THE POETRY BUS

Curating the world artfully, inclusively, fairly.

How we began

The Bus began as a weekly online exercise which proved so popular that we just had to turn it into a real magazine!

Our hopes

What we do

Get in touch

We choose quality poems that have something to say, and say it well.
Egalitarianism and inclusivity are what we strive for. PB is edited by a woman and a man, one a poet the other a reader.

are to provide a high quality vibrant showcase for new and more established poets and artists alike from across the world.

Email enquiries to, thepoetrybusmag@gmail.com

Hyena! by Fran Lock

" This human form where I was born,I now repent" —
Pixies, 'Caribou'

From the opening poem, Wild Talents.

on the day of your death i became a striped
hyena. hysteria's lank confession, cursorial
man-eater; witch's mount. i ran, feliform punk
with my mane of stale thistles, over primrose
hill, across blackheath, to gnaw the shinbones
of monuments.

Fran Lock is the author of numerous chapbooks and ten poetry collections. Her most recent chapbook is Forever Alive (Dare-Gale Press, 2022), and her most recent collections are the long lyric manifesto White/ Other (The 87 Press, 2022) and Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, 2022). Fran is the newly minted Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University for 2022-23. She is an Associate Editor at Culture Matters, a member of the new Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and she edits the Soul Food column for Communist Review. When not taking the fight to the establishment, Fran hides out in Kent with her beloved pit bull and eternal muse, Manny.

Fran says: The Hyena! Cycle uses therianthropy - the magical transformation of people into animals - as a figure for the embodied effects of sudden and traumatic loss. But in this collection Hyena! takes on a life of her own, she becomes a mode of writing and thinking, at once misanthropic and compassionate; extrovert, mercurial, ferocious and savvy. She becomes, in other words, not just a response to loss, but a way of channelling and resisting grief's slow diminishment of self.

We say: Doctor Fran Lock's full collection, Hyena! can only be described as extraordinary, words woven from a unique lexicography of lyrical alchemy, this conjured new world of Hyena! will drown you, save you, raise you up, change you. Do not miss this book! Fran is this generation's most exciting poet at the peak of her powers.

Choose this option for IRELAND only

Choose this option for UK and Europe

Choose this option for U.S.A Canada and rest of world.

Our special 10th Anniversary issue available now!

IRELAND

UK and Europe

U.S.A and Canada and rest of the world.

Cover Image by ADÁL .

PB9

IRELAND €10 (Including P+P.)

REST OF WORLD €13 (Including P+P)

This is What Happened.

A stunning debut poetry and visual art collection by Melissa Diem.

‘This is an electrifying narrative of the ancient drama of ‘relationship’,
where Self and Other dance it out again and again.
This formally intricate dance of language and breath and stress
swings between Florida landscapes dreaming in the heat
and Irish skies that threaten and enchant,
between the intensely private and the almost terrifying immensities of the cosmos.
Something of the loneliness of such cosmic awareness is in the poems too.
I’d known Melissa Diem’s wonderful first novel, Changeling, so I was prepared for a powerful experience from her debut poetry collection. And I was right.‘ Paula Meehan

.
€19.70 including P+P worldwide

Find out more in this interview by Fran Lock at Culture Matters.

https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/fiction/item/3364-melissa-diem-what-it-means-to-be-human

and at Melissa's website https://melissadiem.com/