No rhyme or reason for age limit on Oxford poetry professorship | Letters
Oxford university’s search for a new poetry professor smacks of youthism, says Michael Horovitz, while Christine Elliott reflects on the hunt for the next poet laureateHaving recently put myself...
View ArticleToffee by Sarah Crossan review – a profoundly moving YA novel in verse
Trauma, grief and belonging are all addressed in this poignant verse novel from the Irish children’s laureateYoung adult verse novels are currently in the ascendant, with three American poets appearing...
View ArticleSimon Armitage named UK's poet laureate
West Yorkshire writer speaks of parents’ pride and his desire to ‘give something back’ as he succeeds Carol Ann DuffyThe West Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage, a former probation officer who describes his...
View ArticleBook clinic: what can I read to stay sharp on maternity leave?
Author Viv Groskop helps select the best political, poetical and fictional reads to keep you in touch with the worldQ: What can I read to stop my brain turning to mush on maternity leave?Teacher, 39A:...
View ArticleWho needs poetry? We all do – and we need it now | Kenan Malik
In an age in which we flee from ambiguity and complexity, poetry gives us permission to wonderThe American Howard Nemerov’s wonderful short poem Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and...
View ArticleJamila Woods: Legacy! Legacy! review – poetry in motion
(Jagjaguwar)She might be an up-and-coming soul singer, but US poet and activist Jamila Woods is a team player. Her second album is also a showcase for other people’s work. Each song on this engaged but...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Catch of the Day by Finuala Dowling
Witty and reader-friendly, this week’s choice reveals more complexity the closer you lookCatch of the DayMy therapist shakes her head.It’s much more complex than that, she says.Continue reading...
View ArticleGirlhood by Julia Copus review – phenomenal mind games
The British poet’s technical dexterity and way of seeing the past afresh reap rich dividendsJulia Copus’s poems are acts of resistance. The material tests its own boundaries to become something new....
View Article'You can't sustain a career on shocking people': is Bret Easton Ellis...
On this week’s show, the American Psycho author meets Alex Needham, the Guardian’s arts editor, to discuss the controversy about White, a collection of essays and his first book in 10 years. Ellis...
View ArticleNature writing is booming – but must a walk through the woods always be...
When so many of us struggle to find time and money to head outdoors, nature writing offers us vicarious enchantment – regardless of realityNature, as both a place and an idea, has become fraught with...
View ArticleTop 10 books about Sudan
Despite 30 years of repression that have hit writers unusually hard, Sudanese literature remains vigorous. Here is some of the best available in EnglishI was lucky to grow up in Khartoum in a house...
View Article'Simon Armitage knows where the heffalump traps are': Andrew Motion on how to...
The former laureate praises the appointment of Armitage, who will make the most of a role that has become less about ‘royal stuff’ and more about the poetry of everyday life The news that Simon...
View ArticleYemeni poetry thrives despite trauma of civil war
Poets explore how the artform can unite people on different sides of conflictA story is often told to illustrate how central poetry is to Yemeni culture: that of the visit of a famous lute player from...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Twickenham Garden by John Donne
Intriguingly attuned to modern science, this acid-spotted Arcadia comes complete with blight, bugs and bad weatherTwickenham GardenBlasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears, Hither I come to seek...
View ArticleRaymond Antrobus becomes first poet to win Rathbones Folio prize
The Perseverance, using the writer’s experience of deafness to explore human communication, was praised by judges as ‘exceptionally brave and kind’Raymond Antrobus has become the first poet to win the...
View ArticleLetter: Les Murray obituary
When I heard Les Murray give a poetry reading in Carlisle in 1992, I knew little of his work, or that this large, friendly man had already published several collections of groundbreaking verse....
View ArticleHillsborough survivors' words shortlisted for Forward poetry prize
Truth Street by David Cain, which combines eyewitness accounts of the 1989 disaster, is nominated for best debut in year when ‘poetry has come down from its high shelf’A debut poetry collection made...
View ArticleA Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes review – women of the Trojan war
The latest novel to retell Greek epic from the women’s point of view is a panoramic portrait of the true cost of conflictHomer’s Iliad, as Natalie Haynes notes in the afterword to A Thousand Ships, is...
View ArticleCommon People review – a valuable anthology of working-class writers
Edited by Kit de Waal, these essays, memoirs, stories and poems from established and new writers come straight from the heartThis important collection brings together 34 working-class writers “in...
View ArticleOxford poetry professor contest kicks off amid growing controversy
Three candidates – Alice Oswald, Andrew McMillan and Todd Swift – issue campaign statements, as efforts to exclude Swift gather steamJust weeks after Simon Armitage was named the UK’s next poet...
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