North of Oxford is open for submissions of poetry, book reviews and essays.  Please feel free to send for consideration of publication. Follow the guidelines on our about page: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/about ..read more

. now (not my backyard, cape breton) . fiona scythed through late september, but now november is the cruelest month, waking forsythia to the ‘frost moon,’ the sun drawing dandelions, clover, grass from rest- less roots: some midnights warm as most fall noons, back Then. . still life . old man on the bridge, shim- mering morning, brook still . changing his eyes: “no fish of any kind today. they’ve . taken to the sides.” . Sean Howard is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Trinity: Tribute Sequences, for Robert Graves (Gaspereau Press, 2022). His poetry has been widely p ..read more

. Love Stories for Girls  . Every distortion I learned about love came from romance comics, and later, telenovelas. I blame the words love at first sight. I blame walking in the rain, walking on beaches, dancing on beaches. I blame red convertibles. I blame messages about the unimportance of a career. I blame unrealistically perfect bodies and men with full heads of hair. I blame super-long eyelashes and the negative portrayal of eyeglasses. I blame the idea of nice girls. I blame kissing. Really— as if kissing fries the brain and afterward, everyone ends up in love with an inappr ..read more

Commies  . “Oh, you’re the Communist!” my girlfriend gushed to my Uncle Harold at my cousin’s wedding in conservative southern Illinois. Penny and I were about to break up, and I wondered if she were putting me on the spot on purpose, like an elbow in the ribs. Who else would have described him to her that way? My face turned crimson. . A “dirty little secret” in the family, my aunt’s marriage to a radical New York Jew, her brothers opposed to the union, Harold having been blackballed from the theater – he’d directed a few plays off Broadway – for his political activities in the McCart ..read more

(1) when a revolution gets hijacked streets get empty within a night from Berlin and Paris to Toronto and Tehran when a revolution gets hijacked the revolutionary thieves fill their pockets with Mahsa and Nika’s blood to pay the sacred prostitutes when a revolution gets hijacked . (2) they killed Jalal Jalal will be back very soon . (3) the ten lost ancient tribes of Israel are not lost anymore . (4) I am a homo deus living in multiverse dimensions with millions of dispersed souls and assassinated brains how does it bother you? . Nasim Basiri is an Iranian poet, activist and an international ..read more

  Brother Donkey  . This morning I took my high blood pressure pill. I’m not sure really why that bugs Me now. I ate my breakfast, looked at the sunrise. Contemplated putting on my overcoat And going outside for a breath Of air. There was a gray avalanche . Of traffic noises. There were no birds. Just an avalanche Of cars, semis, buses, motorbikes, tractors, mopeds. The sun was a pill But I could not swallow it. I took another breath And opened the door to my VW bug. It was December in my memory, my overcoat Remembered that. It was fifty years ago at sunrise. . Fifty Years. A sunr ..read more

We have created a new site for our reading series. Information is available at this link: https://northofoxfordreadingseries.wordpress.com ..read more

Until Next Time – Selected Poems 1990-2022 by g emil reutter has just been released by Alien Buddha Press. The collection is available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2S719VK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SLFCSTBNIY13&keywords=B0C2S719VK&qid=1682344564&sprefix=b0c2s719vk%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1   What Others Have Said About g emil reutter’s Poetry reutter’s poetry has the keen ability to focus on people in a variety of situations, and to add his own unique twist to each poetic experience. –           Diane Sahms … g em ..read more

. By Michael Young . Flatback Sally Country is the second collection by poet Rachel Custer and is remarkable not only for the lyrical beauty of its language but also for the narrative thread that unifies it. We follow Sally, a woman in a small American factory town struggling to become more than the stories the townsfolk tell about her. Because she became pregnant at an early age, she is assumed to be salacious, but determines not to make the mistakes her own mother made while she raises her daughter, Mercy. But it is also the story of those desperate townsfolk who not only box Sally ..read more

By Neil Leadbeater ‘No, Don’t’ can be construed as a plea from the heart. It is something that the narrator is addressing to herself and to her readers. It is saying ‘No, you don’t have to capitulate, let anything distract you or throw you off course, especially fear, especially grief. The double negative adds emphasis to the plea. Reading Byrne’s poems is the art-equivalent of looking at a collage. Quotations selected from philosophers, scientists, educators, artists and writers, are often used as launching pads for her texts. The texts themselves are embroidered with a collage of imag ..read more