Lots of votes again, but the clear winner of the August Readers’ Choice Award is:

Blue Baby – by Susan Castillo Street

The Editor’s Choice Poem is:

Anosmia – by Kitty Coles

selected by Rob Miles who said:

“What an honour to be asked, and initially an unequivocal treat to undertake: ‘here are some poems, pick one.’ Then it gets harder. Unless I’m in public and threatened by confinement to a specialist unit, I recite or at least mumble poems to myself. I was able to live with these for a while, and every one had something to recommend it: moments cannily caught, memories evoked, some really nicely handled imagery and refreshingly ambitious play with sound shapes, presentation and traditional form. Such a selection is bound to be subjective, but if I have to say what really stood out about my choice of Anosmia as ‘winner’ it has to be its combination of some of the elements already mentioned, but moreover its unforced fusion of means and meaning (all the best poetry does this for me). Like the scents it describes, calling on a range of nicely strung synesthetic and imagistic tropes, it has layers like a perfume with top, middle and bottom notes; some darker than others, including the informing suggestion or sillage of a much bigger and more sensitive narrative relating to illness and treatment that is only partly masked by some intimate and wry married couple talk. Well done to the (to me anonymous) author, but also to all those whose work I read.”