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Osmosis Press
@osmosispress.bsky.social
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'Someone’s rhythm sneaking in again. Sharing a language. The osmosis of rubbing up. Communing.' (Kathleen Fraser) Ed. Briony Hughes, Saskia McCracken, Cat Chong
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This week Osmosis is so excited to be featuring an extract from the forthcoming collection 'Grief is a Thing in Pleather' by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain! Writing back to Emily Dickinson’s figure of death in ‘because I could not stop for death’ alongside Wiz Khalifa’s character (1/4)
* When your engine finally gives out Death pulls up, kicks his door wide open, says Ride or Die. You choose both. Close up his face is not handsome, a buzz of flies. There’s a waterproof hat in the back, wide rimmed and when a fly stops at your ear you ask it, why do you stay? To be as regal as the buzzard one day it replies as if the bounty hunter can confer carrion pride to everything he touches * You will crash, or You will run out of gas Both are an ending. *
September 7, 2025 at 5:40 PM
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This week, interrupting our typical weekly Featured Writing schedule as we’re incredibly announce Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain’s latest collection will be forthcoming from Osmosis Press this October 2025!

This collection is a consideration of and a writing through what it means to live (1/5)
Grief is a Thing with Pleather by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain in white writing on a black background surrounded by white drawings of flies.
August 31, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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This week in the Osmosis Featured Writing series, ‘la máquina se turna’ in the ‘omnicultural / revolution’ by Samuel Haecker. This visual poem revolves, subverting the linear conventions of poems written in English; ‘caressing mouths fed regrowth’ are ‘littering rejuvenation’ as (1/3)
omnicultural revolution trial decomposed fathers littering rejuvenation wir kommen wir kommen wir kommen caressing mouths fed regrowth valórame las artificias de hierro brain cycle printed formalities niemandsland begraben außerhalb stamen molten steel shaped of nettles puestos de lata se comen la hora paranoia blooms are machinist suns bringe das Land es schwimmte alleine circuit boarded up aiming for fingers splinterless querida patria me mato las manos string extensions of artificial honesty pflanzlich geschmolzen ohne Riss wool is health without instruments boca adolorida la máquina se turna
August 24, 2025 at 5:18 PM
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This week, Osmosis is ‘upended on top of a green sofa with its seams burst’ in this hybrid experimental text by EK Myerson titled ‘what happens when a list takes on water?’. ‘[N]ow this is a list with legs’, they write, referring to listing as the ‘nautical term to describe when a vessel (1/3)
[3] I spent yesterday afternoon drawing these images in biro on a sheet of spare paper, which I had torn and folded into a rough fortune teller. Origami fortune tellers were very popular when I was in primary school but I hadn’t made one in years, so I had to google the template. These are the hidden fortunes of my Zodiac square: Pisces I: “reality is…the skin of an egg” – Etel Adan, Surge Taurus II: “the spread of unscheduled eating as an aspect of modern life” – Sidney Mintz Taurus III: “the committee of management have, in one act, labelled their course both philanthropic & cosmopolitan” – Frederick Douglass Capricorn IV: “Resonance is a biscuit / snap it into / and dunk it in your tea” – Bhanu Kapil Capricorn V: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience” – Edward Said, Reflections on Exile Aquarius VI: “processes of substitution, opposition, replacement & transformation amount to the very mechanism of industrial capitalist modernity” – Esther Leslie, Synthetic Worlds Aquarius VII: “Should the novel that is never published still have been written? Of course it should” – Phyllida Barlow Pisces VIII: “To make matters worse, I’ve never been able to keep my glasses clean” – Fred Moten, Black & Blur
August 17, 2025 at 6:01 PM
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This week, Osmosis is watching the ‘intermittent spread of drifting cargo ships and the spinning of wind turbines dotting the horizon’ in JD Howse’s ‘Picture of Gray (1922), Henry Scott Tuke’. In this lacerating, evocative, and thinly veiled work of (1/8)
Joseph watched it all happen on television. He was lying in the dark, lit only by the light of the screen, curled up into a foetal little ball on his bed. He pulled the blankets tighter around him and felt salt sting the rotting corners of his sunken eyes, rolling down the broken ridge of his nose and onto his dry, chapped lips. “I knew it,” he whispered, “I hate myself, I hate everything, I want to die, I want to be loved.” I am sorry, I love you. There is nothing else to say. I feel like I’m getting there, and then it falls apart. It’s impossible to tell if that’s choking or laughing. Consider the hedgehog, huddling up against another hedgehog for warmth, and in the process hurting the other hedgehog and likewise being hurt in turn. The water filled his mouth and he dreamed.
