Ursula K Le Guin obituary
Science fiction and fantasy writer whose great books include The Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of EarthseaThe writer Ursula K Le Guin, who has died aged 88, presided over American science fiction...
View ArticleRG Gregory obituary
My father, RG Gregory, who has died aged 89, was a poet, playwright, theatre-in-the-round director and inventor of Instant Theatre, a technique that involves actors and audiences in the creation of...
View ArticleCurses and verses: the spoken-word row splitting the poetry world apart | Don...
A takedown of young, accessible female poets is brave. But remember, Keats and Auden were first met with as much bewilderment as praiseO poetry! What will we do with you? You’re in the headlines again...
View ArticlePoetry is pleasing, even on YouTube | Letters
Poetry of all tastes and genres should be celebrated, say Angela Croft and Catherine RoomeFurther to the critique in PN Review that you report (Literary world split as poet attacks rise of social media...
View ArticleHow I fell in love with L E Sissman | Tony Peyser
When I read Men Past 40, I remember thinking, ‘If this is what poetry is, I’m in.’MEN PAST 40GET UP NIGHTSAnd look outAt city lights,Wondering where theyMade the wrongTurn, and why lifeIs so long.I had...
View Article‘I went off the rails’: how Benjamin Zephaniah went from borstal to poet
Rastafarian wordsmith tells of abuse and life of crime as a child in new autobiographyBenjamin Zephaniah, the Rastafarian acclaimed as Britain’s “people’s laureate”, has revealed the abuse he suffered...
View ArticleWhen is a poet not a poet? When they’re popular | Rebecca Nicholson
Rebecca Watts has sparked a literary spat we can all enjoyI may have seen too many films about infirm lady authoresses swooning in their corsets while contemplating God, or pale consumptive vagabonds...
View Article‘Every poem is political’: Danez Smith, the YouTube star shaking up poetry
Smith’s dear white america was a viral phenomenon. Launching a new collection, Don’t Call Us Dead, the poet is in polemical mood about the black experience in the USIf you watch Danez Smith’s poem dear...
View ArticlePoem of the week: How Are The Children Robin by WS Graham
A complex story springs from the shared parental experience of seeing offspring leave homeHow Are The Children RobinFor Robin SkeltonIt does not matter how are you how areThe children flying leaving...
View ArticleTS Eliot returns to Margate with art exhibition
The Waste Land inspires art exhibition in seaside town where TS Eliot wrote his poemNearly 100 art works by 60 artists that can, in varying ways, be linked to the greatest poem of the 20th century are...
View ArticleHelen Dunmore wins Costa book of the year for Inside the Wave
Winning for her final poetry collection, written in the last weeks of her life, Dunmore is only the second posthumous winner in the literary prize’s historyThe poet and author Helen Dunmore, who died...
View Article‘My life’s stem was cut’ – a poem by Helen Dunmore
The writer is only the second person to posthumously win the Costa award. To celebrate, we present a poem from her winning collection, Inside the WaveWhatever the tribal allegiances at Tuesday’s Costa...
View ArticleWomen and food, and Helen Dunmore's posthumous Costa prize – books podcast
This week’s show is bursting with food for thought: poetry for the mind and gastronomy for the belly. Claire and Sian start with a discussion of the late Helen Dunmore’s triumph at the 2017 Costa book...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Light, Changed by Yves Bonnefoy
An intense, short reflection conjures a paradoxically worldly sense of the sacredThe Light, Changed by Yves BonnefoyWe no longer see each other in the same light,We no longer have the same eyes, the...
View ArticleDon’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith review – hope in resistance and rebirth
Anger, generosity and dark humour electrify a collection that confronts America racism and speaks urgently for changeIn addressing US national identity and collectivism, Danez Smith (who goes by the...
View ArticleJeet Thayil: 'I have a liver condition, I'm reckless and I'm very aware that...
The former addict whose novel Narcopolis was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize on the western whitewashing of saints and the diagnosis that forced him to writeJeet Thayil is everywhere at the Jaipur...
View ArticleJohn Cooper Clarke: ‘The last time I did exercise was in rehab in the 1980s’
The 69-year-old performance poet on not owning a mobile phone, going to bed at 5am and why he hates badmintonI thrive on four hours. There is always something on telly, and I consider the morning hours...
View ArticleSkating on thick ice: touring Sweden’s frozen lakes
Gliding over frozen rivers and lakes was once a popular winter pastime across northern Europe. A new wild skating tour of Sweden hopes to revive it, and revel in the sublime scenery, tooA...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Housewife by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
At the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act that paved the way for universal suffrage, this ringing, turn-of-the-century denunciation of domestic servitude has not lost its biteThe...
View ArticleTS Eliot's The Waste Land remains one of the finest reflections on mental...
The poet’s modernist masterpiece gathered fragments of an arduous life, some of which can be traced to a seafront shelter in MargateIn 1921, having taken time off from his job at Lloyds Bank for what...
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