Tom Gauld on poetic licence – cartoon
Be careful with that limerick …Continue reading...
View ArticleTop 10 books about South Korea
A novelist recommends favourite writing about a country that has undergone a giddying transformation in recent decadesHistorically known as the Hermit Kingdom for turning away western envoys, as well...
View ArticleJoyce Carol Oates: ‘I have been laughing at Michael Wolff’s hilarious,...
The prolific novelist on Walt Whitman and crying over her page proofsThe book I am currently readingA wonderful new anthology – It Occurs to Me That I Am America, edited by Jonathan Santlofer – on the...
View ArticlePunk poet Eileen Myles, on their dog memoir: 'We were regarded as an unruly...
Lauded by Lena Dunham and the basis of a character in TV show Transparent, the poet discusses newfound fame, dogs and a ‘screwy memoir of queerness’Afterglow is described on the jacket as a “dog...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Fiametta by John Peale Bishop
There is real music to this understated tribute to a young woman’s beauty by a poet who has been unjustly neglectedFiamettaFiametta walks under the quincebudsIn a gown the color of flowers;Her small...
View ArticleThe Peace of Wild Things review – a rich harvest
A new edition of work by the American poet Wendell Barnes draws its slow-moving brilliance from the stillness of natureThis column is usually reserved for new collections, but there is a reason to...
View ArticleAwards for women, writers of colour, small presses – why are there so many...
There are so many literary prizes these days that they could be regarded as an industry in their own right – but they’re needed to change the status quoHow many literary prizes are there in the UK...
View ArticleEdna St Vincent Millay's poetry has been eclipsed by her personal life –...
She was once deemed ‘the greatest woman poet since Sappho’ and won a Pulitzer – but Millay’s legacy has been overshadowed by her sexuality and addictionsWhen pseudonymous Elena Ferrante’s identity was...
View ArticleOn my radar: Richard Sennett’s cultural highlights
The American sociologist on climate-change art, Janáček’s quartets and having a black thumbBorn in Chicago in 1943, Richard Sennett has been called “one of the boldest social thinkers of his...
View ArticlePoem of the week: That Bright Chimeric Beast by Countee Cullen
From a star of the Harlem Renaissance, this is a vivid hymn to imaginative freedomThat Bright Chimeric BeastThat bright chimeric beast Conceived yet never born, Save in the poet’s breast, The...
View ArticleLemn Sissay on the 'radical' poem born of heartbreak – The Start podcast
The poet shares the story behind Invisible Kisses, a poem that impressed on him the true value of familySubscribe and review on Apple Podcasts or Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and...
View Article'We are the people who are desperate beyond emotion': Lou Reed's lost poetry...
Poetry reflecting on nationhood, sex and whiskey, written in 1970 after Lou Reed left the Velvet Underground, is to be published for the first time“We are the crystal gaze returned through the density...
View ArticlePoet Ko Un erased from Korean textbooks after sexual harassment claims
The 84-year-old Nobel favourite ‘flatly denies charges of habitual misconduct’, writing in a statement that he had ‘done nothing which might bring shame on my wife or myself’Korea’s most famous...
View ArticleFrom blank pages to 13,000 word sentences: a brief history of British avant...
In the 1960s, writers such as BJ Johnson, Ann Quin and Bob Cobbing were ripping up the rules of fiction, fighting the establishment - and each other. What, if anything, of their legacy lives on?Of all...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Political Asylum by Dick Davis
A deceptively plain description of the comforts of political refuge serves to outline their limitationsPolitical AsylumMy closest friends were killed. I have a lifeThat’s comfortable in almost every...
View ArticleMAR Taleghany obituary
My father, MAR Taleghany, who has died aged 82, was a professor of law and a renowned scholar of the work of the 13th-century Persian Sufi Muslim poet, theologian and mystic Rumi. He could recite...
View ArticleAfterglow: A Dog Memoir by Eileen Myles review – for the love of dog
An elegy for a lost pet by a rock star of the spoken word takes in love, death and animal visionEileen Myles is a New York poet, maybe the New York poet, a swaggering troubadour of casually roving...
View ArticleSir Wilson Harris obituary
Writer and leading figure in postcolonial literature whose work was inspired by Guyana, the place of his birthSir Wilson Harris, who has died aged 96, was a towering figure among the writers of the...
View ArticleHow did 18th century’s literary women relieve domestic distress? With opiates
It wasn’t just men such as Coleridge and De Quincey who took drugs, study of Mary Robinson and Harriet Martineau revealsThe fantastical poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the scandalous journal of...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Twice a River by Fady Joudah
This complex reflection on the world the poet’s baby son is coming to know takes in many themes, most strikingly the fraught allegiance to placeTwice a RiverAfter studying our faces for monthsMy son...
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