August 10, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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This week, Osmosis is ‘being altered by / my phone the way I / seek stimulus behind it’ in Cogito Ergo by Will Staveley. ‘This is why I travel light’, Staveley writes, offering a litany of quotidian activities ‘ for escape / which is crucially (1/7)
why I smoke clench jaw tense stay in bed ______________for escape which is crucially never ____________just ____________________________________________________to be silent but I need it music light ___________________________________________________reel ______ desire _______________ substance or just the promise _______________ to make it all __________________________________________________________________ seem worthwhile
August 3, 2025 at 3:07 PM
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This week, Osmosis is ‘loitering / amid hyacinths and trying to remember / the movements of desire that terrified me’ in the poems ‘Cankerblossom’ and ‘Notes for a Lecture’ by Luce Lovell. In these poems about ‘market integration for this body politique, / circling (1/5)
I was bipedal and awkward, the canary in a diamond mine. What use is there for warning calls when danger glitters in the macro- structures of a lifetime? I never cared for Deleuze or Guattari to my friend’s dismay. Instead, I would dream of getting railed on a linear bridge, or charting out a life at relevant checkpoints over the Stour. Something to return to once the worst had passed. The shadows & breakages. I won’t get lost in the rhizome. Not again. Not again. And once again, I lapse out at the kindest people I know.
July 27, 2025 at 6:37 PM
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This week, Osmosis is enthralled by the cave markings within the Cueva de Ardales, Spain in Michael Sutton’s poem Fragments from the Oath of Cave Ardales. Inside, more than 1,000 engravings and red paintings dot its walls, ceilings, ground rocks, and other natural features, having (1/4)
[________________________________________] voices, vortices [________________________________________] in mourning [________________________________________] [________________________________________] (gap partly filled, partly overlapped by the following fragments found on a splattered stalagmite) Walk past the disembowelled crane. Should I remember this forever? [________________________] Then, no, leave it alone. Let go of the feathers __The pattern of the feathers [ _))_______] a mirror of immense length
July 20, 2025 at 4:44 PM
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This week Osmosis is riding ‘the old white bike our from the shed’ alongside this week’s protagonist in The Hermit Woman Bikes and Her Visitation by Catherine Hobbs. As a piece of fiction that plays with visual poetry techniques, this week’s featured writing piece is a stand-alone episode (1/3)
A< ` \~`<t cr>chT | ^* ClaT ~. * ^>^ the old white bike out from the shed and drag it laboriously by its rusted frame across the Hoist UP, struggle for the peddles. DAMN! DAMN! Wob Ble then wend dangerously up the gravel schur.rrrru u . ` u u . ` . . . u . k . Almost turfed off turning onto the road, leaving Deepwood behind on the left. Thankfully, no one about. Mangey and hunched: ride on as a perf orming circus bear. The woods appear soft, benign and uninhabited all around, although feel keenly that eyes may be peering out from their cottages at this spectacle. Huh huhh huhh, straiN up the modest hill between Kingswood and Moorside
July 13, 2025 at 7:43 PM
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This week, Osmosis is witnessing the ‘origin moment’ of the universe, which ‘forged heaven beside little planet sphere’ in the poem ORIGIN: Yahweh Forges Entire Cosmos by Greg Hill. This work rewrites Chapter One of the Book of Genesis using only six-letter words, in a strikingly Oulipian (1/3)
1 During origin moment, YAHWEH forged heaven beside little planet sphere. 2 Planet missed having formal format; entire planet shaded inside opaque waters. Thusly, spirit within YAHWEH glided onward beyond opaque waters. 3 Thusly YAHWEH stated, “Behold! Appear lights!” Thence lights formed around YAHWEH. 4 YAHWEH beheld lights, called entire design superb. “Hooray! Extant things tickle Jovian senses. Enough! Moving onward.” YAHWEH placed lights amidst opaque waters. 5 YAHWEH called lights Waking Period; YAHWEH called opaque waters Nights. Sunset beside morrow entire became single cosmic period.
July 6, 2025 at 5:30 PM
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This week Osmosis is delighted to feature an excerpt from 'The Rat Man' by Lucie Staniek. Opening with a quotation from Literature and Error: A Literary take on Mistakes and Errors, this ‘post-critical essay’ focuses its attention on the ‘“Nixon slip”’. As Nixon himself (1/6)
‘“Error is associated with an unavoidable ignorance, ― when one gropes, so to speak, in the dark.”’1 Ruch states that a Freudian slip, is different to an error in the sense that, dissimilarly to an error, a slip ‘allows the transfer of extra, relevant information.’ It permits the listener to interpret, ‘extra information that the speaker did not consciously intend to transmit but is nonetheless relevant to the message.’2 The Freudian slip gives “context” to the error that has been made, which could arguably, change the listener’s interpretation on the said mistake.
