Words from the Wall by Adam Thorpe review – beauty in the bleak
Adam Thorpe ranges from ancient Rome to his mother’s last days in a collection rich in language and dark in toneAdam Thorpe is a longsighted poet, at home with the ancient and the modern, and with an...
View ArticleWalt Whitman: celebrating an extraordinary life in his bicentennial
The poet’s life and works are being explored in three exhibitions in New York, the city that saw him create some of his most profound poemsIn July 1855, a pair of Scottish immigrant brothers, Andrew...
View ArticleTop 10 houseguests in fiction | Jessica Francis Kane
Visits are great engines for storytelling – and from Jane Austen to Ali Smith, here are some of the bestTwo of the most vivid images I carry with me from my childhood reading concern the arrival of a...
View ArticleThe Last Word review – young artists speak truth to poetry
Roundhouse, LondonThis festival gives voice to up-and-coming performers, from poetry slam winner Rakaya Esime Fetuga to the painfully funny Jack RookeThe Last Word festival is a celebration of poetry...
View ArticleNoble Savages: The Olivier Sisters by Sarah Watling review – rebels with a cause
From suffrage marches to skinny dipping with the Bloomsberries … the remarkable life stories of four sisters are told for the first timeWhen Christopher Hassall was writing his biography of the poet...
View ArticleOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong review – portrait of the...
A Vietnamese-American poet’s debut mines his extraordinary family story with passion and beautyOcean Vuong’s grandfather was a US soldier posted to Vietnam; there he fell in love with “an illiterate...
View ArticleKate Tempest: The Book of Traps and Lessons review – living poetry amid the...
(American Recordings/Fiction)Producer Rick Rubin has pared back the effects, giving Tempest’s songs about trying to love and dance through our current crises room to reach outKate Tempest’s latest...
View ArticleBlack Men Are Part of Nature but Nature Is White – a poem
It took 55 bullets and 3.5 seconds for police to kill Willie McCoy, which a report called ‘reasonable’. Acclaimed poet Shane McCrae writes about his killingContinue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Bluff by Jamie McKendrick
A sharply observed portrait of a comically foreign creature is shadowed by unease about its futureThe BluffThe newt that plays so delicately deadmust be on the qui vive unless terrorjust flicks the...
View ArticleJoy Harjo is first Native American named US poet laureate
Oklahoma-born, Muscogee Creek Nation member who helped tell an ‘American story’ has been in the wings for a long time Poet, musician, author Joy Harjo has been appointed as the new US poet laureate,...
View ArticleFaber & Faber: by Toby Faber review – the untold story of a publishing giant
They turned down Ulysses and Animal Farm, but still shaped 20th‑century literatureAll publishing houses have archives, but for anyone interested in 20th-century literature the archive of Faber &...
View ArticleAlice Oswald elected Oxford professor of poetry by huge margin
Oswald will be the first woman to serve in the role, established three centuries agoAlice Oswald has won the race to be Oxford’s latest professor of poetry. She will be the first woman to serve in the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Oy of the Poyem by Zohar Atkins
A rabbi presents some bright-witted spiritual instruction for the digital eraThe Oy of the Poyem: 28 Exercises in non-MasteryContinue reading...
View ArticleIn a squall on Lake Geneva in 1819, Shelley has no fear of drowning
In a vivid letter to his publisher, Lord Byron describes the courage of the English romantic poet It is 1819, and a great poet has a story about the courage of Percy Bysshe Shelley. “He was once with...
View ArticleJackie Kay and Tracy K Smith: what did one poet laureate say to the other?
From being a public figure to poetry in the age of Trump, from old prejudice to new audiences: when US poet laureate Tracy K Smith met Jackie Kay, Scotland’s makar, they had a lot to talk about…“There...
View ArticlePoem of the week: To a Gentleman … by Elizabeth Carter
A plea from the 18th century to preserve the shaded peace of a tree-lined walk folds some feminism into its classical allusionsTo a Gentleman, on his Design of Cutting Down a Shady WalkIn plaintive...
View ArticleActivist held in US after reciting poem attacking immigration rules
American Civil Liberties Union files court petition arguing that the detention of Jose Bello violates the first amendmentA student activist who was arrested in California 36 hours after reading a poem...
View ArticleTracy K Smith on the place of poetry in modern America – books podcast
This week’s show is dedicated to poetry. The outgoing US poet laureate, Tracy K Smith, sits down with Richard to discuss her 15-year career and the role of poetry in uniting a divided America as the...
View ArticleA ‘boggler, boggler’ bus just the ticket | Brief letters
Books of poetry | Electric buses | Headlines | Slugs and snailsFr Julian Dunn (Letters, 1 July) may be stirred to profane language about the dearth of poetry in the 100 best books for the summer piece,...
View ArticleAlthea Gibson’s role in transit of Venus | Brief letters
Althea Gibson | Alison van Uytvanck and Greet Minnen | Rowland Emett | Poetry books | Steve BellYour article on Venus and Serena Williams and how they “paved the way” for black players on the tennis...
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