Welcome to Acacia Publications, the website of Fokkina McDonnell, an award-winning poet now living in the Netherlands. Her poems have been widely published and anthologised, successful in many competitions and nominated for the Forward Prize. Read her online poems here. To hear Fokkina read her poems to you, click here.

Fokkina has a pamphlet and three poetry collections, the latest with Broken Sleep Books, Details on the Books page.

The original manuscript of her third collection was praised by poet Anthony Vahni Capildeo, judge of the 2020 poetry entries, for its ‘beautiful minimalism and intriguing poise‘ and received a Northern Writers’ Award. Published in October 2022, copies are available from Broken Sleep Books.

The poet Matthew Paul has posted a perceptive and detailed analysis of the poem Safe House, from the collection Remembering / Disease. The poem was inspired by a poem by the late poet Andrew Waterhouse. Matthew’s post gets to the heart and soul, not just of the poem, but of Fokkina’s writing. Here is the link.

Blog

On the blog you also find writing prompts and monthly guest poets. About 70 poets have so far featured, most recently Ian Seed with wonderful prose poems. Just search the blog for ‘writing prompts’ and ‘guest poet’.

Social media: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, and Substack.

News

Acceptance by Poems for Persons of Interest, a Canadian online journal edited by Alex Rettie.

Acceptance by the Journal of Imaginary Research . It publishes short works of fiction in the academic genre of the Research Abstract. The theme was ‘Shrinkage’. Scroll down to Volume 11 (2026) to download. The abstract is no. 29. It is titled The Impact of Childhood Belief on Adult Ability To Shrink Objects. The abstract describes a psychological experiment and is accompanied by an imaginary biography.

The poem Interior with a Table has been awarded 4th place in the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society’s Open Competition 2026.

The poem Canada is as far away as bibles are is published on the site After. This online journal is edited by Mark Antony Owen and dedicated to ekphrastic poems. The poem was inspired by a huge lightbox made by the Canadian artist Rodney Graham.

The photo shows The Avid Reader, 1949 displayed at Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar, the Netherlands.

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