❛ My work isn’t limited to poetry. It’s often a case of I have an idea and I sometimes see that idea as an exclamation, or in a more filmic way, or I want sometimes to actually make something.
From our interview with Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Issue 51).
❛ I think that artists provide questions, not answers. We provide provocations rather than fully formed objects.
Painter Kehindle Wiley, who was born #OTD in 1977.
❛ Today, as I leave this house, you ask, with a teenagerish / grin, if I'm having an affair. In the exact same way you ask if I've / sorted the recycling.
Today's #ThrowbackThursday comes from Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, with poem 'Body Language', from Issue 46.
Email editor@themothmagazine.com for an application form, or visit our website for more details.
25.02.2026 21:18 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
'Rustic but cosy, pared-back but comfortable, and full of eclectic touches' Irish Times
Quiet, welcoming accommodation for writers and artists of all disciplines in beautiful Cavan – come and work on your next project somewhere truly inspiring...
❛ First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
Octavia Butler, who died #OTD in 2006.
❛ I really think I write about everyday life... Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.
Edward Gorey, born #OTD in 1925.
Fish Friday, anyone? 🐡
Painting by Moth Art Prize winner Blanca Amorós, who featured on the cover of Issue 47.
❛ How to survive as a reasonably intact human being undamaged by popular preconceptions and misconceptions? It has been a long uphill battle.
Filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman, who died #OTD in 1994.
A Tuesday throwback to our interview with the brilliant June Caldwell, from Issue 30!
More wisdom this way: bit.ly/pastmoths
This week's Moth Studios Challenge is to produce a painting / drawing of a chair. The work must be completed within two hours and submitted from 9-11pm on Tuesday evening to The Moth Studios (by private message on FB).
The challenge is open to everyone. Please share and good luck!
🎨 Jason Line
Could YOU write a poem that kids would love?
The Caterpillar Poetry Prize is currently open for entries – with up to €1,000 and a trip to The Moth Retreat up for grabs.
Closing 31 March, so there's still plenty of time to try out something new: bit.ly/tcpp26
🎨 Quentin Blake
Happy Valentine's Day, friends of The Moth! While you've caught us feeling sentimental, share your favourite love poem in the comments below...
We'll start, with a Frank O'Hara classic.
💌💌💌
❛ You say: this season is so cloud-heavy, so like breathing lead, / So like enduring, lightless for longer, the days brittle, hard.
The late Fred Johnston's final poem from The Moth, 'Conjuring' (Issue 50). 🌥
❛ Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angels hide. The mind makes and makes, spinning its web.
Sylvia Plath, who died #OTD in 1963.
Crawling through the week...
'Child's Play' by Swedish artist Markus Åkesson, which originally featured in Issue 20. 🕷️ #MothArchives
This week's Moth Studios Challenge is to produce a painting/drawing which includes a pair of spectacles. Complete within two hours and submit from 9-11pm on Tuesday evening to The Moth Studios (by private message on FB).
Please share and good luck!
🎨 Mary Bergherr
❛ Poetry, for me, is the answer to, 'How does one stay sane when private lives are being ransacked by public events?' It's something that hangs over your head all the time.
Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Lisel Mueller, born #OTD in 1924.
❛ I wouldn’t view it as a personal humiliation if I stopped making a living from my writing... it wouldn’t feel like, oh no, the world is disregarding me and my blazing talent. There are so many authors I admire who have a day job.
From our interview with Naoise Dolan...
❛ I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word... Whoever wants to know something about me ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.
Gustav Klimt, who died #OTD in 1918.
Previous winners include Louise Greig, Coral Rumble, Laura Mucha, Carole Bromley, Ciara O’Connor and Laura Theis.
🌟 1st prize €1,000 plus a week at The Moth Retreat in Ireland
🌟 2nd prize €500
🌟 3rd prize €250
We want to hear from you!
bit.ly/tcpp25
Have you written a poem you think kids might love? The Caterpillar Poetry Prize is an annual prize for unpublished poems written by adults for children aged 7–11.
Every year since 2015, The Caterpillar Poetry Prize has been awarded to a single poem by a single judge...
❛ To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.
Writer Patricia Highsmith, who died #OTD in 1995.
'The Moth is a friend to the bright' Joshua Cohen
Fancy testing the waters before you take the plunge?
You can grab any back issue of The Moth now, from just €5, including P&P.
🌥 bit.ly/pastmoths
❛ February, month of despair, / with a skewered heart in the centre. / I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries / with a splash of vinegar.
Favourite poems to welcome in February this #SharingSunday? We'll start with one by Margaret Atwood.
Share in the comments! 🐈⬛
❛ You might say I lead a double life. Or a triple or multiple life. In fact, outside my studio, I am not who I pretend to be. There is no showing who one really is.
Artist Dorothea Tanning, who died #OTD in 2012.
❛ I need a few months to live scuzzy to finish a book, you know, to not wash my hair, to just sit in the same room for hours and eat with my hands...
From our interview with author Claire Kilroy, originally in Issue 13: bit.ly/pastmoths
Half way there... #HumpDayVibe
Gaël Davrinche from Issue 36, with 'Under the Skin'
❛ One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
Lewis Carroll, who was born #OTD in 1832.
❛ What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
J. D. Salinger, who died #OTD in 2010.
