The first free issue of LAMP is being distributed across universities, coffee shops, retirement homes, bars, libraries, hospitals, and art galleries, from May 2009.

Composed in solitude, it was time for these writers to circulate and aerate their work. LAMP includes a new generation of poets who want to serve the subjective wonder of poetry; writers who regard poetry as that rare place in language where anything is possible. This issue celebrates the importance of diversity and the continual relevance for poetry within our lives.

Each writer has approached and selected their subject and style with a unique perspective. Poetry is perhaps the most challenging of all forms of artistic expression both to define and produce. Who can categorically say when a particular kind of text even becomes a poem? The poet Gwendolyn Brooks once said, 'Poetry is life distilled,' and therefore, it remains a truly subjective experience.

On this online version of LAMP, a taster for the issue as a whole, you will find examples of the energetic and ambitious writing being pursued by seven newly emerging poets.

Aquila Dunford Wood

Adulterer.

She, he, I, an archaic triad.
Sang of white chalk
purity in song rotting at the phone, your call
and shaping existence
and I
fall a little deeper into sand with bad blood on my hands
and we
talk over the subject with empty listening
watching a forgiving twitch of your leg your way
I do think ill of you

in time the lie will ferment
if kept

you were unkept when the door stood open
under mist
and a week or two past
and I cannot trust my own words
thick
buttered to my teeth
I want to lick them clean

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