After 10 issues, over 200 poems published – with five featured in Best British Poetry anthologies and numerous finding their way into poets’ collections – working with some of the best poets writing today, the editors have decided to close Poems in Which.

We’re proud to have had over 30,000 readers visit Poems in Which from over 60 countries. We are also proud to have been an advocate for making poems published in online magazines eligible for more major poetry competitions. The website will stay open for the next year and then, after that, the magazine will be available through the Web Archive at the British Library.

Thank you to everyone who has read Poems in Which, thank you to everyone who has submitted work and our thanks go out especially to those who agreed to publish with us (the full contributor list is below – look at those names!).

With all our love,

Amy, Rebecca, Wayne and Alex

Abigail Parry

Agnes Marton

Alanna McArdle

Alex Bell

Alexander Booth

Alexander Speaker

Alison Winch

Amy Blakemore

Andrea Quinlan

Andrew McMillan

Angela Kirby

Angela Readman

Anna Selby

Annie Katchinska

Anthony Adler

Aria Aber

Barbara Barnes

Ben Stainton

Bobby Parker

Camellia Stafford

Charlotte Chappel

charlotte Geater

Chloe Stopa-Hunt

Chrissy Williams

Claire Trevien

Claudine Toutoungi

Clyde Kessler

Cowan Montague

Crispin Best

Dai George

Daisy Behagg

Daisy Lafarge

Dan Barrow

Declan Ryan

Dollie Stephan

Eireann Lorsung

Ella Frears

Emily Hasler

Emily Toder

Emma Hammond

Emma Jeremy

Erik Kennedy

Fiona Moore

Fran Lock

Francine Elena

Gence Barber

Giles Goodland

Graeme Bezanson

Harry Giles

Harry Man

Holly Hopkins

Holly Isemonger

Ian Cartland

Irit Sela

Isobel Dixon

Jack Nicholls

Jake Brukhman

Jane Yeh

Jeff Hilson

Jen Campbell

Jenna Clake

Jennifer L. Knox

Jérome Poirier

Jerrold Bowam

Jessica Schouela

Joe Dunthorne

Joe Turrent

Joey Connolly

John Canfield

John Clegg

John McCullough

Jon Stone

Josephine Corcoran

JT Welsch

Judy Brown

Julia Bird

Karl Smith

Kate Potts

Kate Wise

Kathryn Maris

Katrina Naomi

Katy Evans-Bush

Kieran Ryan

Kirsten Irving

Laura Webb

Lauren Vevers

Leah Umansky

Lisa Kelly

Lorraine Mariner

Lucy Mercer

Luke Kennard

Marcus Slease

Marek Kazmierski

Maria Taylor

Markie Burnhope

Mark Waldron

Martha Sprackland

Matt Haigh

Matthew Welton

Megan Watkins

Melissa Lee-Houghton

Michael Naughten-Shanks

Michael Preece

Natalie Chin

Natalya Anderson

Nicola Gledhill

Nisha Bhakoo

Paul McGrane

Paul Stephenson

Pearl Pirie

Peter Daniels

Petra Kamula

Prudence Chamberlain

R.A. Villanueva

Rachel Long

Rachel Piercey

Rebecca Goss

Rebecca Tamas

Rebecca Varley-Winter

Rhian Allen Douglas

Richard Barrett

Rishi Dastidar

Roddy Lumsden

Rosie Breese

Roy Marshall

Sampurna Chattarji

Samuel Prince

Sara Peters

Sarah Crewe

Sarah Franciose

Sarah Jean Alexander

Sarah Wedderburn

Scherezade Siobhan

Shelia Hamilton

Siegfried Barber

Simon Barraclough

Siofra McSherry

SJ Fowler

Sophie Collins

Sophie Herxheimer

Sophie Mayer

Stacey Teague

Stephen Connolly

Stevie Ronnie

Tania Hershman

Tim Wells

W.N. Herbert

Wioletta Grzegorzewska

We’re proud to have had over 30,000 readers visit Poems in Which from over 60 countries. We are also proud to have been an advocate for making poems published in online magazines eligible for more major poetry competitions. The website will stay open for the next year and then, after that, the magazine will be available through the Web Archive at the British Library.

Thank you to everyone who has read Poems in Which, thank you to everyone who has submitted work and our thanks go out especially to those who agreed to publish with us (the full contributor list is below – look at those names!).

