The Unaccompanied by Simon Armitage review – luminous and unsettling
Snowmen and bargain shops take an unexpected twist in this powerful collection about a world in meltdownSimon Armitage’s work is earthed – no matter what he is writing about, his poetry is never...
View ArticleDavid Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet by Thomas Dilworth review –...
The story of the eccentric and exceptionally talented David Jones, who couldn’t wait to go off to the trenches, makes fascinating readingIn 1966, Robert Speaight published a biography of Eric Gill, a...
View ArticleUnseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes
Unpublished correspondence from the poet to her former therapist records allegation of beating and says that he told her he wished she was deadSylvia Plath alleged Ted Hughes beat her two days before...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Two poems by Byung-rul Lee
Poetic imagery hint at emotional turmoil underneath a restrained surface, in these poems translated from KoreanBy Byung-rul Lee and Soyoung Park for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the...
View ArticleDetective work shows Auden was the model | Letters
In his review of Polly Clark’s Larchfield (Review, 8 April) Ian Sansom suggests that the WH Auden figure in the novel would make “an excellent model for a 1930s detective”. Quite right and he was. My...
View ArticleSylvia Plath, a voice that can’t be silenced | Sarah Churchwell
The emergence of some of her final letters will cast new light on her violent marriage to Ted Hughes and how it inspired her poetryIn early 1956, Sylvia Plath wrote a long, digressive letter to a man...
View ArticlePlath's letters probably won't harm Hughes's reputation | Rafia Zakaria
Bardic men behaving badly, from Lord Byron to Robert Lowell, are traditionally excused – while women poets are written off if they step out of line News: Unseen Plath letters claim domestic abuse by...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Line,
by Colette Bryceyou were drawn in the voice of my mother;not past Breslin’s, don’t step over.Saturday border, breach in the slabs,creep to the right, Line,sidelong, crab,cut up the tarmac, sunder the...
View ArticleTom Raworth obituary
Poet who introduced the radicalism of postwar US poetry into British writingA leading figure in the British poetry revival of the 1960s, Tom Raworth, who has died aged 78, brought the radicalism of the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Budapest 1944 by Howard Altmann
A tribute to two survivors, this poem resgisters both the Nazis’ unspeakable war crimes in Hungary and the blighted struggle for renewal in their wakeBudapest 1944For my fatherIn the unswayable...
View ArticleRSC plans celebration of Shakespeare's favourite classical poet
Company aims to reignite interest in Ovid, whose book the Metamorphoses is alluded to in some of the Bard’s plays Shakespeare’s favourite classical poet, Ovid, inspired him with myth, magic and...
View ArticleThe Bagpiping People by Douglas Dunn review – stories of amiable Scots...
This collection of short stories by the poet tells of ruffled lives and people leaving their disapproving villages for Glasgow and beyondThe poet Douglas Dunn also writes wonderful short stories, some...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Across the fields to St Begas
by Lorna GoodisonClear the stile set in the dry stonewall thenset out across fields to where St Bega beckons.You’ll step past drowsing dams who suckle newborns beneath shade trees.You have never seen...
View ArticleWilliam Wordsworth review – inspiration and smoking chimneys
Theatre by the Lake, KeswickNicholas Pierpan’s ambitious drama explores a dark year in the poet’s lifeOn the one hand there is the wonder of a mind that makes the world anew with words; on the other is...
View ArticlePoem of the week: In the Evening by Anna Akhmatova
Translated by the late Richard McKane, this strikingly love-deprived love poem is a fine example of the author’s intense focus on personal experienceIn the EveningThere was such inexpressible sorrowin...
View ArticleInside the Wave by Helen Dunmore – generous and contemplative
Reflections on mortality – filtered by the poet’s experience of illness – run through this wide-ranging and consummate collectionHelen Dunmore is a much admired and widely read novelist, but she began...
View ArticleTranslation Tuesday: Two poems by Lee Seong-Bok
Two quiet, wistful recollections of the past by a South Korean poet, for the final Translation Tuesday on the Guardian websiteBy Lee Seong-Bok and Yea Jung Park for Translation Tuesdays byAsymptote,...
View ArticleThe Guardian view on Tony Harrison: a people’s poet | Editorial
In embracing the past as a way of tackling the present, he remains a constant reminder of the power of words to tell us about the world we all live inThe 80th birthday of the poet Tony Harrison brought...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Giant
by Cahal Dallat, winner of the 2017 Keats Shelley prizeThe one exceptional thing about him –as we worked late August nights on importsoftware for Italian racing-bikes for his friend Italo,percentage...
View ArticleKate Tempest: ‘I engage with all of myself, which is why it’s dangerous’
Kate Tempest has shaken up the world of poetry by taking it out of the bookshops and on to the festival stage. But in the process has this great and empathetic observer found the scrutiny too much?Kate...
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