Listen up … I loved these poems when I read them during the last half of 2024. I hope you also enjoy their different music.

‘Object Permanence’ by Madeleine Cravens

The end’s already in motion, the end was starting this whole / time and today Brooklyn is a beautiful, devastating autumn. / Everyone I love is dancing in the plaza. A band plays below

Madeleine Cravens is the author of Pleasure Principle, published by Scribner in June 2024. Her poems can be found in The New Yorker, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. Madeleine is currently 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia University, where she was a Max Ritvo Poetry Fellow. She has been the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the New York State Summer Writers’ Institute. She lives in Oakland.

‘Come wilderness into our homes’ by Daniela Danz

(Translated from the German by Monika Cassel)

come rising sea levels / up over our shorelines both the developed / and the undeveloped the homey / lowland areas wash / jellyfish into our soup bowls / and ramshorn snails into our hair / as we swim in each other’s direction panicked / with our yearning for one another

Daniela Danz is the author of four books of poetry, Serimunt, Pontus, V, and Wildniß, two novels, Lange Fluchten and Türmer, and the libretto for “Der Mordfall Halit Yozgat,” an opera by Ben Frost based on one of the ten murders carried out by the right-wing NSU. Danz was named poet laureate of Tübingen in 2012 and has received numerous grants and awards, including the 2019 German Prize for Nature Writing, the 2020.

Monika Cassel’s poems and translations from German have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Poetry, The Georgia Review, Guesthouse, and Poetry Northwest, among others. Her chapbook Grammar of Passage (flipped eye publishing, 2021) won the Venture Poetry Award and she was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press inaugural Rhine Translation Prize.

‘Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer for Our First Home)’ by Patrick Rosal

I know  / we’ve had a monsoon  / of grieving to do  / which is why  / I promise    to lie / beside you  /for as long as you like  / or need  / We’ll let our elbows / kiss     under the downpour  / until we’re soaked  / like two huge nets  /                    left  /beside the sea

Patrick Rosal is the author of The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems (Persea Books, 2021), Brooklyn Antediluvian (Persea Books, 2016), winner of the 2017 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and Boneshepherds (Persea, 2011).

‘Just as the Darkness Got Very Dark / Another Data Point’ by Erika Meitner

I’ve been driving since / before he was born. / He is sixteen. Does he know // the black hole of loving / and not being loved in return, / the night and its volume?

Erika Meitner is the author of six poetry collections including Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022), Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), and  Copia (BOA Editions, 2014).

‘If It Happens to You’ by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

How do you go to bed when you have just run over a sheep? Trembling on the /
edge of the bed your cold hands like raw steaks over your eyes, her hand // forms half an orange which presses heavily upon your knee, back and forth

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is considered one of the rising stars in contemporary Dutch literature. In 2015 Rijneveld published Kalfsvlies (‘Calf’s Caul’), a collection of poetry which was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize for best Dutch-language poetry debut, prompting the daily newspaper de Volkskrant to proclaim her the national literary talent of the year. In 2020 she was awarded the International Booker Prize for her novel The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchison.

‘A mathematics of breathing’ by Carl Phillips

to win another night of watching the prince / drift into a deep sleeping beside her, // the chance to touch one more time / his limbs, going, // gone soft already with dreaming. / When she tells her own story

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

‘A Welcome’ by Joanna Klink

No one stays unscathed / but you have days of summer to grow / into your thoughts and learn the great /caring tasks. You have yards of treelight / to race through under the birds’ low song- / swept radiances. The trills you hear /are glass grace. They are singing.

Joanna Klink is the author, most recently, of The Nightfields (Penguin Books, 2020). Her other poetry collections include Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin Books, 2015), Raptus (Penguin Books, 2010), Circadian (Penguin Books, 2007), and They Are Sleeping (University of Georgia Press, 2000). She is teaching at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.

‘Of Daylight Saving Time, MyFitnessPal, and Indoor/Outdoor Cats’ by Jessica E. Johnson

Home: before the day starts birds eat away at silence. / Their twitter nibbles darkness into lace the printer / hums because you didn’t think to turn it off.

Jessica E. Johnson is the author of the book-length poem Metabolics (Acre Books), the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press), and the forthcoming memoir Mettlework (Acre Books). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Republic, River Teeth, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon

‘The Age of Pleasure’ by Derrick Austin

For Erdem

The hottest day in the hottest week in human history. / Cats in shadow dodged the sun but not each other’s rage or lust,/ shredding and shrieking behind the Euro Plaza Hotel./ What had you done for seven weeks but get food poisoning / and your phone pickpocketed? The only person you knew / on the continent was your lover with a jellyfish tattooed on his back.