With all our love,

Amy, Rebecca, Wayne and Alex

Abigail Parry
Agnes Marton
Alanna McArdle
Alex Bell
Alexander Booth
Alexander Speaker
Alison Winch
Amy Blakemore
Andrea Quinlan
Andrew McMillan
Angela Kirby
Angela Readman
Anna Selby
Annie Katchinska
Anthony Adler
Aria Aber
Barbara Barnes
Ben Stainton
Bobby Parker
Camellia Stafford
Charlotte Chappel
charlotte Geater
Chloe Stopa-Hunt
Chrissy Williams
Claire Trevien
Claudine Toutoungi
Clyde Kessler
Cowan Montague
Crispin Best
Dai George
Daisy Behagg
Daisy Lafarge
Dan Barrow
Declan Ryan
Dollie Stephan
Eireann Lorsung
Ella Frears
Emily Hasler
Emily Toder
Emma Hammond
Emma Jeremy
Erik Kennedy
Fiona Moore
Fran Lock
Francine Elena
Gence Barber
Giles Goodland
Graeme Bezanson
Harry Giles
Harry Man
Holly Hopkins
Holly Isemonger
Ian Cartland
Irit Sela
Isobel Dixon
Jack Nicholls
Jake Brukhman
Jane Yeh
Jeff Hilson
Jen Campbell
Jenna Clake
Jennifer L. Knox
Jérome Poirier
Jerrold Bowam
Jessica Schouela
Jody Porter
Joe Dunthorne
Joe Turrent
Joey Connolly
John Canfield
John Clegg
John McCullough
Jon Stone
Josephine Corcoran
JT Welsch
Judy Brown
Julia Bird
Karl Smith
Kate Potts
Kate Wise
Kathryn Maris
Katrina Naomi
Katy Evans-Bush
Kieran Ryan
Kirsten Irving
Laura Webb
Lauren Vevers
Leah Umansky
Lisa Kelly
Lorraine Mariner
Lucy Mercer
Luke Kennard
Marcus Slease
Marek Kazmierski
Maria Taylor
Markie Burnhope
Mark Waldron
Martha Sprackland
Matt Haigh
Matthew Welton
Megan Watkins
Melissa Lee-Houghton
Michael Naughten-Shanks
Michael Preece
Natalie Chin
Natalya Anderson
Nicola Gledhill
Nisha Bhakoo
Paul McGrane
Paul Stephenson
Pearl Pirie
Peter Daniels
Petra Kamula
Prudence Chamberlain
R.A. Villanueva
Rachel Long
Rachel Piercey
Rebecca Goss
Rebecca Tamas
Rebecca Varley-Winter
Rhian Allen Douglas
Richard Barrett
Rishi Dastidar
Roddy Lumsden
Rosie Breese
Roy Marshall
Sampurna Chattarji
Samuel Prince
Sara Peters
Sarah Crewe
Sarah Franciose
Sarah Jean Alexander
Sarah Wedderburn
Scherezade Siobhan
Shelia Hamilton
Siegfried Barber
Simon Barraclough
Siofra McSherry
SJ Fowler
Sophie Collins
Sophie Herxheimer
Sophie Mayer
Stacey Teague
Stephen Connolly
Stevie Ronnie
Tania Hershman
Tim Wells
W.N. Herbert
Wioletta Grzegorzewska

Sara Peters

I love the stuffy attic and the cool.
I would rather take a tour of attics than a holiday.
O vinyl, boardgames, war chests, sepia;

O trauma, obsolescence, broken things.
Standing in the wings I look for some
foreshadowing of you: a photograph of us

before we met on opposite sides of a park;
your initials in two lost Scrabble tiles.
If you dream of an attic it means there is an afterlife;

if you dream of a basement, there is not.
Where does that go after a loft conversion?
We experience over seven million thoughts a day.

My neighbour is a ballet dancer who maintains
he can always tell when someone has a secret:
the brain is visibly, manifestly overstuffed.

They have a 4th bedroom and en suite.
Where do you put everything
you simply don’t know what to do with?

Luke Kennard

What storm is it
that keeps me listening —
molecular, mythic
unintelligibly dear?*

*Never an answer from
the stubborn dead.

A:

I wish that for one moment I could:

1. relax, weep, be myself

2. forgive, know better, win, undo

3. love properly, keep secrets

4. stop the bleeding

5. forget or overcome

Q:

how to go on
knowing nothing
of what will happen

A:

If I buried you in the fields
I know best, starred with grasses,
they would yield no rest.

You are loud and sweet-pithed
setting meadows afire,
too angry to be dead as such.

Chloe Stopa-Hunt

that night     a field     for deer           a breath
the sound      of bells       a child            to grieve

a name         a womb     to fill     with glass
and dye         its knots     to test     our grief

has mass     will bloom     will burn     like gas
will smoke     a harbour       bright with grief

tonight     a show for     bricks     a tithe
of brass      and dirt     a spine     to grieve

to run     each street       to church     a raft
of ash              raise high     the beams     for grief

R.A. Villanueva

For these questions: ellipsis, Smithsonian, South American dish.
If you wait long enough, everything will come back at the same time.
Where there’s smoke, there’s an ex-smoker bumming other people’s cigarettes.
Nothing is made in Middlesbrough but baked beans and disappointment.

