From Catullus to Dylan Thomas: the top 10 elegies
They date back to ancient times and remain a strong current in modern poetry. Here are some of the best Elegy, an individual response to the death of a person or a group, began in Greece and Rome as a...
View ArticleManchester University students paint over Rudyard Kipling mural
Students replace poem If by ‘well-known racist’ with Maya Angelou’s Still I RiseStudents at the University of Manchester have painted over a mural of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, arguing that the writer...
View ArticleWe can’t paint over our racist past | Letters
Manchester university students defacing a Kipling poem draws mixed responses from readersI read the article about how at the University of Manchester the students painted over the Kipling mural and...
View ArticleAndrew Motion on Stisted: ‘That’s where I first began to care about poems’
The former poet laureate on the village perched between Braintree and Halstead where his eyes were opened to the world“Fair seed-time had my soul,” says Wordsworth in the first book of The Prelude,...
View ArticleEven Rudyard Kipling felt iffy about If | Letters
Thoughts from John Anzani, Richard Maidment and Mike Wright following the decision to erase Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, from a display at the University of ManchesterI feel that some correspondents are...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Prison Camp Violin, Riga by Robert Sheppard
Refracted around an instrument held on to in dire times, this is a tribute to the spirit that keeps it playingPrison Camp Violin, RigaA brittle fiddle someoneTurns this on a latheContinue reading...
View ArticleIncantata review – pain, poetry and potatoes with Paul Muldoon
Town Hall theatre, GalwayStanley Townsend brings the poet’s searing love poetry to life in a visually stunning show boasting some Beckettian touchesFor the bereaved it can often feel as if nothing will...
View ArticleShilpa Gupta: the artist bringing silenced poets back to life
For centuries, poets have been jailed or killed for speaking out against injustice – but they speak again an eerie sound installation at Edinburgh art festivalIn a disused fire station in Tollcross,...
View ArticleMagical German art, punk protesters and Edinburgh curiosities – the week in art
Hard-hitting works by Weimar iconoclasts, Yoko Ono lends support to Pussy Riot, and Lucy Skaer explores the desire to collect – all in our weekly dispatchMagic Realism Otto Dix and George Grosz are...
View ArticleJericho Brown: ‘Poetry is a veil in front of a heart beating at a fast pace’
The US poet on tensions between religion, sexuality and race – and why writing has saved his lifeJericho Brown was born in Louisiana and teaches English and creative writing at Emory University in...
View ArticlePoem of the week: His Secret Daughter by SA Leavesley
An adult child reckons with the very ambiguous legacy of her father His Secret Daughter His mug handle is the first thing she brûlés. The gold melts away like chocolate, cools smoother than...
View ArticleNorah Lange: finally, 'Borges's muse' gets her time in the spotlight
A groundbreaking poet and novelist, Lange has been reduced to a decorative footnote in male authors’ careers. Might the first English translation of her fiction change that? Outside Greek mythology,...
View ArticleJason Reynolds: ‘What’s unusual about my story is that I became a writer’
The American author on his gut response to a friend’s death, how to get young people reading, and the value of crochetJason Reynolds, a 34-year-old from Washington DC, didn’t grow up expecting to be a...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Lapstrake by Ross Cogan
A hymn to the unassuming skill that brings humanity into graceful sync with nature may be a lesson learned too lateLapstrakeHere you can walk across mudstone and mudflat, through sedge into a river...
View ArticleJericho Brown on poetry, religion and race in the US – books podcast
On this week’s show, we sit down with the US poet Jericho Brown, whose second collection The New Testament has just come out in the UK. He talks to Sian about what prayer and poetry have in common,...
View ArticleFeel Free by Nick Laird review – glimpses of elsewhere
Nick Laird’s acute eye and shades of meaning make these poems a gift to readFeel Free is an ambiguous title. You could be taking an empty chair with Laird’s permission and helping yourself to his...
View ArticleThe New Testament by Jericho Brown review – dazzling verse on masculinity and...
Steeped in the language of the Bible and addressing sexuality and violence, this is a striking and inspiring collectionAs a former speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans, Jericho Brown understands...
View ArticleBacklash after the Nation apologises for publishing controversial poem
Anders Carlson-Wee’s How-To has been accused of racism and ableism, but some writers say the magazine should not be scared to offendA fierce debate has broken out in US literary circles after the...
View ArticleMill workers’ poems about 1860s cotton famine rediscovered
Research has uncovered 300 works by writers in Lancashire struggling during the economic crisis caused by the US civil warThe forgotten voices of Lancashire’s poverty-stricken cotton workers during the...
View ArticleInfluential women missing from the list | Brief letters
What, no Sappho? | Poetry in newspapers | Rain risk for mobility scooters | The Healeys on holiday | Cheap beer in YorkshireThree-quarters of the 20 “most influential women in history” (Report, 9...
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