There are dark stirrings in Brexiteers’ sudden fixation with poetry | Edward...
By turning to Tennyson and Yeats, Geoffrey Cox et al are casting themselves as epic heroes fighting for a return to a purer past• Edward Sugden is a cultural historian at King’s College LondonThis week...
View ArticleSeamus Heaney’s words heal wounds reopened on Ireland’s border
Celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the late poet’s birth are helping to defuse old tensions aggravated by BrexitBrexit has reopened old wounds and old questions, making Northern Ireland wary of...
View ArticlePoetry book of the month: Insomnia by John Kinsella - review
The relationship between art and our beleaguered ecosystem fires the Australian poet’s new collectionInsomnia, John Kinsella’s latest collection in what has been, over 30 years, a remarkable writing...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Porch Light by David Wheatley
This quiet poem, about the ways locations both literal and metaphorical can be kept open, is wonderfully musicalThe Porch LightBirchwood ankle-deep in leafy mulch:borrowed green of a buried can of...
View ArticleUnknown Daphne du Maurier poems discovered behind photo frame
Poems believed to have been written by the Rebecca author in her 20s were found by auctioneers before a sale of intimate lettersA handful of youthful poems by Daphne du Maurier have been found in an...
View ArticleTheresa Lola named young people's laureate for London
The 24-year-old from Bromley hopes to help young people use poetry to ‘celebrate themselves’, as under-34s drive sales to record highPoet Theresa Lola, named the new young people’s laureate for London,...
View ArticleZaffar Kunial: ‘Muhammad Ali gave me his autograph in Moseley – I kept it in...
The Birmingham-born poet recalls growing up near Tolkien’s woods, playing cricket at Edgbaston and listening to the Beatles on cassetteTo get me into the mood to write this, I’m listening to “Mr Blue...
View ArticleInua Ellams: ‘In the UK, black men were thought of as animalistic'
The poet, playwright and cultural impresario on supporting his family through poetry, his love for comic books and why ‘home’ is really his laptop, MeredithThe first preview of Barber Shop Chronicles...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Breath by Adrian Rice
A poem about final acts of love that spans playfulness, anger and delicate eroticism BreathWhat is death,but a letting goof breath?Continue reading...
View ArticleInto thin air: Carol Ann Duffy presents poems about our vanishing insect world
To mark the end of her poet laureateship, Duffy introduces new poems celebrating the beauty and variety of an insect world facing extinction by Alice Oswald, Daljit Nagra, Paul Muldoon and moreWhich is...
View ArticleLes Murray, poet and 'gentle titan of Australian letters', dies aged 80
Australia’s most renowned contemporary poet published close to 30 volumes of work • Les Murray interview: ‘No one I knew was much good at forgiving’Les Murray, a distinguished figure of Australian...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Near Helikon by Trumbull Stickney
Poised between centuries, this sonnet set in a favourite haunt of the Muses powerfully blends mood with landscapeNear HelikonBy such an all-embalming summer dayAs sweetens now among the mountain...
View ArticleLes Murray remembered by John Kinsella: a brilliant 'battler'-poet
Despite some unfortunate political rows, the generous spirit of the man and his poems shone through his life and workIt’s not a simple portrait when painted from this angle: a complex person, a...
View ArticleJoe Dunthorne and Sarah Crossan on poetry and fiction – books podcast
On this week’s show, we explore poetry as a means to write a novel – and a way of not writing one. Claire sits down with Sarah Crossan to discuss her latest novel-in-verse, Toffee, the story of a young...
View ArticleMary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly review – a lyrical tour de force
This rolling free-verse epic charts the life of a 19th-century servant in rural Gloucestershire during a period of political upheavalShortlisted for the Rathbones Folio prize, Alice Jolly’s remarkable...
View ArticleLes Murray obituary
Leading Australian poet whose work celebrated the rural worldYears ago I took the Australian poet Les Murray to the launch of an anthology of new poets in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. “Why,” he asked edgily...
View ArticleThe Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin by Geoffrey Hill review – the last...
Hill dishes out the thunderbolts in a demanding portrayal of a nation out of kilterAn engrossing study of the cultural politics of modern British poetry could be written through the prism of the late...
View ArticleHunt for next poet laureate still on as Imtiaz Dharker says no to job
Pakistani-born British poet declines ‘huge honour’ as speculation switches to remaining contenders to succeed Carol Ann DuffyThe acclaimed poet Imtiaz Dharker has turned down the poet laureateship, the...
View ArticleChildren's picture book artists tell migrants' stories through postcards
An invitation to illustrators the world over to visualise the lot of the refugee using bird imagery resulted in a remarkable book of drawings and poems• See a gallery of more postcardsIt was Piet...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Suppose by Phoebe Cary
These lines of no-nonsense advice to Victorian children show their age in gender politics, but retain a cheering vigour SupposeSuppose, my little lady, Your doll should break her head, Could you make...
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