Everything I know I learned from Bob Dylan | Elizabeth Wurtzel
Who cares about the Nobel prize? Dylan made it cool to be Jewish, hot to be American and transformed literature. His masterpiece is himselfB efore Bob Dylan came along, there were famous poets – people...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Poems written during the Siege of Leningrad
Three Russian poets shine words into the blackness of 1942 when a million people died under siege by the Nazis, in this extract from a new anthology Written in the DarkBy Gennady Gor, Vladimir...
View ArticleGun with which Verlaine shot Rimbaud up for auction
Christie’s to sell weapon fired in 1873 in what would be the culmination of a torrid affair between the French poetsThe most famous gun in French literature, the revolver with which the poet Paul...
View ArticleForward prize winner Vahni Capildeo shortlisted for TS Eliot poetry award
The Trinidadian writer joins Alice Oswald, Ian Duhig and Denise Riley among the final 10 vying for the UK’s richest poetry prizeAfter landing the £15,000 Forward prize for best collection in September,...
View ArticleIrish poet who wrote about rape ordeal hits back at online trolls
Alvy Carragher posts YouTube video that uses words of her abuser to highlight persistent trolling of female writersAn Irish poet has debuted a poem on YouTube that hits back at people who abused her...
View ArticleBig cheers for small publishers
The independent publisher Oneworld has won two Man Bookers in a row … and there are small presses in the running for the Baillie Gifford and TS Eliot prizesPaul Beatty’s Man Booker prize success this...
View ArticlePrecious Italian manuscripts moved to avoid earthquake damage
Works by the poet Giacomo Leopardi will be moved to Bologna from Visso over fears for their safety after recent earthquakes The 19th-century manuscripts of one of Italy’s greatest poets and intellects,...
View ArticleThe Saturday Poem: Turning
by Rebecca WattsNow it’s autumnand another year in which I could leave youis a slowly sinking ship.The air has developed edgesand I am preparing to let myself liein a curtained apartment,Continue...
View ArticleAnne Carson: ‘I do not believe in art as therapy’
The poet and classics professor talks about her new collection, Float, her love of volcanoes and the power of brevityAnne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, published in 2001, made her name; she...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Ellipsis by Deryn Rees-Jones
Babies and lost books feature in a poem that provocatively elides thought and sensation EllipsisAnd there I found myself, more truly and more strange.Wallace StevensRelated: Poem of the week: Pantoum...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Two Poems by Philippe Beck
Complex and haunting, here are two poems by French poet Philippe Beck, who won the French Academy’s Grand Prix de Poésie in 2015By Philippe Beck and Nicola Marae Allain for Translation Tuesdays by...
View ArticleWole Soyinka says he will tear up his green card if Trump wins
The Nigerian Nobel-winning author, now living in the US, tells Oxford students that it is up to young people to stand against ‘ultranationalism’ – in a speech that also took aim at Brexit and Bob...
View ArticleRefreshing breaks: how fragmented stories can be fulfilling reading
Anne Carson’s new poems make extensive use of broken snatches of writing, a modernist technique that presents readers with difficult – but liberating – challenges“Reading can be freefall,” runs the...
View ArticleAnne Frank poem, handwritten for a friend, goes on sale
Written in the friendship book of Jacqueline van Maarsen, Frank’s work is an exhortation to virtuous living written shortly before Anne and her family went into hidingA short poem by Anne Frank written...
View ArticleBeyond Bob Dylan: authors, poets and musicians pick their favourite songwriter
Dylan’s Nobel prize win sparked a debate about lyrics as literature. Here, Andrew Motion, Carol Ann Duffy, Johnny Marr, Naomi Alderman and others nominate songwriters whose verse has the power of...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Adventure Flight
by Lemn Sissay Third planet from the sun, this spinning earth.Thousands of football cups but only one is first.Here comes the light to break the pitch: the new day.Crowds wake! Clouds break! The...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Psalm 52 by Mary Sidney Herbert
One of a set of justly celebrated and influential translations from the Bible, this works with vigour, invention and and anger as an original poem in its own rightPsalm 52Tyrant, why swell’st thou...
View ArticleThe Map and the Clock review – a delicious mix of ancient poetry and...
This out-of-the-ordinary anthology curated by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke is playful, enigmatic and heart-rendingEvery now and then, a book comes along that insists on shouldering individual...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Five Poems by Benito del Pliego
Spanish poet Benito del Pliego places puns beside paradoxes, vivid imagery and insights in these five, brief poems from his latest collectionBy Benito del Pliego and Sam Carter for Translation Tuesdays...
View ArticleWords for solace and strength: poems to counter the election fallout – and...
What poets can help us get through a Trump administration? Here are five that serve as signals that good exists, and that someone is awake and listeningAudre Lorde once wrote that “poetry is not a...
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