The Moth Magazine

Hello October! 👋 For #SharingSunday, show us your favorite pieces of art that remind you of the season.

🎨 John Everett Millais

❛ I don't know where it's likely to go better.

Getting a little existential this weekend with Kit Fan's 'Year of the Rat', from the #MothArchives 🐁

❛ I have all my subjects to hand. I go back and look at them. I take notes. Then I go home. And before I start painting I reflect, I dream.

Artist Pierre Bonnard, born #OTD in 1867.

The Moth Poetry Prize is now OPEN!

One of the biggest prizes in the world for individual unpublished poems is back for 2025 – and we're very excited to announce that this year Ishion Hutchinson is joining us as judge.

More info below and on our website: bit.ly/mothpoetry25

❛ I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.

W. S. Merwin, born #OTD in 1927.

The theme of this week's Moth Studios Challenge is correspondence. Complete your piece within two hours and submit to The Moth Studios (via Facebook DM) from 9-11pm on Tuesday evening: facebook.com/TheMothStudios

Open to everyone. Please share and good luck!

🎨 Franz Nolken

Ukrainian artist Kateryna Kosianenko's 'Bunny', which featured in Issue 49 of The Moth. 🐇 #ArtistSpotlight

❛ To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.

Poet T. S. Eliot, who was born #OTD in 1888.

On a beautiful country lane surrounded by some of Cavan's famous 365 lakes, The Moth Retreat is the perfect getaway for up to two writers or artists in rural Ireland...

Visit our website for more details and how to apply: www.themothmagazine.com

LESS THAN ONE WEEK TO GO! 🍂

Time is running out to enter this year's Moth Nature Writing Prize - closing on 30 September.

We want to read your poems and prose about your relationship with the natural world, for the chance to win up to €1,000.

bit.ly/mothnature25

(Painting by Georgia O'Keeffe)

There's an issue of The Caterpillar for every season...

Take Issue 30 for example –– haunted houses, circus acts, monsters, banjos, even excuses for not doing your homework.

Perfect for the spooky months.
👻 bit.ly/caterpillarbackissues

❛ One of the things I’ve been doing recently is I’ve gotten interested in chickens. Hen-keeping. I could see how I could easily become a chicken farmer.

An interview with poultry enthusiast and poet, Paul Muldoon, originally from Issue 12 🐓 → bit.ly/pastmoths

An after work treat...

American painter Zoey Frank's 'Blueberries', from Issue 36 #MothArchives 🫐

❛ Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax... bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do ― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

Author Stephen King, born #OTD in 1947. 🎈

A classic, from the #MothArchives, Sarah Tsiang's Forward Prize shortlisted poem, originally from Issue 40. 🍆

YouTube video by The Moth Magazine Ann Gray | My Blue Hen | The Moth Poetry Prize 2013

Beautiful, award-winning poem featured in @themothmagazine.bsky.social newsletter today. A treat to hear Ann Gray read "My Blue Hen."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rjO...

Less than two weeks left to enter!

You could win a cash prize or a week at The Moth Retreat in rural Ireland – and see your work published in the Irish Times online...

We want to hear from you.

🌷 bit.ly/mothnature25

Here's 'Go Player' from Issue 44, by oil painter Jeffrey Chong Wang, who relocated from China to Canada in 1999 – his work reflects the history of Western oil painting techniques, with contemporary themes in Eastern culture. 💚 #MothArchives

It's #SharingSunday again! And already halfway through the month, so let's share our favourite pieces of art that remind us of the month of September.

🎨 Vincent van Gogh, The garden of Saint Paul’s Hospital (‘Leaf-Fall’), 1889

Saturdays are for Swedish flat-pack furniture stores. #MothArchives (from Issue 44) 💙

‘An edition of The Moth is as much a finely weighted collage of text and image as it is a sturdy literary journal of international standing and aspect.’ Adrian Duncan

Interviews, poems, art and short stories, this way - a welcome distraction from reaching for your phone...

☎ bit.ly/pastmoths

❛ Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking part in a workshop, one should read.

Poet Mary Oliver, born #OTD in 1935.

⏳️ THREE WEEKS TO GO! ⌛️

Don't miss out on entering this year's Moth Nature Writing Prize – judged in 2025 by multi-award-winning author and naturalist Mark Cocker.

€1,000 up for grabs, plus a trip to the Moth Retreat in beautiful rural Ireland.

🌸 bit.ly/mothnature25

❛This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told: Somebody grew up, fell in love, and spent a winter with her lover... Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost?

Short story writer Ann Beattie, born #OTD 1947, photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

For #SharingSunday, here's a treat from the Moth Archives – 'In The Depth Of My Gardens, 2016–2017' by Victor Ma, originally from Issue 40. 🌱

❛I think it's very hard for many people to really look at something and not try to put words into it... to really let themselves go with something visual and feel something visual just for the hell of it. Just for the beauty of really looking...

Artist Elizabeth Murray, born #OTD in 1940.

‘A gorgeous flea-market of poems and stories and artwork’ — Conor O’Callaghan

Mix and match, from just €5 for one issue or €20 for a bundle of 5, including P&P.

🪩 bit.ly/pastmoths

❛ If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Poet e.e. cummings, who died #OTD in 1962.

❛ Against windmills / and microwaves, against suede shoes / and season tickets to anything...

Today's #ThrowbackTuesday goes out to our 2023 Moth Poetry Prize-winning poem, 'Things I'm Against' by Lance Larsen. Today we're against Tuesdays..