June 29, 2025 at 7:44 PM
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This week, Osmosis is venturing underground in Olya K-Mehri’s The Soil Does Not Approve of What Is Happening Below. While this poem evocatively charts the movement of the roots, ‘like they’ve heard rumours of fire and want to meet it halfway’, Mehri’s poem looks at the ground as a place (1/3)
There is no such thing as stillness underground—only waiting with teeth. They do not care for your gardens. They remember forests like war. Each one carries a secret it stole from the last thing it touched. If you could hear them, you’d swear the soil was cracking jokes in a language now extinct. When they finally rise, we will mistake them for something holy.
June 22, 2025 at 7:15 PM
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This week Osmosis is moving amongst the ‘words [as they] sprout along the inner walls of the womb’ in this week’s scripto-visual piece titled ‘Thāi-mozhi/ തായ്മൊഴി’ by M. P. Pratheesh. ‘[B]reathe. grow. move’ the poem instructs as ‘time preserves nothing’ and ‘disappears (1/2)
Malayalam words scribbled in acrylic ink on terracotta shards of a broken pot are layed on top of twigs and white cotton cloth.
June 15, 2025 at 4:54 PM
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This week, Osmosis is delighted to be part of the process of ‘mak[ing] your own Easter bread, kozunak’ in the poem How to prove you still belong by Kapka Nilan. Written after the process of baking Cozonac or Kozunak, a sweet yeast dough that can be used to make various traditional (1/6)
and you just can’t knead any more or braid, sticky dough all over your fingers and on the floor in your far away kitchen but the lemon zest and vanilla take you back home where you don’t seem to belong, and someone might say ‘well done’ when they see a photo of your labour, hopefully, well risen and authentic and beautiful enough, and you’ll know, even if no one says it, that you still belong, and finally see the basket full of fruit that is now your life
June 8, 2025 at 2:26 PM
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This week Osmosis is ‘receiv[ing] the ~~ river ~~~~~’ in OVER | COME | OVER (CLIMATE EXCHANGE) / TURN OF THE TIDE / FLOTSAM / TONGLEN* by Fianna (Fiona Russell Dodwell). As the I of the poem takes the place of the river, ‘i am flooded ~~~~~~~’ as ‘you (1/5)
she’s~ very~~ high ~~~ though moon’s~ only~ new ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ i am flooded ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ more~ rain ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ from~ moors ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ you flooded~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~they are~~~ swollen and ~ full ~~~~ of ~~~ red~~ soil ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~they come~~ up~~ from ~~ under~ the~~ Aga at 4.9m ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~overthestepat5m~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~nine tides~~~~~~~~ mopping ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ they~~ will ~~~ send~ help ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ they will pump it out ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ they keep it quiet~~~ they~ are ~~~~ at~~~~ sixes ~ and ~~~~~~ sevens ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~we ~ have~ ~~~~~nochoice they ~~~ will~~~ send ~ compensation ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~willreceive~~~~sealsandmud~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~for~~ninetides~ we~~~ ~~~will ~~beovercome~ seals~~ bump intothe~~~~ kitchenwall~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ flow~~~ become~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~ receive the ~~ river ~~~~~ ~~~~ fish ~~~ slap~~~ on~~ the~~~ floor ~~~~ again again~~~~receive~~ flotsam~~~like~ a~~~ troupe~~~dancing~~into~ town ~~~~~ ~everyyearon~~ ~thesameday~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ the ~~~~ quay~~ ~is~ drowned ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~a~rowing~eight~ sends ~~~~~~waves~~~~~~overwindowledge~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ this~~ is~~~~~ they~~~~ mud~~ way~~~ you~~ dodwells~ is ~~~~~ they~ water~~~~~~ way~~ you~~~~ will~~~~ take~ us~here~ in~~~~now i~~~~ am ~~~ sleepless~~~~~~~ ~~you~ ~~~~ muddy ~ we ~~~ ~~~~ jaded ~~~~~ they~ send~~~ text~~~ after text~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~everywe~~~ move up ~~~~~ ~~~~go ~ooze~~~into they red hills send back see~~~~ they~…
June 1, 2025 at 2:43 PM
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This week, Osmosis is with Dani Salvadori in the poem At Rainham Marshes ‘where: / grasslands sweep over the landfill / mud is silvered by water / the A13 is dampened by flight / gravel pit chutes house the future / [and] lorries bring waste to waste’. In this immense and immersive (1/5)
incantation: snow bunting | slavonian grebe whooper swan | gannet barnacle goose | fieldfare slaty backed gull | white tail plover whimbrel | bearded tits | whinchat bittern | great white egret | peregrine spoonbill | stone curlew | scoter black swan | ring ouzel | laughing gull glossy ibis | corn bunting | brambling white stork | serin | serin | serin
May 25, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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This week, Osmosis is ‘flecked with gilt’ in ‘blue lexicon’ of the ‘[a]mbient barricade’ in the poems 'Flux AH' and 'Flux BI' by Rahul Santhanam. As a semi-ekphrastic work, these poems were written in relation to the movement of lyric abstraction in painting which arose in Paris during the (1/5)
Flux BI And for the word wondered to What had. In which it whittling played No hand. Ambient barricade. Tentacular Fog. In the night of the arrhythmic Mirrors, fixity be all. Serpent. Sum Of same fault logic. Twisted honey Brother whisper to powder school an Income trussed of slow a parlour blither. Blank of such bone veer have you. Glisten us? Flower lamp bundle cow.
