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Moon landing poem launches Simon Armitage as poet laureate

Conquistadors – reproduced exclusively below – knits memories of first love and the Apollo 11 pioneers with reflections on colonialism. Read it belowTwo months after his appointment, Simon Armitage has...

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The best recent poetry – review roundup

Skin Can Hold by Vahni Capildeo, Anthony Anaxagorou’s After the Formalities and The Tradition by Jericho BrownVahni Capildeo’s formally ambitious third collection, Skin Can Hold (Carcanet, £8.99)...

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Poem of the month: The Window

Once in a lifetime, you will gestureat an open window, tell the one whodetests the queerness in you that deaddaughters do not disappoint, free your sore knees from inching towards a kindof reprieve,...

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Tishani Doshi: 'I can go out alone at night – but the dangers don’t go away'

The Welsh-Indian poet, dancer and writer talks about the realities of life for women in Tamil Nadu and her hit poem Girls Are Coming Out of the WoodsIn the late 1990s the Welsh-Indian writer Tishani...

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The short story of a long paddle on the Leeds and Liverpool canal – a poem

The illustrated city: This week we combine poetry and illustration to explore the story of Britain’s waterwaysThis week, to celebrate our Canal Revolution series, we’ve combined a fictionalised...

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Poem of the week: Prison sonnets by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Written from jail in 1888, these still-forceful lines register the multiple losses suffered inside the ‘convent without God’Sonnets III and V from In VinculisIII.Honoured I lived erewhile with honoured...

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Poem of the week: Story's End by Kathleen Raine

From a writer whose mystical bent was out of tune with her times, this late work is candid about ‘life’s long years’Story’s EndO, I would tell soul’s story to the end,Psyche on bruised feet walking the...

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Poetry book of the month: So Many Rooms by Laura Scott – review

Nothing is what it seems in this debut collection, which channels Leo Tolstoy with extraordinary resultsI knew nothing about Laura Scott when I picked this book up by chance. There is a thrill in...

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Jackie Kay on putting her adoption on stage – and getting a pay rise for her...

When Scotland’s national poet travelled to Nigeria to ask her birth father if he ever thought of her, he said no. Does it hurt to put this on stage? And should the next ‘makar’ be on £30,000?Before...

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Why the Eisteddfod leaves Glastonbury in the shade | Letters

The National Eisteddfod of Wales is an overlooked UK cultural highlight, says James GriffithsEvery year the National Eisteddfod of Wales is held in the first week of August. Every year the “national”...

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David Berman, acclaimed US indie songwriter, dies aged 52

No cause of death has been announced for songwriter and poet known for his projects Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, and his wry, witty lyricsDavid Berman, who was regarded as one of the most poetic...

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Kevin Barry: ‘I generally give people good old-fashioned book tokens’

The Booker nominated author on how Don DeLillo changed his life, laughing at Nicola Barker and the Thomas Pynchon novel he has never finishedThe book I am currently readingInventory by the Derry writer...

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Escape to the country: the best books about the great outdoors

From wild swimming to eating strawberries in a thunderstorm, Helen Mort picks her favourite works about the joys of green space‘God bless the great indoors” sing the Lemonheads in “The Outdoor Type”,...

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The word is out: Val McDermid selects Britain's 10 most outstanding LGBTQ...

The bestselling crime writer has nominated her favourite queer and trans authors and poets as part of a showcase celebrating the best in British writingMy first novel was published in 1987. It was the...

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Kate Tempest review – this isn't a gig, it's a reckoning

Leith theatre, EdinburghThe performance poet absorbs all of the uncertainty and anger of our times, and pours it into ferocious, apocalyptic music that both wounds and healsRarely can a room have felt...

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Poem of the week: from Hesiod's Theogony

This classical allegory of the poet’s role has intriguing modern resonanceLines from Hesiod’s Theogony, translated by Thomas Cooke“Shepherds, attend, your happiness who placeIn gluttony alone, the...

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Taking a stanza: Simon Armitage cancer poem engraved on a pill

Poet laureate’s second work in his official capacity honours a planned new research centre and has been carved into a tiny tabletSimon Armitage’s latest poem, a “bullet / with cancer’s name / carved...

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Poem of the week: Marriage by Alison Winch

A philosophical look at the irreconcilable ingredients of marriage is snappier and funnier than you might expectMarriageMarriage sets off egg tagliatelle and shame,insists it is the solutionand not the...

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Does 'the English canon' still shape what we read? – books podcast

What is the canon of English literature? When did it first emerge and why was it established? Who has challenged it and how has it changed as a result? And does it still make a difference to the books...

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September 1, 1939 by Ian Sansom review – a biography of a poem

One of WH Auden’s most famous poems is treated to an entertaining dissectionIt’s not Auden’s best poem or (since “Funeral Blues” appeared in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral) his most famous. It’s...

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