Dear Reader

Look to the city’s forests. Those monoliths and museums, cathedrals and palaces  and theatres whose stories have sunk deep under the pavements, have rooted themselves in the silt at the bottom of the river. Think of the architects spreading sketches across tired wood, holding up samples of mosaic tile, wondering what sort of mark they’ll leave. Think of the tongues of flame, the sirens, the silence before the shells fall. Think of the thousands and thousands of feet that have walked here. The myriad secrets whispered across the vast blue dome, where the apostles keep them safe. Think of the nightingale you heard here that night in November, wrapping its song around St Paul’s in ribbons of winter.  Tiny in the face  of all that history.  Dauntless, nonetheless. --- Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex with her husband and two small sleep thieves. Her work has recently appeared in Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ekphrastic Review and The Madrigal, among others. Her first collection, The C

W orcestershire-based actress, director, producer and poet Amanda Bonnick holds a BA degree in Philosophy and Sociology from the University of Warwick. As a theatre practitioner, she has produced a number of plays for the Melting Pot Theatre Company and has written street theatre. She has recently been Poet-in-Residence at Worcester Cathedral. Solace in the Silence is the outcome of her period in that residency. Cathedral residencies have become quite popular for poets in recent years and some, such as this one, have led to publication. This collection, however, amounts to far more than an imaginative sequence of poems, it is also a prose diary covering the period from mid-2019 to Easter 2021 which offers up a personal record of what amounts to a ‘pilgrimage’ describing, among other things, the author’s reflections on her own creativity and her insights into the life and work of the cathedral.   Her journal also expresses something of the emotion felt when the building was closed du

I give you these ribs to help you live. They form a bridge across  thirty years of wild rain, and sun,  and the apples  in a basket that were brought  and placed next to each of the bones.  Between each porcelain thread  are little voices, hanging  gently, smouldering like the final wisp  of a spider’s web long vacated, their soft hands so carefully aligned  in this thin bone cloth. And those promises voiced in the harshest throat of winter or the thrill of April rain become us now. The earth is fresh; the world is a curve in the heart, and  where it beat. --- Marcello Giovanelli is a writer and academic from Leicestershire, UK. He has recently published poetry in  Ink, Sweat and Tears ,  Poetry Plus , and  The Poetry Village .