Four Quartets review – TS Eliot's poems brilliantly danced
Barbican, LondonWith unfussy, Cunningham-influenced movement alongside Kathleen Chalfont’s readings, Pam Tanowitz has distilled Eliot’s essence Choreographer Pam Tanowitz has been quietly plying her...
View ArticleLEL by Lucasta Miller review – the scandalous death of a popular poet
Did a love affair lead to the demise of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, one of the most famous and most exploited poets in early 19th-century Britain ?In 1838 the newly married wife of the governor of Cape...
View ArticlePoem of the week: A Bit of Love by Helen Dunmore
An elderly man reckons wryly with his diminished life in a resonant character study A Bit of LoveHe must stir himself. No more hidingBehind the skill of handsThat are not his.Continue reading...
View ArticleThe Making of Poetry by Adam Nicolson review – when Coleridge met the...
This investigation into the birth of the Romantic movement is the perfect marriage of poetry and placeIn the 21st century, the creative act of authorship is the magic moment of the liberated and...
View ArticleSoundwalk Collective with Patti Smith: The Peyote Dance review – over-egged...
(Bella Union)Smith’s incantations over arid music, inspired by a French writer’s take on indigenous people, stray into appropriationThere’s not the slightest cause to doubt that Stephan Crasneanscki,...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Something Like Dying, Maybe
Last night, it was bright afternoonWhere I wandered. Pale faces all around me.I walked and walked looking for a door,For some cast-off garment, looking for myselfIn the blank windows and the pale blank...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Whereas by Layli Long Soldier; When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen; and Dear Big Gods by Mona ArshiLayli Long Soldier’s formally inventive debut collection...
View ArticlePoet and playwright Lemn Sissay wins the PEN Pinter prize
Judges laud ability to forge beautiful words from sorrows as he sees it as sign to continueLemn Sissay has won the PEN Pinter prize, set up in memory of playwright Harold Pinter. Sissay, 52, who was an...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Vocation by Carol Ann Duffy
Subtly shifting imagery describes an elusive role, which may or may not be the poet’s ownVocationMore my shadow than my shadow,it is mute, as it must be.I walk it along the world’s wide road,chanting...
View ArticleBest books of 2019 so far
Mark Haddon and Natalie Haynes took on Greek myth, Queenie made us laugh and Toni Morrison returned with essays. Here are our highlights across fiction, poetry, non-fiction and children’s booksMore of...
View ArticleStormzy's prize for new writers reveals inaugural winners
Poet Monika Radojevic and novelist Hafsa Zayyan both receive the #Merky Books award, named after the rapper’s publishing imprintGrime rapper Stormzy has chosen two winners for his inaugural #Merky...
View ArticleThe Guardian view on book prizes: the more the merrier
The Booker prize may have lost some of its prestige, but that allows other awards – and different books – to shineOnce upon a time there was only one truly heavy-hitting literary prize in Britain – the...
View ArticleSimon Armitage: ‘I always thought, if Ted Hughes can do it why can’t I?’
Grit, wit and a focus on the everyday made the 21st poet laureate a popular choice. He shares his plans for his tenure, his aversion to ‘big P political poetry’ and the rejected poem that got him...
View ArticleDocument casts new light on Chaucer 'rape' case
The poet’s reputation has long been questioned over charge of ‘raptus’. But term may have meant abduction of a bride for his young ward, says academicA document from the 14th century has emerged that...
View ArticleStudent discovers lost Siegfried Sassoon poem to young lover
Heartfelt handwritten lines from the war poet ‘fell into the lap’ of researcher who was trawling through theatre director’s lettersIt is a poem of only eight lines, but those lines are filled with...
View ArticleOcean Vuong: ‘As a child I would ask: What’s napalm?’
How did a Vietnamese refugee come to write what many are hailing as the great American novel?While he was an undergraduate, Ocean Vuong formed the habit of writing at night. During the day, he studied...
View ArticleLetter: Henry Graham obituary
Henry Graham contributed three poems to the 1967 anthology The Liverpool Scene. It was an association he came to regret. In no way was Graham a “pop poet”, despite writing the line “a three-piece suite...
View ArticlePoem of the week: New Order by Fred Johnston
A cancer scare provides a strange and agonised source of inspirationNew OrderI enter a new order of thingslearn the language of blood-tests, platelets,reticulocytes, an Absolute Neutrophil...
View ArticleRalph Windle obituary
My partner, Ralph Windle, who has died aged 88, was a prolific author, having previously been a successful businessman and academic.His alter ego, a wise and seemingly omniscient sheep named Bertie...
View ArticleHere's to bandit country: the Irish border, writing's new frontier
Once overshadowed by Dublin and Belfast, the border regions are finally being recognised for inspiring some of Ireland’s best writing – and it’s not all about BrexitAsk anyone where they think about...
View Article