our mother’s day will come by Fran Lock my mother’s face exists in the space between kaijū and sphinx. she’s wearing clothes that holdher body in contempt. her breath, imperfect peppermint. she has to go to work. her earringsare obols, shorn of their funerary usage. palestflirtation of dubious gold. unclaimed…

Fran Lock has curated this year’s compilation of poetry for Culture Matters, to mark International Women’s Day. There are poems by Jane Burn, Sogol Sur, Joanne Key, Julia Bell, Anne Pelleschi, Beri Allen-Miller, and Fran herself, ending with a prose piece, On Fighting the Disconnect. Introduction When you put out…

30 years ago at approx 3.30pm Mairéad Farrell was murdered by the British state on Gibraltar. Standing by her side, also with his hands in the air, was Dan McCann who was also shot dead. A few hundred metres away Sean Savage was to have a similar fate. At the…

To mark IWD, we're publishing this poem from a new collection by Sheree Mack called skinshame, to be published shortly by Culture Matters.‘We’ll show you you’re a woman’ was the title of a report compiled by Human Rights Watch into the violence and discrimination experienced by black lesbians and transgender…