Rhyme and reason: Seamus Heaney HomePlace pays lyrical tribute to the poet
A new arts hub in Bellaghy, mid-Ulster, celebrates the life and legacy of the Nobel prize-winning poet, while its rural surroundings offer glimpses of the landscape that inspired himThere are two pubs...
View ArticleFrom Schubert to Sinatra: why the song cycle speaks to the heart
A new English version of Die Schöne Müllerin offers a reminder as to why it’s Sinatra – not his classical contemporaries – that matches Schubert in ambitionIt’s an everyday story of country folk....
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Moments of the mind
by William LetfordThree men sit at the kitchen table. My grandfathersmokes Golden Virginia. Making a roll-uphas become his ritual. His fingers help him think.So that’s what he does. He teases tobacco...
View ArticleAberfan 50 years on: how best to remember the tragedy?
In 1966 a coal slag heap collapsed on a school in south Wales, killing 144 people, most of them children. Poet Owen Sheers went back to the pit village and, using the people’s own memories, created a...
View ArticleThe Green Hollow by Owen Sheers – extract
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1966 Aberfan disaster, the Welsh poet and playwright has written a ‘film poem’ based on the voices and memories of those involved. The following passages are...
View ArticlePoem of the week: After the Dragonflies by WS Merwin
A luminous depiction of these beautiful creatures conceals a stark warning of environmental catastropheAfter the DragonfliesDragonflies were as common as sunlighthovering in their own daysbackward...
View ArticleMelissa Lee-Houghton: 'Articulating your experience is remarkably...
To mark World Mental Health Day, the Forward prize-shortlisted poet talks about how writing has figured throughout her psychiatric recoveryDuring my first prolonged hospital admission, at the age of...
View ArticleOdes by Sharon Olds review – in praise of tampons and other taboos
A new collection from the TS Eliot prizewinner finds beauty in the outrages visited on ageing bodiesSharon Olds’s inspired new collection alerts us to taboos we barely think about ordinarily. The book...
View ArticleUnseen documents revealed on new website dedicated to TS Eliot
A digital trove of letters, essays and photographs disclose the Nobel laureate’s views on detective fiction, poetry publishing – and his ‘dread’ of the USA timely essay by TS Eliot, in which he warns...
View ArticleTinyLetter: the mini saviour of modern poetry?
TinyLetters are a simple but radical new email marketing tool that could save poetry and short fiction from obscurity by winning authors a bigger audienceThe idea of the TinyLetter is largely...
View Article'Dylan towers over everyone' – Salman Rushdie, Kate Tempest and more pay...
Salman Rushdie, Cerys Matthew, Jarvis Cocker, Andrew Motion, Billy Bragg and other artists and writers pick their favourite moments from Dylan’s body of workRichard Williams: Why Bob Dylan deserves his...
View ArticleSjón: why Olso’s Future Library is a fairytale come true
The Icelandic poet follows Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell as the latest contributor to the Future Library anthology. He describes the magic behind the projectMy favourite Icelandic folk story has...
View ArticlePoster poems: bus journeys
A communal space offering an ever-changing view of life passing by, buses have opened windows on to the world for many poets. Share your bus verses hereI’ve been reading Peter Riley’s recent pamphlet...
View ArticlePeace Talks by Andrew Motion review – from Craiglockhart to modern day warfare
The former poet laureate harnesses language’s transformative capacities to communicate the pain and grief of conflictPeace Talks is the first book of poems from the former poet laureate since he left...
View ArticleSlakki: New & Neglected Poems by Roy Fisher review – a collection with...
From Birmingham’s city blocks to memories of war to restless skies – the quality is consistently high in this collection of work from the past 65 yearsIn 1951, citizens still chafing at postwar...
View ArticleWhy I took the slow train to become a fan of Bob Dylan
How 1984 marked the start of my career as a poet and my admiration for the Nobel prize-winning songwriterLetters: Bob Dylan’s a poet – and now we knowAs a poet, I’m supposed to be attracted to Bob...
View ArticleCarol Ann Duffy: my pick of British and Irish poetry
A new anthology celebrates the music, accents and independence of poets since the earliest timesOn a seventh-century night in Northumbria, the Venerable Bede tells us, a lay brother and cattle herder...
View ArticlePrime Minister’s Literary awards 2016: novel with print run of 350 makes...
David Ireland’s The World Repair Video Game shortlisted in fiction category alongside Steve Toltz and Charlotte WoodA novel with a print run of only 350 copies is among the works shortlisted for the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Medley for Morin Khur by Paul Muldoon
Beneath its bright, musical texture, this meditation on an obscure musical instrument carries some very dark reflectionsMedley for Morin Khur IThe sound box is made of a horse’s head.The resonator is...
View ArticleStephen Lawrence poem by Benjamin Zephaniah donated to British Library
Manuscript of What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, which was written to help drive search for the teenager’s racist killers, will be displayed in the library’s galleriesBenjamin Zephaniah has donated a...
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