The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award is a celebration of innovative new writing from across the globe. Each year, the competition invites submissions of poetry and short fiction that redefine the parameters of form, concept and technique. The works included in this anthology, comprising winning and shortlisted entries, take the temperature of literature today. In poetry, the lines are blurred between the social and political, with immersive invocations of place, fragmented stanzas and synaesthetic counterpoints. In fiction, small moments of wonder are brought into sharp focus, blending humour, rigour, shock and awe.