Poem of the week: Low Tide at St Andrews by Emily Pauline Johnson
The half-English, half-First Nation Canadian translated the Romantic tradition into a beguilingly low key in this reflection on a coastal sceneLow Tide at St Andrews(New Brunswick)The long red flats...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Two poems by Yoo An-Jin
Acclaimed South Korean poet Yoo An-Jin reflects on loneliness and agingBy Yoo An-Jin, Brother Anthony of Taizé and Yu Chang-Gong for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the Guardian Books...
View ArticleHollie McNish's 'funny and serious' poetry wins Ted Hughes prize
YouTube star’s collection Nobody Told Me, a verse memoir from ‘the frontline of motherhood’, secures prestigious £5,000 honourA “funny and serious, humane and consciousness-raising” poetry collection...
View ArticleSpy report that criticised Marlowe for 'gay Christ' claim is revealed online
British Library releases ‘Baines note’ in which playwright Christopher Marlowe scandalously suggests Christian communion should be smoked in a pipeA controversial document in which the playwright...
View ArticleClive James: ‘Helen Hunt! Holy smoke, what an artist!’
I long for the days when Jack Nicholson could deliver a speech without flashing his ivory like a leopard set to chargeSome tenured academic blockhead in America has written a book proving that poetry...
View ArticleA Quiet Passion won’t solve the mystery of Emily Dickinson – but does the...
Salacious rumours surrounding Dickinson’s life have come thick and fast, but does that mean A Quiet Passion writer-director Terence Davies is free to speculate?In 1882 Emily Dickinson was living as a...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Probably
by Hollie McNish, winner of the Poetry Society’s Ted Hughes award for new workI probably won’t die in childbirthI probably won’t be aloneI probably won’t have a ruptured aortaI probably won’t break a...
View ArticleYevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet who memorialised Babi Yar, dies aged 84
Poet and dissident who denounced Stalin died ‘surrounded by relatives and close friends’ in Oklahoma, where he taught at the University of TulsaThe acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose...
View ArticleDrinking too many coffees with the great Russian poet Joseph Brodsky
It was 1974 and tension was high between the Soviets and Americans. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky and the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov met in New York and had a lot to talk aboutI first met the poet...
View ArticleYevgeny Yevtushenko obituary
Rebellious Russian poet and author of Babi Yar, who became a celebrity in the westIn the middle of a novel published in the Soviet Union in 1981, two young people are exchanging opinions about Russian...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Tweet Tweet by Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze
Two heralds of spring in Jamaica provide melodious inspiration for mature reflection on the meaning of homeTweet TweetThere’s a blackbirdin my mango treeand I think of Marleyand singing songs of...
View ArticleLike love, violets gladden the heart
Wenlock Edge Violets have a built-in nostalgia, a belonging to something that is always fleeting and longed forA century and a half ago, when springs were different, the poet John Clare wrote: “All...
View ArticleThe colour in anything: illustrations by Quentin Blake – in pictures
Away from his Roald Dahl illustrations, Quentin Blake has brought to life everything from James Blake’s music to Michael Rosen’s poetryContinue reading...
View ArticleRoy Fisher obituary
English modernist poet whose work was rooted in his home town, BirminghamThe poet Roy Fisher, who has died aged 86, did everything wrong – from a literary-careerist perspective. He rejected the...
View ArticlePoet's Pacific paradise: Pablo Neruda’s homes in Chile
As a new film about Pablo Neruda gets a UK release, we visit two of the Pacific-facing homes where the poet found inspiration: Isla Negra and the ‘crazy port’ of Valparaíso‘If we walk up and down all...
View ArticleWord hoards: masterpieces of concrete poetry – in pictures
Poets such as Ian Hamilton Finlay and Augusto de Campos have shaken words out of standard verse structure and rearranged them in striking, enigmatic new forms. Here are some of the teasing, amusing and...
View ArticlePortobello Sonnets by Harry Clifton – fluent and humane
Memories mingle with the pace of modern Dublin in a wry, sophisticated study of changePortobello Sonnets opens with a quotation from Patrick Kavanagh: “In the third age, we are content to be ourselves,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Yorkshire Pudding Rules by Ian McMillan
This amusing and buoyant poem from the writer and broadcaster serves as a parodic religious guide on the sacred art of making the best Yorkshire pudYorkshire Pudding RulesThe tin must not gleam. Must...
View ArticleJeff Johnson obituary
My friend Jeff Johnson, who has died aged 75, was described by his fellow artist Anthony Green as “the greatest miniaturist that Britain produced in the 20th century”.Jeff was born into a working-class...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Counting Backwards
by Helen DunmoreUntroubled, the anaesthetistPotters with his cannulaAs the waterfall in the ante-roomGrows steadily louder,All of them are cool with itAnd just keep on workingNo wonder they wear...
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