Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Death is a subject which has engaged writers throughout the ages in an attempt to express what for many remains unspeakable. There is no definitive way to deal with death, and each person tackles it in their own way. Poets are no exception.

The extracts below are just a small selection of the poems about death you can read on our magazines site. If you wish to see a fuller list, you can access our site’s Advanced Search here and search for "death" as the Subject term. You can also access the Poetry Library’s catalogue or contact the Poetry Library directly.
 

Canadian poet Susan Musgrave writes about loss in this issue of Second Aeon, a magazine which was edited by Peter Finch in the sixties and seventies:

               All these white flowers
               darkened my sleep,
               after you were gone and
               after you.

                              'as death does'

J. Brookes, editor of the late 1990s' Cardiff-based little magazine The Yellow Crane takes us to a wake in a pub in an issue from 2002:

               So, in the City Arms saloon
               we drink away the afternoon
               toasting the uncle newly dead
               and those of us still pushing on
               till suddenly it's later than we thought

                              'The Aunts'

American-Irish poet Chris Agee lays flowers at a grave in this poem from the 2004 Tabla Book of New Verse, an annual journal published in Bristol between 1998-2004:
 
               A month on, parachutes from the moons of dandelion
               Glistening like thistledown on the lost air of your departed time.

                              'A Bouquet from Miriam'

This piece by celebrated Russian poet and novelist Vladimir Nabokov is entitled 'Paradise' and was published in a 1994 issue of Thumbscrew, another Bristol magazine which ran from 1994 to the early 2000s:
  
               There, in a glade, a wild angel slumbers,
               a semi-pavonian creature.
               Poke at it curiously
               with your green umbrella,
               speculating how, first of all,
               you will write a paper on it,
               then -- But there are no learned journals,
               nor any readers in paradise!

                              'In Paradise' (written in Berlin, 1927)

Oldham-based poet Tony Grist imagines the ongoing life of a poet who has already died in this poem, from a 1999 issue of Thumbscrew:

               He had not died as the world believes
               But written his poems of far old age –
               Tipharetic, wonderful –
               Then I woke, not having learnt a line.

                              'The Dead Poet'

London poet Valerie Josephs recalls reactions to the death of her mother in this prose poem from a 2005 issue of little London magazine Brittle Star:

               Inside a small brown envelope on my desk is my mother's hairpin.
               We sold the jewellery, gave away the dresses, hats and bags, no
               one wanted the fur coats.

                              'Talisman'

Belfast-based poet Howard Wright encounters death in this poem from a 2006 issue of long-running poetry magazine Magma:

               Regardless of other appointments, he would
               as indeed he should,
               seek you out and arrive at your door,
               though, in the end, what’s more
               likely is you will find yourself cold-calling at his

                              'Death's Door'

London-based Dublin poet Róisín Tierney offers us a vision of the funeral as dream, reset in the mythologies of fairy tales, also published in the same issue Magma:

               Horses stand and plume the air with breath.
               They bow and dip their heads.
               Feathers are fitted to their foreheads.
               They are well feathered now!
               They stamp and sweat.
               And someone is getting a right send off.
               Someone is getting the feathers.
               See the glass carriage. O Cinderella!
               Oh dream world of happy endings!

                              'Dream Endings'

American poet Clint Frake gives us two elegies, both published in a 2009 of the Templar / University of Gloucestershire magazine Iota. The first is in memory of Allen Ginsberg:

               The Detroit News printed “Flower Power!” & “Smoke Dope!”
                            beside your obituary.
               I knew you as crystal-headed sage
                      in crisp white, buttoned business shirts;
               first-thought wizard of candid snapshots & scholarly blues
                      who gave up his seat at the auditorium for late arrivals

                              'Father Fisheye'

The second is in memory of Gregory Corso:

               Ah, seraphic weasel, adamant mason of oddest phrase,
                           brimming Dionysian—
                     how you scolded the poets in Naropa’ s summer tent
                           where the sprinklers soaked our manuscripts at noon.

                              'Lost Watches & Stolen Coats'

Poet and novelist Lucy Ann Watt takes us to the last bedside in this poem first published in 2009 in the long-established magazine The Rialto:

               You’re so tired of sitting up,
               they’re making up the death bed:
               pumping up the air-mattress; unfolding
               and flapping and smoothing and tucking
               the sheets. White. White for the birthing-bed

               – alpha – and first communion, starched white
               for the shirts for your very first job,
               white for the wedding, hotel-white
               tight on the mattresses of all your infidelities

                              'Sheets'

And lastly issue 2 of ARTEMISpoetry, a magazine of poems, reviews and essays by women, included a feature called "Writing from the Rough - Poems About Grief". You will find thought provoking pieces on the poetry of bereavement by the following three poets:

Lynne Wycherley:
"It has dangers: it can sharpen grief."  

Lucy Hamilton:
"that desperate need to write, to make sense, to create something new."  

Anne Stewart:
"Surely, this is a topic that can’t be put out of bounds?"