From Keats to Merseybeat: a retreat into my favourite verse is a soul saver |...
Poems are Swiss army knives of words – they have multiple usesI can’t remember when I fell in love with poetry, though I remember the teachers who encouraged it. I remember bringing in a lever-arch...
View ArticleThomas Keneally: ‘Does anyone write a good book at 83? Well, I think I have’’
The Australian novelist on crying over a Dickens biography, laughing at Kathy Lette and the classic he is ashamed not to have readThe book I am currently readingThe Barbara Kingsolver novel...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry collections – review
The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie; The Mother House, by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin; A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson; and Still Life by Ciaran CarsonAs someone who passes a Pictish symbol stone with an...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Bicep to Bicep by Mary J Oliver
Each month the Guardian’s Review section selects a poem to highlightIt was his jobto give me awayYet I wasn’t his to giveContinue reading...
View ArticleFrost Fair by Carol Ann Duffy review – icy perfection from a curator of cold
Duffy’s beguiling short ballad, gracefully illustrated by David de las Heras, pithily explores London’s ‘Great Winter’ of 1683Frost Fair is a tiny book, about 4in x 4in, and might be alighted upon as a...
View Article'Sometimes the world goes feral' – 11 odes to Europe
As Britain braces itself for the Brexit endgame, leading poets – from Carol Ann Duffy to Andrew McMillan – take the pulse of our fragmenting worldFrom the collection Kin, Cinnamon Press, 2018Continue...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Flea by John Donne
A ludicrous image of physical intimacy provides a suitor with a feeble wooing ruse – and us with sharp romantic comedyRelated: 'Sometimes the world goes feral' – 11 odes to EuropeContinue reading...
View ArticleI Wanna Be Yours review – a love story with heady chemistry
Bush theatre, LondonRagevan Vasan and Emily Stott star as a couple pulled apart by their backgrounds in this play by slam poet Zia Ahmed The question of how to build intimacy across the divides of our...
View Article'Ridiculously hard': how Neil Gaiman wrote a poem for refugees from 1,000 tweets
The author and UNHCR ambassador appealed for warm scenes for his poem What You Need to Be Warm – and received ideas from everyone from Ben Stiller to Monica LewinskyRead the poem belowComing up with...
View ArticleThis old Etonian is no harmless buffoon | Letters
The nickname ‘Boris’ is misleadingly cuddly, says Lisa Hallgarten’s poem, while Hilton McRae can’t understand the public’s fondness for electing Eton alumniDon’t call him Boris.It’s the name for a...
View ArticleThe advantage of life in the slow train | Brief letters
Virgin Trains | Letters | Partridges | Christmas hits | Election break | PoetryYou say the Advanced Passenger Train had been canned “partly because of the motion sickness it allegedly induced” (End of...
View ArticleClive James remembered by John Simpson
7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019The BBC world affairs editor on the gifted critic, poet and wit who elevated British life with his televisual panache• Gordon Banks remembered by Peter Shilton• Read...
View ArticleThe nine lives of Cats: how poetry became a musical, then a film …
Published as war broke out in 1939, TS Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats outsold The Waste Land. The 1980s saw a West End smash. Will the new film speak to us today?When Old Possum’s Book of Practical...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Corn-Stalk Fiddle by Paul Laurence Dunbar
From one of the great black American poets, this harvest song combines formal and vernacular language to potent effectThe Corn-Stalk FiddleWhen the corn’s all cut and the bright stalks shineLike the...
View ArticleRobert Graves on magical women – archive, 18 December 1968
18 December 1968: On a walk in his adopted home of Majorca, the poet talks about women, love, life and death“Women,” said Robert Graves, “hold the key to the return of a Golden Age. And that will be...
View ArticleThe Penguin Book of Oulipo review – writing, a user's manual
Lovers of word games and literary puzzles will relish this indispensable anthology celebrating Perec, Calvino and many othersThe Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature)...
View ArticleHow to be hopeful: Alice Oswald’s poem Mist
The poet on the startling wonders of the natural worldContinue reading...
View Article'We encourage the audience to boo, jeer and heckle': competitions that reward...
Poets have a reputation for taking themselves too seriously. The anti-slam throws that stereotype out the windowJakob Boyd’s whole body folds around the microphone. The words come out of him like a...
View ArticleTS Eliot would not have minded Cats reviews, says his estate
Original author ‘liked to have his head blown’ and would have seen the funny side of film’s terrible reception, says spokespersonTS Eliot “would have had a sense of humour” about the much derided film...
View ArticleRick Vick obituary
My best friend, Rick Vick, who has died aged 71, was known as “the Poet of Stroud”. He was a writer who became a teacher in prisons and rehab centres in Gloucestershire. He contributed to the research...
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