Guardian Books podcast: Women writers - Austen, Plath, Olds and Segal
Two hundred years after Pride and Prejudice was first published and 50 years after The Bell Jar first appeared in print, we look back to examine the legacy of Elizabeth Bennet and Esther Greenwood.With...
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Interview: Olwyn Hughes, Sylvia Plath's literary executor
Ted Hughes's sister tells Sam Jordison how misrepresented she feels the story of her sister-in-law's death has beenClick here to read Elizabeth Sigmund's side of the storyI spoke to a number of Plath...
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Interview: Elizabeth Sigmund, dedicatee of The Bell Jar – Reading group
Sylvia Plath's friend tells Sam Jordison about her memories of getting caught up in a family's tragedyClick here to read Olwyn Hughes's side of the storyElizabeth Sigmund was a friend of Sylvia Plath's...
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Guardian book club: Love Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
A subject that challenges the resources of verseCarol Ann Duffy is often praised (or occasionally dispraised) for her accessibility, and this is a matter of language as well as subject matter. When her...
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The Seacunny by Gerard Woodward – review
A note of immovable discord permeates a new collection by Gerard WoodwardMichael Donaghy wrote that having a tattoo done required "a whim of iron". Gerard Woodward, who in The Seacunny joins the ranks...
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The Healers
By Sharon Oldswinner of the TS Eliot Best Collection of 2012 prizeWhen they say, If there are any doctors aboard,would they make themselves known, I remember when my thenhusband would rise, and I would...
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The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie – review
Kathleen Jamie's spare verse is both in tune with nature and at home with itselfKathleen Jamie's The Overhaul is easy to overlook (as I did when it came out towards the end of last year) because...
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Sundance film festival 2013: Kill Your Darlings - first look review
This Beat generation film - starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg - hammers out a surprisingly complex and satisfying rhythm, with just the odd dud noteFilms about the Beat generation are all too...
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Lucretius, part 1: a poem to explain the entire world around us | Emma Woolerton
The subject of Lucretius's six-book poem De Rerum Natura was not war, love, myth or history – it was atomic physicsLucretius (full name Titus Lucretius Carus) lived in the first half of the century BC,...
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Poem of the week: Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns
To mark the Bard's birthday week, one of his own favourites, describing a celidh to rememberThis week, the Scottish Bard's birthday will be celebrated around the world, and what better relish to...
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Ruth Siverns obituary
Young fiancee of Philip Larkin and inspiration for some of his early poetryRuth Siverns, who has died aged 85, was engaged to the poet Philip Larkin from 1948 until 1950 and inspired some of his most...
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Richard Blanco's inaugural poem for Obama is a valiant flop
'One Today' has some fine lines, but writing good poetry for a grand national celebration is an impossible featThe celebratory public poem is an extinct genre in our sceptical postmodern times, and...
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Sylvia Plath: 50 years later and the same bitter arguments rage on | Hadley...
Half a century after her death, the debate over the poet burns with ever-greater fervour, but it need not follow that if one is pro-Plath one is anti-HughesLast week I referred to the upcoming 50th...
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James Franco: the actor who wrote a poem for Barack Obama
The Spider-Man star and polymath penned one to commemorate the president's second inauguration. And it's truly awfulAge: 34.Appearance: Omnipresent.Occupation: Actor, director, poet, musician, student,...
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Go Giants by Nick Laird - review
The epic ambition of Nick Laird's latest collection of poems reveals the poet's genuine sense of the incomprehensible scale of the cosmosNick Laird hails from a land of giants – literary giants, whose...
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My Hero: Robert Burns
His poetry performed itself – it still demands to be heard aloudDespite every Burns Supper I've ever been to being longer than the Tattoo; despite Hugh MacDiarmid being absolutely spot-on when he said...
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Burns is not the only bard
Still widely assumed a one-off because of his class, Burns actually had numerous contemporaries from ordinary backgroundsIn a slightly peevish strain, Sir Walter Scott wrote in the Edinburgh Annual...
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Sharon Olds: Confessions of a divorce
Forty years after a literary magazine dismissed Sharon Olds' poems about her children, she has become the first American woman to win the TS Eliot prize, for her exploration of an equally domestic...
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Saturday poem: Bruce's Address to his troops, at the Battle of Bannockburn,...
by Robert BurnsSCOTS, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,Scots, whom BRUCE has aften led,Welcome to your gory bed, Or to glorious victorie!Now's the day, and now's the hour!See the front o' battle lour!See...
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Lucretius, part 2: all things are made of atoms | Emma Woolerton
In Lucretius's universe, there are atoms and there is void – completely empty space. Nothing else can be said to existLucretius's stated aim in his six-book poem, De Rerum Natura, is to free us from...
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