Elizabeth-Jane Burnett: 'Swimming can give you the optimism to keep going'
Swims is a work of poetry that follows its author into open waters around the UK, where she finds both simple pleasure and more complicated political hope“What can I do as a person on the planet, as a...
View ArticleGoing for a gong: the week in literary prizes – roundup
We toast the winners of the Goldsmiths prize, the National Book awards, the Warwick prize for women in translation and the Stephen Spender for poetryThere were gongs galore this week. First to...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Yoga for Leaders and Others by Philip Fried
Instructions for spiritual exercises are retooled as a manual for presenting political evasion in the most attractive lightYoga for Leaders and OthersMountain PoseContinue reading...
View ArticleBantam by Jackie Kay review – home truths from a goddess of small things
Jackie Kay depicts a world of grief, joy, love and humour in the sparest termsThis collection is a pick-me-up – fresh, upbeat and sympathetic. The tone is partly a matter of temperament. Jackie Kay...
View ArticleHelen Dunmore's final poems lead shortlists for 2017 Costa prizes
Inside the Wave, in which the poet reflected on her own impending death, joins diverse contenders in poetry, fiction, biography and children’s booksHelen Dunmore’s final poetry collection, in which the...
View ArticleBest books of 2017 – part two
From moving memoirs to far-reaching fiction, the wonders of science and the lessons of history, novelists, poets and critics pick their best reads of the yearPart one: George Saunders, Ali Smith and...
View ArticleThe week in radio: The Verb Celebrates 35 Years of Spoken Word; The Adoption;...
The Verb’s hymn to spoken word was pure poetry, while a real-life story of adoption hit homeThe Verb Celebrates 35 Years of Spoken Word (Radio 3) | iPlayerThe Adoption (Radio 4) | iPlayer5 Live Daily...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet to Vauxhall by Thomas Hood
A dazzling sonnet captures the fizz and excitement of a firework display at London’s celebrated pleasure gardensSonnet to Vauxhall“The English Garden.” – MasonContinue reading...
View ArticleOmar Musa: Genocide is the basis for racism in Australia
The poet, writer and hip-hop artist on language, his new book and album, and the demonisation of Yassmin Abdel-Magied Being a migrant in Australia, according to the author, rapper and poet Omar Musa,...
View ArticleHera Lindsay Bird: poet of exploding helicopters and dick jokes
The New Zealand poet explains the 90s sitcom references and unembarrassed passions that have gone into her eponymous debutIt is an ungodly hour on a Wednesday morning and Hera Lindsay Bird’s...
View ArticleKim Moore's 'thrilling' debut poetry collection wins Geoffrey Faber prize
The Art of Falling, by a Cumbrian poet and former trumpet teacher, joins illustrious former winners including Seamus Heaney and JM CoetzeeA debut poetry collection that tackles the author’s own...
View ArticleJorie Graham: ‘I am living in the late season, but it has its songs, too’
The Pulitzer-winning poet on mortality, makeup and capturing life’s complexityThe last lines of the last poem in Jorie Graham’s most recent collection, FAST, imagine dawn giving way to day: “Leaving /...
View Article'If only I'd been warned!' - writers choose books to give to their younger...
Julian Barnes, Margaret Drabble, Tessa Hadley, David Nicholls and others choose reading matter that would have been useful when youngContinue reading...
View ArticleCarol Rumens’s best poetry books of 2017
The year was marked by a wealth of new black and ethnic minority voices and a rich haul of debutsPoetry’s multiverse expanded in 2017. What struck me most was the sparky power surge of black and ethnic...
View ArticleEight new Australian writers you should read (according to those who know)
We ask industry insiders – publishers, editors, festival directors – for their pick of the new cream of the literary cropNo writer is an island. Behind every blossoming wordsmith is a literary industry...
View ArticlePoem of the week – Walter Osborne: Apple Gathering, Quimperlé by Frank Ormsby
A richly described Victorian painting of a harvest scene is full of innocent joy, shadowed by what history would soon bring to the fields of northern FranceWalter Osborne: Apple Gathering,...
View ArticleThe Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson review – a new cultural landmark
The first version of Homer’s groundbreaking work by a woman will change our understanding of it for everHomer’s Odyssey, probably composed around 700BC, is one of the oldest poems in the western...
View ArticleHouse of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson review – new literary territory
Slavery, a dub musician as Noah and memories of a Jamaican childhood inform a collection that subverts history’s grand narrativesIn an elegiac essay on the late Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, Ishion...
View ArticleYou Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie review – a poet and...
Humour and anger combine in this story of the Native American experienceSherman Alexie has emerged as one of the US’s greatest writers. And because he has always written of the terrible beauty of...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Microbial Museum by Maya Chowdhry
Finding the poetry in scientific vocabulary, this work is alive to the marvels of its discoveries as well as the ecological peril it reportsMicrobial MuseumApril ship sets sail, sea freezes ripples,...
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