May 18, 2025 at 4:22 PM
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This week, Osmosis is ‘Inside / the Darker nights / of the evergreen / Red Heart’ in these ‘sculptural’, ‘cerebral and sensual’, and ‘vividly arranged’ poems by Sam Francis. Featuring 'The garden', 'The portal', and 'The vessel', ‘there’s Free roses’ inside these surreal (1/3)
Inside the Darker nights of the evergreen Red Heart Where there’s Free roses The Genius of The Garden fell in a den of iniquity down Outside it was GREEN // Inside A Terrible Beauty of plenty and excess - large-scale, backlit - vertical, horizontal, linear We laugh, but imagine the Collinson of green foliage pages “Then write it,” she said.
May 11, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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This week, Osmosis is reading the ‘Signs on Leaves’ by Laura Davis. Mirroring both the structure of the villanelle and the dactylic hexameter of the Aeneid, Davis’ poem calls out the growing species extinction alongside the catastrophic effects of late-stage capitalism in (1/5)
The vanishing insects – not just the bees, collateral in Big Farma’s arms race. The data is stark, we just have to see. From cash crops that fail to deserts of wheat, the market, not land or climate, dictates we ignore the wisdom of signs on leaves.
May 4, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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This week, Osmosis is featuring Ryan T. Pozzi’s ‘The Life and Legacy of Walt Whitman: With Unfortunate Clarifications from the Undersigned’; while the prose of this piece acknowledges Whitman as ‘a towering figure in the pantheon of American letters’ and ‘the father of (1/5)
4 The “pulse of the land” apparently included long walks spent ogling laborers and scribbling longhand fantasies about shirtless farmhands. Transcendence, but horny. 5 The “common man,” of course, mostly meant white laborers Whitman found poetically rugged. His so-called universality had blind spots large enough to drive an empire through. He celebrated the body—just not every body.
April 27, 2025 at 8:06 PM
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TODAY. GUMS AND POMATUMS BY SALVATORE DIFALCO.

from @marbledmayhem.bsky.social: This week, ‘Jerry Lee Jones [is] on [the] radio / causing itch to the air’, in Gums and Pomatums by Salvatore Difalco. Gesturing between the American pianist, singer and songwriter, hair (1/5)
Jerry Lee Jones—what is that tune that detaches you from your reality? Is it always a shaking leg or a bone fragment sticking out of your busted shin? We fight, we love, we grease ourselves to fit right in.
April 20, 2025 at 11:54 AM
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TONIGHT. VIDEO POETRY FROM ANGEL DIONNE. DREAMS OF SPLENDOR.

(IMAGE OF FRAME AT 0:26. TEXT:

‘Dreams of splendor
unearth
foreign structures
and islands
of paper tokens
that we squirrel-away
in the pockets of your cheeks.’)
April 6, 2025 at 9:57 PM
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FEATURED WRITING SUBMISSIONS OPEN.

Every Sunday we showcase a writer on our featured writing blog. We welcome writers from all disciplines to submit work, and are particularly keen to see pieces which engage with hybridity and experimentation.
April 2, 2025 at 5:52 PM
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TONIGHT. SIMON RAVENSCROFT. A RELATIVE PLAY OF WAX, HAZE.
Now, iridescence implies variability of colour based on perspective. The word is a compound of Greek iridos, from iris - a goddess incidentally - and the Latin suffix -escent; it means literally to have a tendency towards rainbow.
March 30, 2025 at 8:36 PM
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TONIGHT. JHANI RANDHAWA. SQUALL.
As an ocean ages, plural god shuttle of light and languages as ocean is thick on an atmosphere cupped snow, born of glacier I exit into dream of tsunami frozen in place of settlement, of permutation
March 23, 2025 at 8:31 PM