Tag: Poetry

live

Dila Toplusoy

‘the job of the living is to live,
the job of the dead is to die,’

says our teacher
in front of the village graveyard, covered with olive groves –

a place where we do not belong
yet –

we all know we are bound to change roles,
the way those olives are bound to become oil.

sooner or later, we will be the subjects
of the latter statement –

but until then, the job description is
golden clear.

Dila Toplusoy is an Istanbul-born poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Skylight 47, CERASUS, t’ART, La Piccioletta Barca, Sky Island Journal, Needle Poetry and Amethyst Review, among others. She is a content editor at ARCCA Magazine and holds a first-class honours degree from University of the Arts London.

Issue 11 – January 2024

What next? What comes after THIS and THAT and THESE and THOSE?

In our submission call in July, we stressed that ‘WHAT NEXT?’ was a loose theme. Submitters treated it that way. We read hundreds of AFTERS and THEREFORES and AS A RESULTS. But we also saw WHAT IFS? and WHY NOTS? and WHERE ARE WE GOINGS?

From hundreds of diverse and thought-provoking predictions, warnings and possibilities, Issue 11 formed. Our 16 brilliant writers and artists reflect on snapshots of a future and the future of snapshots. The results are enthralling, escapist, engaged and enlightening.

One of our favourite things about micro fiction and micro poetry is the way it continues to give something new on each re-read (or re-listen). We hope these poems, stories and artworks won’t be static. We hope they travel forward with the reader into whatever comes next…

Daniel & Elinor

WHERE?

Tayiba Sulaiman, ‘Table manners’

Mike Farren, ‘Reading Wise Children in a hotel lobby’

Rucha Virmani, ‘Late Spring in the Anthropocene’

Kiley Brockway, ‘Haunted’

Molly Knox, ‘I heard them howling and barking in the distance’

AIR

Seán Street, Two Poems

Mia Kelly, ‘The New Highway, 1972. Walsh Norrel. Black and white photograph.’

Dila Toplusoy, ‘live’

Jacelyn Yap, ‘Once a Home’

Allison Renner, ‘Dendrology’

Lawrence Bradby, ‘Empty-handed’

RE–

Suzanne Hicks, ‘Believe Me’

Jayant Kashyap, ‘A breeze in the midst of rain—’

Lei Kim, Two Poems

Zary Fekete, ‘Except, Grass’

Sambhu Nath Banerjee, ‘Next? A Dismal Destiny’

Briefly Write Issue 11 contributors - Mike Farren / Molly Knox / Lei Kim / Allison Renner / Jayant Kashyap / Rucha Virmani / Tayiba Sulaiman / Kiley Brockway / Zary Fekete / Mia Kelly / Jacelyn Yap / Lawrence Bradby / Seán Street / Suzanne Hicks / Sambhu Nath Banerjee / Dila Toplusoy

Big little news…

We are proud to announce that we are now paying all contributors to Briefly Zine. Thank you to everyone who has supported us on our journey so far.

Briefly Zine in 2024

Submissions for Issue 12 will open in April 2024, with an expected publication date of July. We will announce details for Issue 13 (themed) later in the year.

Poetry Prize

We recently announced the results of our third annual poetry prize. You can read all the winning and shortlisted poems here: Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2023. Our next competition will open in May 2024.

Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2023 – Results

…smeared and stinging with translation…

In its third year, the Briefly Write Poetry Prize continues to inspire, delight, challenge, entertain and move us. We are so grateful to have had the chance to read such a diverse array of short poetry.

Many re-reads and painful decisions later, we’re excited to share our winners, shortlisted and longlisted poets. Each of these explored, crafted and created new worlds, moments and memories. We hope you enjoy discovering these poems as much as we did.

The quality (and quantity!) of submissions still astounds us. Thank you to every single person who entered for sharing your words, stories and experiences. Thank you for supporting our poets, for taking the time to discover new pieces and for simply being here (however you stumbled across this page). Thank you for your comments and encouragement, for all the love and support you have shown our little literary space. And thank you for the poetry.

The Briefly Write Poetry Prize will be back next year. In the meantime, do keep revisiting, re-reading, re-listening and discussing. And keep writing, keep creating, keep sharing.

With wishes for many more literary discoveries together,

Daniel and Elinor

FIRST

Mesrure Onal, ‘small mercies’

SECOND

Elisabeth Flett, ‘amsterdam’

THIRD

Ava Patel, ‘Do You Think About the Sea?’

