Philip Larkin: Letters Home review – the poet as loyal, guilt-ridden son
What do your parents do to you? This correspondence, edited by James Booth, reveals a new side of Larkin, as he tries to make up for how much he hated visiting his mother“My very dear old creature,”...
View ArticleAs poet laureate prepares to step down, the succession race begins
Carol Ann Duffy will finish her decade in the role in May, but the long process of choosing the next appointee begins this weekendSimon Armitage: The highest office in poetryCarol Ann Duffy ends...
View ArticlePoet laureate: the highest office in poetry | Simon Armitage
Poetry demands a laureate who is at home both in the library and in the wider worldNews: Search begins for the next poet laureateLanguage is our greatest invention. As a device for understanding...
View Articleplaytime review – paeans to beauty and selves that might have been
McMillan’s follow-up to his celebrated debut, physical, is a tautly controlled exploration of nostalgia and loss of innocenceWhen Andrew McMillan published his first poetry collection, physical, in...
View ArticleInto the dark water: Philip Hoare on the life and death of Wilfred Owen
In peace and wartime, the poet found solace and sensuality in swimming. A new film marking the centenary of his death explores the refuges he sought away from the battlefieldI spent my childhood...
View ArticleLetters Home 1936-1977 by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth – review
The poet’s sweetly sad dispatches, mostly addressed to his mother, reek of social history, while revealing a witty, wise and grossly impractical manSometimes, you have to wonder about the guardians of...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Green Boughs by Naomi Mitchison
Ahead of the Armistice centenary, this impassioned work records the poet’s grief and outrage at the lives destroyed by the first world warGreen BoughsMy young, dear friends are dead,All my own...
View ArticleThe Radical Democrats by Rob Sears – a poem for the midterms
In this new poem, constructed entirely out of speeches, statements and tweets from Donald Trump, a divided US is seen in the glare of the midterm electionsA poem for the midtermsRob Sears is the author...
View ArticleCountry diary: life below zero for nettles in the serious moonlight
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: The leaves look like mountain ranges cut by river valleys seen from an aeroplaneIt is not yet dawn and the nettles are frosted. The moon, high among bruised clouds, is bright...
View ArticleLeonard Cohen, wounded but still walking – archive, November 1972
8 November 1972 Martin Walker talks to Leonard Cohen, whose new book of poems has just been publishedWhat an agonising, dreadful thing it is to be the cleverest boy in the country. To have your poems...
View ArticleUnder Milk Wood review – Thomas's village moves to north-east England
Northern Stage, NewcastleStaged in the round, Elayce Ismail’s production relocates Dylan Thomas’s dramatic poem about the people of Llareggub In divided times, there’s something comforting about Dylan...
View ArticleBenjamin Zephaniah rejects poet laureate overtures: 'They are not worthy'
Poet says he has ‘absolutely no interest’ in state appointment after being speculatively named as a contender to follow Carol Ann DuffyBenjamin Zephaniah has ruled himself out of the running for the...
View ArticleWhy I’ll be choosing poems instead of poppies this Armistice Day | Rhiannon...
In this time of nationalism and bombast, the works of the war poets cut through – and remind us of our shared humanityThere is so much fixation on the poppy as a symbol of remembrance these days that...
View ArticleReflections on the first world war and Armistice Day | Letters
On the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, readers share their thoughts on how the conflict shaped historyThe poppy is now a matter of controversy. Some claim it is a symbol of...
View ArticleWanted: one royal versifier – an interest in trees and homeopathy an...
With Carol Ann Duffy bowing out as poet laureate, others are courting the honourSince he does not read newspapers or subscribe to news outlets, maybe someone could tell Jeremy Wright, the minister...
View ArticleJackie Kay on Arthur Roberts: the black Scottish first world war soldier who...
In 2004, Roberts’s wartime diaries were discovered in a Glasgow attic. A century after he went to war, Scotland’s makar remembers his contributionRead Jackie Kay’s poem, The Looks of Loss, belowArthur...
View ArticleLet Woakes join Stokes and Foakes | Brief letters
Losing two Johnsons | US-obsessed Brits | Laurence Binyon | Striker with sledgehammer | Damon Albarn’s donkey jacket | Chris WoakesTo slightly misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one Johnson may be regarded...
View ArticleLetters Home 1936-1977 by Philip Larkin – digested read
‘I gather from the fact that Pop hasn’t written for some while that he must have died. Here is a drawing of a frog. Still at least we have Basil Brush on the television’Dear Mop and Pop (if he happens...
View Article'A pas de deux of sex and violence': a poet's guide to film noir
Claustrophobic and nihilistic, a disturbing universe with dramatic lighting. An award-winning poet explains why he immersed himself in film noir for his Booker-prize shortlisted debut novelI watched...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Smog by David Tait
An increasingly anxious speaker is pained by both systemic homophobia and pollution in the air, in this breathless poem by a Lancastrian living in ChinaSmog by David TaitI don’t have long to writeso...
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