we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
Author: Porridge Magazine
ONE POEM – Carolyn Oulton
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
TWO POEMS – Catherine Redford
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
FICTION | The Signmaker — David Hartley
They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.
TWO POEMS – Billie Manning
The plane goes to the gym every morning
before work and holds that plank.
TWO POEMS – Carl Griffin
Now I’m a chrysalis,
neither caterpillar boy
nor butterfly man.
COMFORT FOODS // On Rissóis — Samantha Denny
Fried dough dishes are a universal constant.
THREE POEMS – Livia Franchini
The colour revealed itself like crab meat
only a wound, something to lick clean
Porridge Books of the Year 2023
From Prince Harry’s TMI memoir to Barbara Kingslover’s Appalachian bildungsroman, the team at Porridge share their favourite novels and non-fiction reads of 2023.
ONE POEM – Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell
I imagined the horse bolting so it did,
skidded along the canyon’s edge while I watched.
ONE POEM – Aysar Ghassan
There
cars are white,
the sun is not for bathing under.
ONE POEM – Rebecca Wheatley
She would never allow a condiment
without a saucer or a spoon,
tea without a pot,
a pop sock and skirt.
Porridge 