SHORTLIST

Begüm, ‘now, where was I’

Hana Damon-Tollenaere, ‘Summer Night / Desperation’

Devaki Devay, ‘It’s’

Sarah Dickenson Snyder, ‘You Are Not Your Death’

Alice Louise Lannon, ‘Spring’

Thomas Mixon, ‘Intercostal’

Fiona Ritchie Walker, ‘Rehearsal’

LONGLIST

Sara Backer * Linette Marie Allen * Creana Bosac * Esther Yumi Ko * Clara Burghelea * Jack Cooper * Michael Okafor * Adrija Ghosh * Zoe Davis * Susi Lovell * Rosalind Moran * Martins Deep * Kelli Lage * Leyelle * Rishika Srivastava * Jayant Kashyap * Rikki Santer * Liz Verlander * Jonathan Gwaltney * Arundhathi Anil * Edward Hughes * Abi Pate * Jennifer Elise Wang * Anna Kibbey * Amelia K. * Claire Taylor * Sudipa Chakraverty * Lei Kim * Linda McCauley Freeman * Adam Sampson * Karin Hedetniemi * Sobur Adedokun * Angharad Williams

Read more:

small mercies

Mesrure Onal

seated across me my parents both
heads tilted in question
olive-skinned and hard of hearing
hardly anglophone

I shrug with a close-mouthed smile
hiding my bloody tongue
smeared and stinging with translation
a passing stranger’s barbs

I cannot chew nor cry nor spit them back out

and so the train shudders beneath me as I swallow them all whole

Mesrure Onal is a Turkish-born and British-raised digital nomad. She mostly works as a writer, editor, and translator for children’s books and small businesses. Her writing tries finding those fistfuls of ink that can make different people from different places feel the same tug at their heartstrings.

amsterdam

Elisabeth Flett

and so we went to amsterdam

you, brushing top soil
off the coat in which you were buried

me, forgiven
for all the mistakes I made in your absence

sitting in silence
as we watched the cyclists go by
the sky no more blue and bright
than the day on which we first met  

Elisabeth Flett is an award-winning writer, theatre-maker, musician and general feminist trouble maker. A regular performer at Speakin Weird and a competitor in the 2023 Loud Poets Slam (North East Heat), Elisabeth won University of Aberdeen’s Literary Lights Non-Fiction Prize in 2021 and the July 2023 City of Poets Tiny Prize. Her writing has been published by Hysteria, Coin-Operated Press, Leopard Arts, Bits and Pieces, Queer Out Here, Apricot Press, Glasgow Zine Library, Penumbra Online and Out on the Page.

Do You Think About the Sea?

Ava Patel

I think about trees. I think about seeing a tree,
being a tree. I think about holding, bursting.

I think about being a little seed waiting for spring
and being small enough to fit in a closed palm.

I hate vastness. I won’t live long enough
to forget it. And no, I don’t think about the sea.

Ava Patel won Prole Magazine’s 2021 pamphlet competition with her debut pamphlet ‘Dusk in Bloom’.  She’s been published in webzines (London Grip; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Atrium; Porridge) and magazines (South Bank Poetry; Orbis; SOUTH; Dream Catcher; New Welsh Reader, The Seventh Quarry, DREICH).

Rehearsal

Fiona Ritchie Walker

That first summer in the cabin,
my flat belly, you too new

to be fluttering like the wings
in the eaves above us, ready to swirl

en masse across the moonlit sky,
this next generation,

Pipistrelle bats learning to fly.
Night after night I sat, reading, pretending

I wasn’t watching the clock,
wasn’t listening for the last one home.

Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scottish writer, now based in Bournville, Birmingham. Her poetry and short fiction has been published widely in collections and anthologies, most recently in Amsterdam Quarterly, Postbox Magazine and Magma’s Islands issue.

You Are Not Your Death

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Sarah Dickenson Snyder

I wish someone had said when I dived
into that well of fear. Where were those
Buddhist monks when I didn’t use the blue sink
in the upstairs bathroom for years after
a thermometer shattered and left numberless
glass slivers and tiny balls of mercury—Death,
a clinging partner, making me walk downstairs
to brush my teeth & stay up all night sometimes
alone with the darkness.

Sarah Dickenson Snyder’s collections include The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (2023). She’s had Best of Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. See more.

Summer Night / Desperation

Hana Damon-Tollenaere

I think it might be
Too hot to bake cookies but
Let’s try something else let’s
Try taking the night off or
Building a pillow fort or
Unraveling
Thread by thread
The ways our stories might
Have overlapped had
Things gone differently

Hana Damon-Tollenaere was shortlisted in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2023.

Intercostal

Thomas Mixon

There was nothing. On the walk
I unfolded both my arms, but
not a single leaf would touch
my greedy floating ribs. I knew
I carried needs they were against.
I carried needs. They were against
my greedy floating ribs I knew
not a single leaf would touch.
I unfolded both my arms, but
there was nothing on the walk.

Thomas Mixon has poems in miniskirt magazine, Rattle, Radon Journal, and elsewhere. He’s a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.