Weekend podcast: Marina Hyde on Boris’s last hurrah, the world’s favourite...
With Partygate and the former PM back in the news, we ask if we’ve finally reached peak Boris (1m35s)? With one billion streams, what makes John Cooper Clarke’s I Wanna Be Yours possibly the world’s...
View ArticleOn my radar: Ali Smith’s cultural highlights
The award-winning Scottish author on a brilliant exhibition in Paris, a talismanic collection of new poetry and an apocalyptic novel like no otherBorn in Inverness in 1962, Ali Smith has published 12...
View ArticlePoem of the week: here yet be dragons by Lucille Clifton
This short poem with a vast moral force field examines humanity, the monsters of racism, misogyny and militarism, and asks the reader a crucial, mind-stopping questionso many languages have fallenoff...
View ArticleTop 10 stories about wolves
Writers including Angela Carter, Karen Russell and Jiang Rong have looked into the eyes of an animal that roams widely through our stories and stalks our collective imagination Is it because wolves are...
View ArticleMariluz Escribano Pueo: the late Spanish poet finally finding acclaim
Child of Spanish civil war is attaining readership and recognition that eluded her in her lifetimeThe defining moment in Mariluz Escribano Pueo’s life came when the Spanish poet, activist and teacher...
View ArticlePoem of ‘beauty, wit and grace’ about fathers and sons wins National Poetry...
Ex-New York cab driver Lee Stockdale wins £5,000 after My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert beat 17,000 other poemsA poem of “beauty, wit and grace” that explores an encounter...
View ArticleDM Thomas obituary
Author, poet and scholar of Russian literature whose greatest success came with his controversial 1981 novel The White HotelThe greatest notoriety – and critical and sales success – enjoyed by the...
View ArticlePhilip Larkin: ‘writing in the language of ordinary people’ – archive, 31...
31 March 1973: Larkin talks about his approach to life and poetry as well as his efforts in editing the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century VerseThe University of Hull is literally redbrick: squat, square...
View ArticleWhat we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in March
Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the commentsIn this series we ask authors, Guardian writers and readers to share...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Self-Portrait As Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant; A Tower Built Downwards by Yang Lian; Artifice by Lavinia Singer; Master of Distances by Jordi Doce; Customs by Solmaz SharifSelf-Portrait As Othello by...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Not It by Caitlin Doyle
A children’s game conveys the panic-inducing sensation of reaching adulthood, of being ‘It’ before being ready“Not It!” we’d shout before a roundof backyard hide-and-seek,the last to say it left...
View ArticleThe Rossettis review – lurid, luscious-lipped beauties drown out the family’s...
Tate Britain, LondonDante Gabriel’s paintings are shown up by his sister Christina’s poetry in this baffling, overblown exhibition about the decidedly non-revolutionary pre-RaphaelitesIt’s obvious,...
View ArticleThe Home Child by Liz Berry review – a long injustice
Based on the life of the author’s great-aunt, this verse novel about forced child emigration from the UK to Canada is a profound act of witness Liz Berry’s first poetry collection, 2014’s Black...
View Article‘Plenty to savour’, ‘sensual’, ‘a great gift’: the best Australian books out...
Each month, Guardian Australia editors and critics pick out the upcoming titles they’ve already devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands onGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailGiramondo,...
View Article‘I’m CBE, I’m poet laureate so I’m clearly not a republican am I?’: Simon...
When Simon Armitage left his job as a probation worker to become a full-time poet his dad was horrified. Is the former young subversive turned royal appointee now part of the establishment?I’m...
View ArticleThe new LGBTQ+ lit list, chosen by writers
From sensational memoirs to sublime poetry, Douglas Stuart, Ali Smith, Colm Tóibín and others share lesser-known books about queer life that deserve to be classics, introduced by playwright Mark...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Place I Am by Peter Bennet
The boundaries between place and self become intriguingly fuzzy in this painterly reflectionI have become a master of the craftof moulding, patiently and with precision,lethargy into shapes of hours...
View ArticlePlot by Claudia Rankine review – the lives of mothers
The award-winning author of Citizen turns her mind to the complexities of balancing art and parentingTwenty years ago, the poet, essayist and playwright Claudia Rankine, hailed for Citizen– an...
View ArticleSolmaz Sharif: ‘I don’t shy away from hurting the reader’
The Iranian-American poet on puncturing comfort, staying an apostate and her teenage love of RL StineThe poet Solmaz Sharif was born in Istanbul to Iranian parents in 1983 and raised in the US, moving...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Bin-Men Go on Strike by Raymond Queneau
Discovering treasure in what the world has discarded, this freewheeling reverie carries with it radical ideas about artit’s strike day for the bin-menit’s a lucky day for uswe can play ragpicker or...
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