WeRNotVirus: plays to highlight Covid-19 racism against Asians
Project including monologues will be shown on Zoom to help expose ‘hidden problem’ in UKCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA series of plays and monologues will highlight the...
View ArticleThe Australian book you've finally got time to read: Sentenced to Life by...
For The Erratics author Vicki Laveau-Harvie, James’s slim but dazzling collection shows that poetry can be the antidote to the numbness many of us feel Walking home recently under grey skies, I stopped...
View ArticlePoems to get us through: a musical exchange with God
Lachlan Mackinnon evokes the power of music to strengthen faith, in the last of Carol Ann Duffy’s comforting picks from her poetry bookshelvesThe poet Lachlan Mackinnon lives in Ely, and is also a...
View ArticleIf we love our sunburnt country, we should be protecting its heritage – not...
Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country is arguably the best-known poem in Australian history. But mines are threatening the homestead that informed it You may not know where it comes from, but there is one...
View Article'Things fall apart': the apocalyptic appeal of WB Yeats's The Second Coming
Written 100 years ago, Yeats’s poem has been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream from Chinua Achebe to The Sopranos, Joan Didion to Gordon Gecko. Why is it such a touchstone in times of chaos?In...
View ArticleTo err is human – even for the greatest poets
For centuries, critics have tried to disguise mistakes in verse as intentional literary licence. An Oxford academic begs to differReaders of the world’s finest poetry have often skated over...
View ArticleLawyers' poems deal with trials of delivering lockdown justice
Collection published written by and dedicated to those who have kept system goingCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageI need to get a bookcase for the background of my ZoomI need...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Poem by Paul Bailey
A simply spoken meditation on the presence of death throughout a life is told with unpretentious witPoemMy last of days was there to contemplatewhen words absconded from meas long ago as...
View ArticleWhat Is the Grass by Mark Doty review – Walt Whitman and me
From visions of a shadowy spirit to memories of love and loss … a contemporary US poet pays tribute to the persistent presence of Whitman“I celebrate myself, and sing myself”: Walt Whitman lived by the...
View ArticleBullet Points by Jericho Brown – poem
The Pulitzer prize winner’s anguished response to the routine threat presented to black men by the US police has been widely shared since George Floyd’s deathJericho Brown: ‘To win justice for George...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Cinematic by Peter McDonald
Too late, but not too late for me to hidethese sorry features further in the shade,as huge projected faces loom and slideaway into their screen; I want to gowhere images and ghosts stagger and...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Touched by Alan Buckley; Passport to Here and There by Grace Nichols; Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt; Later Emperors Evan Jones“I bring you no fireworks”, claims Alan Buckley’s poem “Flame”, musing on...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Skipping Without Ropes by Jack Mapanje
One of the Malawian author’s many prison poems, this defiant work builds into a forceful cry of rageSkipping Without RopesI will, I will skip without your ropeSince you say I should not, I cannotBorrow...
View ArticleDeborah Lavin obituary
My mother, Deborah Lavin, who has died aged 68 of lung cancer, started out as an actor, moved into teaching English and finished up writing plays, poetry and studying the life of Eleanor Marx, the...
View ArticlePolice violence, heritage and love: Forward poetry prizes reveal shortlists...
Native American poet Natalie Diaz among contenders for best collection award with Postcolonial Love Poem, alongside Pascale Petit and Caroline BirdA poetic exploration of the wounds the US has...
View ArticlePoetry book of the month: The Kabul Olympics by John McAuliffe – review
The Irishman’s fifth collection shows great sensitivity to language and detail and is at its witty best on domestic mattersJohn McAuliffe is Irish but many of the poems in his sympathetic fifth...
View ArticlePatti Smith: where to start in her back catalogue
In Listener’s digest, our writers help you explore the work of great musicians. Next up: the hugely influential poet who brought Baudelaire to punkHorses (1975)Related: Patti Smith: ‘Reading Mark Twain...
View ArticleSiôn Eirian obituary
My friend and colleague Siôn Eirian, a playwright, scriptwriter and poet, has died aged 66, following a short illness. Siôn was born in Hirwaun, a village in Cynon Valley, South Wales, to James Eirian...
View ArticleMichael Rosen returns to Twitter after long battle with coronavirus
Beloved author of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt was in intensive care for 47 days, but as his recovery continues he has resumed tweetingMichael Rosen has returned to Twitter, as the former children’s...
View ArticleUS books world rocked by racism rows
Questions over the response of the Poetry Foundation and the National Book Critics Circle to BLM protests have sparked a wave of resignationsThe US literary establishment is in turmoil after a wave of...
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