Deaths of the Poets by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts – the high...
A thoughtful interrogation of the idea of the doomed poet avoids ghoulish sensationalismNot thelives of poets, which Dr Johnson wrote about, but their deaths – whether early or late, in bed or in...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Hôtel Idéal Séjour
by Adam O’Riordan The winter sea and perhapsin the distance the sound of waves.The women at your bedsideare dressed against the chill.Continue reading...
View ArticleDeaths of the Poets by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts review – a...
Tracing the final footsteps of our great poets makes for a lively jaunt – but what does it say about their work?On the grey January morning when the news reached the world that David Bowie had died,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: On the Mountain by Lavinia Greenlaw
A careful engagement with nature ‘in its fault and fold’ is also a watchful flight from human complicationOn the MountainTo travel the world explicitin its fault and fold.Continue reading...
View ArticleTranslation – and migration – is the lifeblood of culture | George Szirtes
Even the literature that seems most rooted in one place is animated by writing from elsewhere – and trying to keep that influence out is profoundly dangerousCulture is not a purely national business. I...
View ArticleClive James: ‘When I am a break down to Nadal in the fifth, I contemplate...
More and more I need to be told things are happening. Only then can I turn my majestic attention to them, like a rusty old weather vane miles behind the actionAs the last traces of anaesthetic haze...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Tanager
by Billy CollinsIf only I had not listened to the pieceon the morning radio about the former asylumwhose inmates were kept busyat wooden benches in a workshopmaking leather collars and wristbandsthat...
View ArticleFormer lover of the poet known as Iran's Slyvia Plath breaks his silence
Fifty years after Forough Farrokhzad’s death, Ebrahim Golestan talks about his affair with the giant of Persian literatureForty miles south of London, in a quiet West Sussex village, lives a...
View ArticlePoem of the week: In the Studio by Nancy Cunard
Superficially traditional, this 1923 sonnet on an artist and his model conceals some of the daring that made the author a groundbreaking modernistIn the StudioIs it March, spring, winter, autumn,...
View ArticleJackself by Jacob Polley review – sinister and mysterious
Polley’s haunting verse narrative blends nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales with a dash of ColeridgeInstead of the onerous first person – the “I” from which most autobiographical narratives...
View ArticleOmens turn to charm in Ted Hughes' badlands
Mexborough, South Yorkshire No longer ‘more or less solid chemicals’, the gunmetal waters of the Don are clean enough for salmonThere were wisps of snow in the liverish sky over Main Street,...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Last Muse
by Elaine FeinsteinA bossy ghost I work for: she who only lives in words on the pageand has no thoughts I do not give her.She has no flesh, and will not age. Why should I careif she survives when I am...
View ArticleA Herring Famine by Adam O’Riordan review – poems of craft and guile
A promising poet’s second collection delivers work full of subtle music that wears its heart on its sleeveParadox is one of the cornerstones of poetry. Emotion jostles with meticulous craftiness,...
View ArticleThe 2017 Stephen Spender prize – a callout for poetry translators
The Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation opens for submissions on 27 February. Award judge Margaret Jull Costa reflects on today’s need for translatorsI was thrilled to be invited to be one...
View ArticleThe Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics and Madness of Ezra Pound – review
Daniel Swift’s account of the disgraced poet’s years in a mental hospital is enthralling but leaves us little wiser as to his state of mindThe psychodrama surrounding one of America’s greatest 20th...
View ArticlePoem of the week: No Moose by Mark Waldron
The engaging surrealism of an extremely incongruous visitor to a chip shop gives way to a distinctly grim sense of a narrow and unimaginative social worldNo MooseAn English seaside town at dusk,...
View ArticleWalt Whitman's lost novel The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle found
Described by Whitman scholar as a ‘a fun, rollicking, creative, twisty, bizarre little book’, the discovery has been made available free onlineA “rollicking” anti-lawyer revenge fantasy by Walt...
View ArticlePoetry, love and psychosis: can writing help us come to terms with mental...
In hospital in 1972, Paula Keogh fell in love with the poet Michael Dransfield. In her new memoir she captures the voice of her illness and the man she lovedPaula Keogh never intended to write about...
View ArticleClive James announces new poetry collection – Injury Time
Celebrated broadcaster, critic and poet to publish sequel to Sentenced to Life – which was seen as farewell volume after his struggle with cancer The much-loved broadcaster, critic, memoirist, novelist...
View ArticleJack Thompson's wisdom: life's crowning glory is the here and now
His voice is indelibly laid down in minds of Australians who have watched his film career unfold over five decades: from Breaker Morant to The Man From Snowy River; from Midnight in the Garden of Good...
View Article