‘Tit for tat’ doesn’t mean what some people think it means.
Where there’s hope, there’s a poet with an unpublished memoir.
Acid-wash denim is actually washed in spinsters’ tears and chlorine.
Never underestimate the speed of a hungry walrus.

You can’t hurry love (except at closing time in Doncaster).
Chipping Norton, crêpe paper, 57% of adult men.
Organized religion was invented as a stand-in for hot dogs.
When it’s over, you can pretend you never cared about it anyway.

Jane Yeh

Hold your head up, Lucy!
A queen bees starts the size
of a worker! What does she do
to grow a body big enough
to populate a world? Does she take
lots of pictures of her own face and SHARE them?
Does she LIKE her own face?
What song does she sing in the video?
Is it about the hive—a Versailles
of golden chambers—or
herself? What words does she

memorize? “My car eats oats.
My mascara is not made of
murdered elephants
and neither are my brats.
I deserve the air of others.
My natural beauty’s mirrored
in the sticky tips of pine needles
and scales of all the salmon.”

That’s deep! Oh, dangit—

it’s raining. I must call
the credit card company.
Yes, they’ll put me on hold,
but I’ll put them on speaker!
I’ll be gorgeous in the in-between time—
rage filling in all the sharp
edges of my bones!

Jennifer L. Knox

[It is 1599. Enter the celebrated Renaissance organ builder THOMAS DALLAM, downcast & sighing. He is preparing to leave for the Levant to deliver a pipe organ, a gift from QUEEN ELIZABETH I, to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.]

DALLAM: For my voyage into Turkie I have no frend to advise me in
any thinge. . .

[Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH I with items for Dallam’s voyage.]

QUEEN: Item one sute of sackcloth.

DALLAM (sighing): another sute.

QUEEN: Item three shirtes.

DALLAM (sighing): three shirtes more.

QUEEN: a pare of virginals.

DALLAM: a pare of virginals!

[He places the virginals on board HMS Hector. Exit QUEEN. Enter the CAPTAINE OF THE SHIPPE who is also bound by Sixteenth Century orthography.]

CAPTAINE: Anker is wayed!

[Exit the CAPTAINE OF THE SHIPPE.]

DALLAM (sighing): I forgot my fustion britches.

[Exit DALLAM]

Scene 2 – In the English Channel

[Sodonly a marvalus storme. Enter DALLAM.]

DALLAM: (sodon) We did not only louse our pinis we lost our selves.

[finding themselves again.]

We found our selves than we founde our pinis!

[Trumpet sounds. Enter the CAPTAINE OF THE SHIPPE.]

CAPTAINE: No, only our pinis.

DALLAM: We could spare the pinis.

[Enter MEN OF WAR.]

CAPTAINE (assaying the MEN OF WAR): Com the more bouldly upon us.

MEN OF WAR (ignoring him): Com under our Lee side.

CAPTAINE: See the stoutnes of our ship.

MEN OF WAR: Flye away!

[The CAPTAINE gives chase.]

MEN OF WAR: We have almost loste sighte of our pinis.

CAPTAINE: Com into my cabbin.

MEN OF WAR (unwillingly): We woll, we woll (by their speech, Dutchmen)

We are all Amberalls, rear Amberalls & wise Amberalls.

CAPTAINE: You speake good Inglishe.

MEN OF WAR: Let our shippes go. We are nothinge but men.

CAPTAINE (striding upon the spar deck): You are all a goner.

[Drawing his sword he kills the MEN OF WAR.]

I am becalmed.

DALLAM: Onwards to Barberie!

[Exit DALLAM & THE CAPTAINE OF THE SHIPPE.]

Scene 3 – Reaching Algiers

[Enter DALLAM and his new fainthearted friend MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER.]

DALLAM: It Lyethe close to the seae.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: They have a great store of hens & chickins.

DALLAM: Great store of partridgis & quales.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: Great store of corne & frute.

DALLAM: Great store of hote houses.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: Greate store of Camels.

DALLAM: & som dromedaries.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: Thar be a greate number of Turks.

DALLAM: Both wylde & tame.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: & verrie relidgus.

DALLAM: The weomen goo with there facis covered & have no souls.

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER (seeing a snake in a tree): A great Ader. He is even Reddie to leape upon us!

[MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER runs into a thicket of briars.]

DALLAM (turning to the audience): A number of other suche smale matters I will omitte.

[Exit DALLAM.]

Act 2, Scene 1 – Entering the Dardanelles

[Enter DALLAM.]

DALLAM: The Dardanelles. And look, the wals of Troye.

[HMS Hector is met by the Turkish navy.]

DALLAM: Ha Ha their sailes are made of cotton woll!

