'Shame seeded my silence': why I decided to stop talking
As a teenager, journalist and film-maker Harriet Shawcross stopped speaking for almost a year. In later years, her sexuality made her retreat againOne Sunday I came to sit with the dead. The room was...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Where’s the Poker? by Christopher Smart
This fable about errant servant Susan is much less concerned with pointing a moral than enjoying the comedyWhere’s the Poker?The poker lost, poor Susan storm’d, And all the rites of rage perform’d; As...
View Article'We donte want to hurt anney one': Bonnie and Clyde's poetry revealed
Family notebook appears to show that both of the notorious Depression-era outlaws turned their hand to verseAn old green notebook believed to contain poetry written by the notorious outlaws Bonnie...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Opener by Keith Hutson
An old-timer’s advice on choosing the best music-hall turn to open a bill is an endearing performance in itselfThe OpenerDo not book a buffoon. People can’t cope,still finding seats and folding coats,...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Look, I’m Not Good at Eating Chicken by Fatimah Asghar
& yes, my family did raise me right. Yesthey stripped their bones & cracked them cleanopen to suck. Would fight over cartilage & knuckle.Sip the marrow’s nectar from urn. Yes, I...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Kingdomland by Rachael Allen; Gen by Jonathan Edwards; Magical Negro by Morgan Parker; and Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 by Helen DunmoreRachael Allen’s debut, Kingdomland (Faber, £10.99), will...
View ArticleOut from the margins: meet the New Daughters of Africa writers
More than 25 years after her groundbreaking Daughters of Africa anthology, Margaret Busby reflects on the next generation of black women writers around the worldTime was when the perception of...
View ArticleBurgess Prize winner 2019: Jason Watkins on Daisy Campbell’s Pigspurt’s Daughter
This year’s Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism goes to Jason Watkins for his review of the writer and actor’s one-woman show about her celebrated late father Ken• Joint runner-up: Kate...
View ArticleTara McEvoy on Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Burgess Prize runner-up 2019: Tara McEvoy’s analysis of a collection that explores the form’s boundaries earned her joint second place in this year’s Observer/Anthony Burgess prize• The winning review:...
View ArticleEnchanted forests: the women shaking up nature writing
The worlds of conservation and nature writing are overwhelmingly white and male. But the Forestry Commission is taking steps to change all thatA chilly breeze blows through the wood and the old tree...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Ivy Leaves by Patricia McCarthy
Nature poetry reveals a much darker world than usual in a child’s guileless impressions of her abuserIvy LeavesHis hands were shaped into ivy leavesthat climbed up the tree, camouflagefor its inner...
View Article'I'm not a gay writer, I'm a monster': did James Purdy foresee Trump's America?
At first he was feted. But then his novel about a handsome, Yale-educated serial rapist made him an outcast. Ten years after his death, has the scabrous author’s time finally come?On 6 August 2015, the...
View ArticleJoni Mitchell book, hand-drawn for friends in 1971, to be published
Morning Glory on the Vine, which combines lyrics, poems and paintings by the revered singer-songwriter, was originally produced privately in 1971A rare book of lyrics, poems and illustrations that Joni...
View ArticleMartin Woodcock obituary
Artist admired for the illustrations that grace the pages of the monumental The Birds of Africa, first published in the early 1980sAmid the economic uncertainty of the mid 1970s not many people gave up...
View ArticleGabriela Mistral | Letters
Letters: She won the Nobel prize 26 years before Pablo Neruda, writes Heather Mayall, and was the reason for his love of literatureIt was good to see mention of a Latin American Nobel prize winner in...
View Article'It was like a miracle': Eight writers surprised with $165,000 awards
Winners of Windham-Campbell prizes, intended to free authors from money worries, only learn they were in contention after they have wonThe Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin was on a trip with her family...
View ArticleWS Merwin, Pulitzer-winning former US poet laureate, dies at 91
Writer who protested against environmental destruction and the Vietnam war died at home in HawaiiWS Merwin, a prolific and versatile poetry master who evolved through a wide range of styles as he...
View ArticleJohn Cooper Clarke: ‘Only eat at the table. And don't watch TV while eating’
The poet and performer on his dad’s sandwiches, the iniquity of snacking and disappointing Dutch foodWhen I was a kid, for a while my mother worked afternoons at the high-class confectioners round the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Hey Jude by Matthew Sweeney
A wayward grandfather’s advice, this is a joyful freewheel through life’s possibilitiesHey Jude(for little Jude)When you sing your songyou can make it an angry one,and do it so loud the punks climb...
View ArticleAnna Burns and Sally Rooney on Rathbones Folio prize longlist
Booker winner Milkman and Normal People, which took the Costa novel award, among 20 contenders for the £30,000 prize The 2019 Rathbones Folio prize longlist spans the world, from a Booker-winning novel...
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