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness, winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water, which was selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His third collection, This Elegance, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Spring 2026. A Cave Canem fellow, he is the recipient of a Ron Wallace Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, a Stegner Fellowship, and an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He lives in Austin, TX.

‘Surfacing’ by Stefanie Kirby

I woke up afraid I’d bled through the skin of my body. The furniture wept at the sight of all that blood. Breakfast: egg, berries bloodied, thawed. The egg softened into an eye.

Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her debut, Fruitful (Driftwood, 2024), is the winner of the 2023 Adrift Chapbook Contest. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Best of the Net Anthology 2024, Pleiades, phoebe, The Massachusetts Review, The Maine Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere.

‘I wake at dawn to glimpse my barren chest and speak to the children I won’t birth.’ by Spencer Williams

My two delicate hums. / My pair of soft assemblies. // My want is a canary rattling the morning’s thin frame, / the steady breath of droplets following months of bad weather

Spencer Williams is a Mexican trans poet from Chula Vista, California. She is the author of TRANZ (Four Way Books, 2024).

‘Snow’ by Louis Macneice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was / Spawning snow and pink roses against it / Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: / World is suddener than we fancy it.

Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet, playwright and producer for the BBC. His poetry, which frequently explores themes of introspection, empiricism, and belonging, is considered to be among the greatest of 20th Century literature.

‘I’d Drive Anywhere with You’ by Kerry Greer

I don’t know how to say this any other way: / He’s not from here. He’s not like anyone / I’ve ever met. // He’s so pleased I ordered him a double / cheeseburger tonight. This is a once-a-month / treat. Fine dining, I say. You should see his face. / He’s six now, and he thinks this might go on / forever. This always growing up, these nights of / life contained and held.

Kerry Greer is an award-winning poet and writer based in Western Australia. She received the Venie Holmgren Prize for Environmental Poetry in 2021. Kerry has been shortlisted for the ABR Calibre Essay Prize, the Woollahra Digital Literary Award, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the ACU Poetry Prize, and more. As a widow and solo parent, Kerry has a particular interest in writing about grief and loss. Her debut poetry collection, The Sea Chest, was published by Recent Work Press in November 2023.

‘The Compline’ by Christian J. Collier

In bed, we discuss / our future, our children woven in myrrh, sitting // in some tomorrow, waiting for us to join & give them our science / so they can live. // I tell her what I fear: I’ll walk into fogged, writhen woods & die / when our babies are too young to carry my baritone with them. // I’ll become / the almost-stranger

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer and the author of the collection Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024). ‘The Compline’ is from Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024).

‘Splinter’ by Gwyneth Lewis

For Finnley, aged 3

In years to come, they will lodge in his heart. / I won’t be me with a sterilised pin / Dislodging dashes of wooden rain / Aslant in his sole. /

Gwyneth Lewis is one of the most prominent Welsh poets of her generation, and the first writer to take up the Welsh Laureateship. Born into a Welsh-speaking family, Lewis has been dubbed a ‘bilingual virtuoso’ – her first book in English, Parables & Faxes, won the Aldeburgh Festival Prize, and she has since received numerous prizes and accolades for writing in both her languages. ‘Splinter’ is from Sparrow Tree (Bloodaxe, 2011).

‘Transformation’ by Adam Zagajewski

(Translated by Clare Cavanagh)

September’s sweet dust gathered / on the windowsill and lizards / hid in the bends of walls. / I’ve taken long walks, / craving one thing only: / lightning, / transformation, / you.

Adam Zagajewski was a poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in Lwów (Lviv), Ukraine, on June 21, 1945. He spent his childhood in Silesia and then in Cracow, where he graduated from Jagiellonian University. Zagajewski first became well known as one of the leading poets of the Generation of ’68, or the Polish New Wave (Nowa Fala), and is one of Poland’s most famous contemporary poets. His eight books of poetry in English include the posthumous collection True Life: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), first released in Poland in 2019 and translated into English by Clare Cavanagh;

‘Indeterminacy’ by J. Mae Barizo

You see I wanted a different kind of music / One that felt like a foreign city or ice cracking / A prediction of snow and then the snow itself endless

J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist and multidisciplinary artist who was born in Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collections Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015). Barizo has been the recipient of awards from Poets House, MAP fund, Critical Minded, Bennington College, Opera America, and the Mellon Foundation. She was a 2024 Artist Resident at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Barizo is the chair of the undergraduate creative writing program and is part of the MFA faculty at The New School. She lives in New York City. She was inspired to write ‘Indeterminacy’ while reading the diaries of John Cage.