Matthew Sweeney obituary
Prolific poet whose darkly humorous fables expressed the strangeness of the world with a sense of delightMatthew Sweeney, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 65, was one of the most adventurous,...
View ArticleLangston Hughes 'born a year before accepted date', researcher finds
Poet researching archives of local African American newspaper finds story reporting on ‘little Langston’ before his recorded birth dateA poet’s late-night internet search of local newspaper archives...
View ArticleSocialist bookshop welcomes ‘uplifting’ response after attack by far right
Crowds gather at Bookmarks in London’s Bloomsbury to hear writers and poets, including former children’s laureate Michael RosenA week after far-right protesters stormed Britain’s largest socialist...
View ArticleHow amateur sleuths finally tracked down the burial place of William Blake
On the 191st anniversary of his death, fans and artists will unveil new headstone and pay homage to poet’s workWhen the stone marking William Blake’s grave is unveiled this afternoon, on the 191st...
View ArticleBells will ring out: world to mark end of First World War
From Flanders to villages across the UK and Germany, bells will toll on 11 NovemberBefore dawn broke over northern France on 4 November 1918, a 25-year-old British officer, Lt Wilfred Owen of the...
View ArticleRobert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That – review
Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s commanding new biography reveals the poet to be a slipperier character than we imaginedIt landed “like a Zeppelin bomb”. Such was Siegfried Sassoon’s response to the appearance,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: R Alcona to J Brenzaida by Emily Brontë
Although set in the young author’s fantasy realm of Gondal, there is a maturity to the portrait of grief here that is a long way from juvenilia R Alcona to J BrenzaidaCold in the earth, and the deep...
View ArticleGardening with the red trousers brigade | Brief letters
Interest rates | Poetry in newspapers | Minister spotting | Cat namesSome 35 years ago I was a researcher at London Business School, sharing our sole computer with the renowned (or infamous) Economic...
View ArticleNational Portrait Gallery buys painting of young Dylan Thomas
Cherubic painting by the Welsh poet’s friend Augustus John has been acquired for £214,750A portrait of a young Dylan Thomas, with red curly locks and a fresh, butter-wouldn’t-melt expression, has been...
View ArticleOn my radar: Andrew McMillan’s cultural highlights
The poet and winner of the Guardian First Book award on the joys of Liberty of London, Robyn, and this year’s most arresting voicesAndrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988. He studied...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Song at the Beginning of Autumn by Elizabeth Jennings
The first intimations of a change in the seasons prompt a lyrical reflection on what is being named Song at the Beginning of Autumn Now watch this Autumn that arrivesIn smells. All looks like Summer...
View ArticleAlexander Pope designed Marble Hill garden, says historian
Manuscript note has linked the 18th century poet to one of lost gardens of Georgian EnglandTwo words in faded brown ink on the back of a translation of Homer’s Odyssey have linked the 18th century poet...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Spathes by Loretta Collins Klobah
Etymology invites the imagination to a host of new places as the poet explores the rich possibilities of a botanical termI gather now dry-leaf spathesthat boys spear-waveand sword-cross, floatinto...
View ArticleThe House With Only an Attic and a Basement by Kathryn Maris – review
Maris’s detailed, hyper-fast poems wittily bridge the gap between the gendersThis is the house that Kathryn Maris built: it has “only an attic and a basement”. What does it signify to have a bodiless...
View ArticleClive James on his new epic poem: ‘The story of a mind heading into oblivion’
In and out of hospital, the writer felt compelled to write something new – an epic, with himself as the heroUntil a few days ago, I was a patient in Addenbrooke’s hospital, here in Cambridge, while a...
View ArticleThe limits of reason: Philip Pullman on why we believe in magic
The world of magic defies rational explanation, but beware dismissing it as nonsense. Like religious experience and poetry, it is a crucial aspect of being human, writes the Dark Materials authorA new...
View ArticleRobert Graves by Jean Moorcroft Wilson review – from war poet to Goodbye to...
This sober biography includes convincing readings of his poetry, but it takes Graves’s charismatic lover to set the narrative alightMiranda Seymour opened her 1995 biography of Robert Graves, the last...
View ArticleSeven questions for seven poets
Observer New Review guest editor Kate Tempest asks seven fellow poets who she admires to answer one another’s questions about their craft, and how they define successI find it frustrating when reading...
View ArticleWysing Polyphonic review – explosions in the sonic inventing shed
Wysing Arts Centre, CambridgeshireMoor Mother and Paul Purgas curate an inspirational gathering where electronic artists, dancers and poets freely test the boundaries of expression‘Noises of spoons!”...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Gulls by Howard Altmann
In this rhythmic poem, a figure finds his state of mind reflected in the wheeling movements of birds and a briny, rocky seascapeThe GullsHere, where the gulls speakof everything I am not,the tall...
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