[The Turkish navy fires its guns.]

And so neare the wals of Troy! The eckco. The eckco.

[Exit DALLAM carrying off a marble pillar from the Trojan ruins which he takes to The British Museum.]

Scene 2

[After many months at sea, HMS Hector weighs anchor in Constantinople. Enter DALLAM who must now attend to the serious business of constructing his organ.]

DALLAM: Open our chestes.

[Enter unexpectedly the exiled KING OF FEZ whose country has been annexed by the Emperor of Morocco. The situation is complex.]

THE KING OF FEZ (looking into the first opened chest): All the glewinge worke is clene Decayed!

DALLAM (looking into another chest): My mettle pipes are brused and broken!

THE KING OF FEZ: It is not worth iid.

Scene 3

[Enter DALLAM who has much work to do restoring his organ after the months at sea. Thirty days later it is ready to present to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire or, as he is known in 1599, THE GRAND SINYOR.]

[Enter first the ENGLISH AMBASSADOR.]

AMBASSADOR: Yow are come hether wythe a presente from our gratious Quene?

DALLAM: I am.

AMBASSADOR: The monarch is an infidell (meaning the Grand Sinyor, not the Quene).

He is a myghtie monarch of the world and you must kiss his kne or hanginge sleve.

DALLAM: ffs.

AMBASSADOR: If your organ doo not please him at the first sighte and perform not those thinges which it is Toulde him that it can Dow he will cause it to be puled downe that he may trample it under his feete.

[pause]

Hee strangled all his brotheres.

[pause]

DALLAM: OK I will come with my mate Harvie. He is an ingineer.

[Exit DALLAM & the ENGLISH AMBASSADOR. Enter DALLAM an hour or two later…]

I have sett my worke in good order. Here is the Grand Sinyor cominge upon the water.

Act 3, Scene 1

[Enter THE GRAND SINYOR in his golden caique & THE SULTANA his mother, in like manner.]

THE SULTANA: I doe not speake, being but a raisine.

[She is anyway thinking of the visit to her garden earlier that day by the English Ambassador’s dreamy secretary Paule Pinder.]

THE GRAND SINYOR: Silence!

[The organ plays. It is equipped with a clock which strikes twenty-two. Then a bell chimes sixteen times and it plays a four part song.]

It is good.

[Two clockwork trumpeters on each corner sound a tantarara after which the organ plays a five part song twice over.]

I wonder at its divers motions.

[The whole edifice is topped by a holly bush full of blackbirds & thrushes which at the end of the music sing and shake their wings.]

Will it goo at any time?

DALLAM: It will goo at any time if you tuche this pin with your finger.

[long pause]

THE GRAND SINYOR: Lett me se you playe on the orgon.

DALLAM: I have a wyfe and Childrin in Inglande. Do not cut of my heade.

THE GRAND SINYOR: I wil give you fourtie five peecis of gould and tow wyfes either of my Concubines or els tow virgins.

[He shows him his CONCUBINES through a grate in the wall.]

CONCUBINES: Wee doe not speake, being but concubines.

DALLAM: At first sighte of them I thought they had bene yonge men and verrie prettie ones in deede.

THE GRAND SINYOR: They are weomen.

DALLAM: Yes & the hare of their heads hange doone on their backs. . .

THE GRAND SINYOR: in deede.

DALLAM: . . .a juell hanging on each breast. . .

THE GRAND SINYOR: . . .& juels in their ears. . .

DALLAM: In deede.

THE GRAND SINYOR: They are wearing britches of fine coton clothe. . .

DALLAM (thinking wistfully of his own pair in London): . . .as fine as muslin & whyte as snow. . .

THE GRAND SINYOR: In deede.

DALLAM: I can disorne the skin of their thies through it. . .

(looking long on them) . . . som of their leges are naked. . .

THE GRAND SINYOR (stamping his feet): My kindnes begins to be verrie anger. Give over looking!

Dallam: I am loth to give over the sighte does please me wondrous well. . .

[page missing]

EDWARD SAID: Run for your life!

DALLAM (putting on new shoues)

[page missing]

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER: They have hewed me all in peecis!

[page missing]

Scene 3 – Dover

[Enter DALLAM, MY MATE HARVIE, MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER & THE MEN OF KENT.]

DALLAM: I am verrie glad we are once againe upon Inglishe ground.

MY MATE HARVIE: Sound the trompetes!

MYGHELL WATSON THE JOINER (limping): Make our selves as merrie as we can.

THE MEN OF KENT: Post horse to Canterburrie.

MY MATE HARVIE: And thenc to Rochester.

DALLAM: And the nexte day to London (he is thinking only of his fustian, a type of cloth believed to have originated in 2nd Century AD Egypt).

THE END.

Jeff Hilson

Rachel Long