Robin Robertson and Andrew McMillan on sex, war and truth in poetry – books...
We’re dedicating this week’s show to poetry, from new faces and old. The Man Booker shortlisted writer Robin Robertson comes in to discuss The Long Take, a postwar noir that follows Walker, a second...
View ArticleAre oldies’ organs still worth donating? | Brief letters
First-name reminder | Supporting the Guardian | Organ donation | Self-identifying as older | For the FallenPaul Chadwick’s interesting article on honorifics (Open door, 12 November) brought to mind a...
View ArticleRobin Robertson wins Goldsmiths prize for innovative fiction with The Long Take
Scottish poet wins £10,000 prize for his ‘narrative poem’ about a D-Day veteran in search of a home in postwar AmericaThe Scottish poet Robin Robertson has won the Goldsmiths prize for the year’s most...
View ArticleNational Book Awards: Sigrid Nunez wins fiction prize as Isabel Allende is...
Chilean-born author receives lifetime achievement award at ceremony celebrating diversity, truth and literature as healing forces in a dark time Sigrid Nunez has won the top prize at the prestigious...
View ArticleAlistair Elliot obituary
Poet and translator whose work was inspired by the classical worldAlistair Elliot, who has died aged 86, was distinguished both as a poet and a translator, combining vast learning with compelling...
View ArticleWhen Tillmans met Britten: a radical War Requiem – in pictures
The Turner prize-winning photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has collaborated with ENO to design the set for Benjamin Britten’s devastating war piece. Here are his exclusive images of the productionContinue...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Moon with a Supermarket Trolley by Beverley Bie Brahic
An unusually genial take on environmental damage gives a fresh spin to an old romantic imageMoon with a Supermarket TrolleyFrom my Juliet balconyOverlooking a creek whose bedHas been trash-filled for...
View ArticleCould a 2100BC sex epic show us how to handle Trump? | Alex Clark
Newly discovered fragments of an ancient text reveal an unusual strategy for dealing with an out-of-control leaderA new bit of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest literary text, has turned up,...
View ArticleIs contemporary poetry really in 'a rotten state' - or just a new one?
Rose Tremain and Robin Robertson have criticised poets for abandoning ‘craft’ – but that argument silences the possibilities offered by new voicesNovelist Rose Tremain thinks poetry these days is...
View ArticleCosta book awards shortlist memoir of homeless couple's coast walk
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn is acclaimed by judges as ‘an absolutely brilliant story about the human capacity to endure’A British woman’s account of how she and her terminally ill husband embarked on...
View ArticleSheffield’s first hip-hop poet laureate: 'gone are the days of tradition'
The poet appointed by lord mayor Magid Magid to champion creative arts wants to change the face of poetryPeople too often think of poetry as posh and white: “the picture of snobbery,” says Otis Mensah....
View ArticleFrancis: A Life in Songs by Ann Wroe review – of saints and supermarkets
This beautifully understated life of Francis of Assisi, told in spare, unpreachy verse, illuminates our own times tooThis is unlike any poetry collection I have read. Ann Wroe, accomplished biographer...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Written at an Inn at Henley by William Shenstone
This cheery tribute to bibulous conviviality also serves up a warm moral Written at an Inn at HenleyTo thee, fair Freedom! I retire,From flattery, cards, and dice, and din;Nor art thou found in...
View ArticleAnthony Edkins obituary
My father, Anthony Edkins, who has died aged 91, was a translator, poet, and part-time lecturer at King’s and University colleges in London. He published the first of his six books of poems, Worry...
View ArticleDear Damian Hinds, please stop wrecking poetry for children | Michael Rosen
Children are being taught that there are right and wrong answers in poemsDo you like poetry? I do. It’s an art form that can entertain, provoke, console, reflect, observe and much more. A breakthrough...
View ArticleEarly Anne Sexton works rediscovered after 60 years
Uncollected poems and an essay show the troubled confessional poet striking a much brighter tone than in her more famous workA handful of forgotten early works by Anne Sexton, in which the American...
View ArticleAmy Lowell: Ted Hughes and DH Lawrence 'owe unacknowledged debt' to...
Paper claims Lowell’s earlier writings can be seen in Hughes’s poem Pike and Lawrence’s The Rainbow, but her gender and sexuality made her unpopularTed Hughes’s poem Pike is one of the late poet...
View ArticleUnknown John Donne manuscript discovered in Suffolk
Found in a box, the 400-year-old volume is one of the largest handwritten collections of the poet’s verse and is expected to sell for more than £200,000A previously unrecorded handwritten manuscript of...
View ArticleGuardian best books of 2018: across fiction, politics, food and more
From Brexit satires to time-travelling murder mysteries and a former first lady’s wry observations on life in the White House, our critics pick the best novels, poetry, sports and children’s books of...
View ArticleLetter: Judith Kazantzis obituary
Among her other political concerns, the poet Judith Kazantzis honoured the interest in criminal justice pursued by her father, Lord (Frank) Longford.I met her at a Longford prize event, which I was...
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