ONE POEM – Balfour McBride

They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.

ONE POEM – Emily Tee

and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth

ONE POEM – Susan Shea

we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together

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.