Charles Osborne obituary
Author, poet, biographer and theatre critic who was literature director of the Arts Council of Great BritainAs literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain during one of its most turbulent...
View ArticleWhy the TS Eliot prize shortlist hails a return to the status quo
This year’s lineup may be deserving, but with just one collection by a BAME poet in an exceptionally strong year for poets of colour, it also seems naiveOver the past few years, challenges to British...
View ArticlePoem of the week: An Invite to Eternity by John Clare
After a flowing, pastoral start, this quickly becomes a darker glimpse of damaged life in a damaged world – but its songlike beauty carries onAn Invite to EternityWilt thou go with me sweet maidSay...
View ArticlePablo Neruda: experts say official cause of death 'does not reflect reality'
Panel of 16 experts says that when the Nobel prize-winning poet died in 1973, there was no indication of the cancer that was supposed to have killed himA team of international scientists say they are...
View ArticleOn Balance poetry review – an imagination that never closes
Sinead Morrissey’s Forward-winning collection is a breathtaking feat, blending fiction, memoir and historySinead Morrissey’s On Balance, which has just won this year’s Forward prize, is a collection...
View ArticleArmistice Day and marking the tragedy of war | Letters
Anke Neibig on rethinking the format of remembrance on the dayMy father and father-in-law were both in the army in the second world war, albeit fighting on different sides. It is that time of year...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Bee Glue by Will Harris
A pair of not-quite sonnets reflect on the exploitation on which more obviously perfect aesthetics rest, and sketch an art that can integrate the suffering Bee Glue‘Break a vase,’ says Derek Walcott,...
View ArticleGoverning in poetry: French president responds to English schoolgirl's verse
Emmanuel Macron posts 21-line composition in response to 13-year-old’s poem about Eiffel TowerEmmanuel Macron is keen to be seen as a man of many talents. The French leader, nicknamed Jupiter after the...
View ArticleKumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi review – unflinching reflections
For all its lyrical elegance, there is no hiding the anger and defiance in this debut collection‘Eminem ruined everything,” laments the speaker of “Self-Portrait as a Garage Emcee”, a playfully candid...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Hansel in College by Tyler Mills
Weaving a different work by Gwendolyn Brooks into her own, Mills makes their parallel stories sing togetherHansel in CollegeI did not believe in a “we”:only you, smoking in the street, hardly real.I...
View ArticleThe Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1 review – why Plath can’t win in a world...
At last her letters, including many to Ted Hughes, appear in complete form. But in the years from 1940 to 1956 she had yet to come into her own as a writerThe posthumous editing of a famous writer is...
View ArticleSelected Poems of Thom Gunn edited by Clive Wilmer review – life on the edge
He left England for California and, as an observer of gay life, became a uniquely Anglo-American poet. The new selected edition of Thom Gunn’s poetry reveals a writer as good as Ted Hughes and Seamus...
View ArticleThomas Keneally reads William Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris – video
The Australian author Thomas Keneally reads William Dunbar’s Lament for the Makaris, the 15th century Scot’s poem about his fear of death, which carries the refrain, ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’ (fear...
View ArticleThomas Keneally: death is not the fly in the cosmic ointment. It is the...
Life is strong in people – we didn’t get to be wreckers of the planet without a mighty life force in us. But accepting death is one of the contentments of ageWhen I was 16, I was given a wonderful...
View ArticlePay Yr Ysgwrn a visit to see the Black Chair of Birkenhead | Brief letters
Indian soldiers | Hedd Wyn | Racism inside us | Boris Johnson’s EnglishSoldiers from India who died in the first world war (The war we don’t remember, 11 November) were at least treated with respect...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Hairless by Jo Shapcott
Blending science, fantasy, and feminism, this is an unpretentious work that dances lightly over its weighty concernsHairlessCan the bald lie? The nature of the skin says not:it’s newborn-pale,...
View ArticleSeamus Heaney's biographer races to see poet's faxes before they fade
Fintan O’Toole, who is to write the life of the Nobel laureate, said he is anxious to record surviving documents written in ‘his favourite communication mode’A race is on to track down faxes sent by...
View ArticleRobert Hutchison obituary
My friend Robert Hutchison, who has died aged 76, was a promoter of culture and the arts with exceptional versatility and range. The Winchester poetry festival, Wilfred Owen Association and Winchester...
View ArticleSarah Maguire obituary
Poet and translator who introduced new audiences to leading poets from around the worldSarah Maguire, who has died aged 60 from breast cancer, was for 25 years a vital presence in British poetry as a...
View ArticleMichael Rosen rewrites A Christmas Carol for modern age of austerity
In Bah! Humbug! the former children’s laureate updates Charles Dickens’s Christmas classic for an era when poverty is again being blamed on the poor Some 174 years after Charles Dickens forged his...
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