braves the polished lawn,
cocks his head to hear the earthworm
tunnel from dark to darker in dirt mouthfuls.
Tadpoles idle in a little quiet, then
yellow as stars, on twigs new green grows,
and white as a wall stained violet with sunrise,
hydrangeas burst in frosted sun.
It was a blustery spring and long, but then
canaries spread in flight
in pools of summer light.
I can’t explain
what I have understood.
​
​​By Grace Lynn​
Grace Lynn is an emerging queer painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work, forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, JAMA, Sky Island, Thimble Lit and other outlets, explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and exploring absurd angles of art history.
History is a Verb in the Downpour
​
Rain on the ridge breaks ripe apricots
of sunset clouds.
It hammers larks, bobcats, peonies
on the hen’s head.
History flows out of the stallion’s
back. Moonlight cracks
its latticework, drips silver smelt
on the face of black rock
like a story
that forgets how it’s told.
Stars drop, one by one,
as pebbles aflame
on grazing livestock.
The wind cooks
the fragrance of centuries.
Lightyears, ten trillion yesterdays, the stone
age in its throat.
It keeps my ancestors’ secrets
carved on caves.
The barn owl carries
the sky on the obsidian span of its wings.
Lightening shocks streetlights
into its swell.
The world wades
its running river, muddy waves churn
promised return. It lapses
into a collective echo
of knees. Elastic pulling
at ancient locomotion
of the trees.
​
​
By Grace Lynn​
Grace Lynn is an emerging queer painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work, forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, JAMA, Sky Island, Thimble Lit and other outlets, explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and exploring absurd angles of art history.
A Mind's Graffiti
​​​
If you forget,
I will recollect
how you made me feel—
your grace,
your strength to resist,
the places you lived:
between the cracks
where wildflowers grow,
pushing through asphalt,
re-seeded,
clambering toward better days.
And I will re-write your name
over and over.
Indexical, until the ink runs out.
In all the missing spaces,
scribbled marginalia—
pages where you should be.
And when I can’t write,
​
my mind’s graffiti
will remember and celebrate.
And where I cannot remember,
I will imagine
that you had a life,
and some connection to me—
like one who rescues the tiny bird.
Limpid memory.
And where you leave no trace,
no print,
I will lay one down.
​
Your gentle hand is here:
in all the books never written,
the pages never read,
in every dropped or lonely thread,
and each lost mind.
All I want
is breath enough
to fill a cup with you.
I stand aside
to let you through—
let me be still
in the sound of grass growing,
the new bud on a tree.
​
By Alice Evans
Alice Evans is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist whose work is multidisciplinary. Her work combines poetry, film, performance, and fine art to explore the thresholds between perception, memory, and place. The work she creates is shaped by lived experience of neurodivergence. Her voice demonstrates states of uncertainty, fragmentation, and transformation. The work is heavily influenced by both academic and creative curiosity. Alice holds a PhD in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, where her research explored Brechtian subjectivity in artists’ moving image. Her MA at the Royal College of Art, focused on psychological dissociation and staged photography. These explorations influence a broader investigation into narrative rupture, emotional landscapes, and the politics of representation. Her undergraduate work focussed on Denis Diderot, Robert Rauschenberg and Jeff Wall.
Alice’s poetry often emerges through a non-linear, fragmentary style that mirrors the texture of lived experience, particularly as it relates to environmental precarity, solitude, memory, and the body. Influences on her work include Rimbaud, Rilke, Derek Jarman and Laurie Anderson. The work is lyrical and has a distinct sensorial intensity.
Her poetry has been featured at the Lancaster Lit Fest, where it was curated by poets Eoghan Wells, Malika Booker and Hannah Lowe. This work was included in the 2022 publication Indivisible published by Commonword, Manchester. Her film-poetry has been screened internationally including: the Los Angeles International Poetry Film Festival, Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, and CRASSH at Cambridge University, UK. A recent film-poem, Laundry Isle is a layered meditation on landscape, weaving spoken word with atmospheric imagery.
She also works as lyricist and vocalist for The Arcane Hope, a spoken-word and art-rock project. Fusing poetic text with sound and occasional live performance, the project is part of a wider commitment to interdisciplinary narrative work.
Her artwork has been exhibited widely, including: ‘Visions in the Nunnery’ (curated by Tina Keane), The Nunnery Gallery, London; the Bridport ‘From Page to Screen’ Festival; and Lancaster Art Fair. She has also engaged in residencies including at HOME arts centre in Manchester. Other activities include: the University Women in the Arts Mentorship, the COLLIDE shortlist at CERN, and she has been awarded Arts Council Support.
A long-standing advocate for kindness and sensitivity towards those with lived experience of mental health conditions, Alice has contributed to national conversations through platforms such as BBC Radio, Metro, Mind, and Refinery29; often highlighting the intersections between creativity, vulnerability, and recovery. Her public projects, such as the Cerebration podcast www.cerebration.co.uk, reframe personal experience through poetic and socially engaged forms.
Across all creative media, Alice seeks to challenge conventional modes of storytelling, offering fractured, multi-voiced alternatives that are simultaneously critical and intensely felt.
She works at her studio in Lancaster. www.aliceevansfineart.co.uk
The Sky that Holds Them
​​​
Two birds float in the hush of a dying light,
wings stretched wide across a sky
that once held everything.
They're not flying away,
just no longer toward each other.
She met him on the cusp of becoming,
when her wings still shook at the thought of open air.
She came from earthbound roots,
calloused beak, and quiet resilience.
He, from a lineage of flight,
names curved in the clouds,
expectations whispered like prophecy.
Only leaving the nest himself,
but already, the wind knew his name.
He showed her the sky,
before she even knew it was hers to claim.
Now the time has come,
to chart her own course.
With her feathers fully unfurled,
and her heart marked by the maps,
that he unknowingly helped trace,
not following in his wake but riding,
alongside the wind.
​
Because not all love is built for landing.
Not every flight is meant to end in the same tree.
Sometimes it just teaches you how to soar,
and then lets you go,
gently,
grieving,
and grateful.
​
​
They finally drift apart.
Not into emptiness.
They move through the same light,
under the same moon,
carrying an echo of what almost was.
​
They never again touch,
yet something in the space between
still shivers,
with memory,
with meaning.
​
They keep flying,
not as a pair,
as something quieter,
something that still aches,
in the softest corners of the sky.
A kind of forever,
that doesn't need closeness,
to be real.
​
So let them go,
let them rise
hearts heavy,
wings brave.
​
Because always,
In some small eternal way,
They’ll both know they once flew under the same sky,
and that sky-
it never stopped holding them.
​​​
​​​​
By Méabh Cusack
Méabh Cusack is an Irish writer and activist from County Monaghan, currently based in Dublin. With a background in politics, Irish-language advocacy, and journalism, her work often offers a glimpse into her own personal thoughts and private life. Poetry became a personal practice for Méabh during a period of transition, when stepping into fast paced, and often ruthless environments felt far removed from the quiet familiarity of home. Her writing is rooted in the landscapes of her rural upbringing and makes frequent use of ecocentric imagery to process emotional experiences through seasonal, geographic, and elemental lenses.