Jorge Carrera Andrade's 'Nothing' — a stark, aphoristic poem of husks and deserts, where the mind yawns a Sahara and nothing saves us.

A short English lesson in humour, vocabulary and wordplay for intermediate learners.

Zerbst's 'The Bay' — an elegy for Stephen Watson, where sea, light, and memory meet the ache of continuing to write.

W. S. Merwin's 'Yesterday' — a haunting, spare story of a father, a son, and a final chance to stay that becomes lifelong regret.

Learn English with Jokes

Jennifer Michael Hecht's 'September' — a still, aching poem of longing, where others' joy sharpens the speaker's quiet melancholy tonight.

Breyten Breytenbach's 'Words Against the Clouds' — a profound meditation on language, exile, and the weight of words in a time of war.

Vonani Bila's 'Dig' — a griot's warning against self-destruction, where love is a deep hole hiding termites and reptiles.

Brian Bilston's 'America Is a Gun' — a wry, staccato catalogue of national stereotypes that lands, hard, on a single repeating line.

R. S. Thomas's 'In a Country Church' — a quiet, piercing meditation on silence, kneeling, and the blazing love hidden in a winter tree.

Poetry from the archive

David Diop's 'Your Presence' — a Négritude poem of rediscovery, love, and the reawakening of African identity after colonial alienation.

Brutus's "If This Life Is All We Have' — a clear-eyed meditation on purpose, joy, and living fully in a finite life.

Post by Rethabile Masilo

In eight countries, at least half of all new cars sold in 2025 were electric or hybrid. The U.S. reached just 10%, well below the global average of 25%.

Europe’s electric-car market has shifted from steady growth to a much sharper acceleration. Battery-electric vehicles captured 30.5% of new-car registrations

Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan' — a mythic, violent sonnet of divine rape, prophecy, and the birth of history from a single shudder.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers's 'Courage – It Takes More' — a stirring poem of ubuntu, justice, and the courage to build a home for all humanity.

Hardy's 'Hap' — a stark, philosophical poem questioning fate, chance, and the indifference of the universe to human suffering.

In 2014, Onslaught Press published for the children of Gaza. See an illustrated anthology edited by Matthew D.

'Not my Business' by Niyi Osundare

Ret's ESL Jokes

Mary Oliver's ‘When Death Comes’ — a luminous meditation on mortality, curiosity, and the fierce desire to live fully and without regret.

Barnes's 'Ink Is Blood' explores writing as lifeblood, memory and an approaching flood in a vivid meditation on poetic creation.

Audre Lorde's 'Who Said It Was Simple' confronts race, feminism, and complicity in liberation movements in a sharp, reflective lyric poem.

Lefifi Tladi's 'The Sophisticated Skinhead' — a fierce, unflinching poem of resistance, exile, and the demand for justice in apartheid South Africa.

Derek Walcott's 'Love after Love' — a tender, luminous poem of self-acceptance, healing, and the return to the self. Read by the poet.

Learn what “the elephant in the room” means, with clear examples, French explanations and practical English usage for ESL learners.

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers's 'The River' — a visionary poem of collective grief, where the city weeps and tears become a river carrying dreams.