Roger Robinson: 'Poets can translate trauma'
The writer and musician talks about his prize-winning poetry collection, his Caribbean education and why the death of George Floyd has been felt so strongly in the UKRoger Robinson is a writer who has...
View ArticlePoem of the week: My pity is fake … by Miriam Neiger-Fleischmann
These stark lines set out a hard, unfinished personal reckoning with atrocious memoryMy pity is fake,my poems, atonement.Mutation in my genesbegan in the gas chambers.Even before that,antigens...
View ArticleWeRNotVirus review – responses to a pandemic of racism
Available onlineTen short plays responding to the rise in racist attacks since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak have a cumulative powerHottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to...
View ArticleForgotten plays: No 4 – Bloody Poetry (1984) by Howard Brenton
This magnificently honest play about the Shelleys and Byron’s summer of sexual experimentation raises difficult questions about the cost of utopian aspirationsHoward Brenton’s output is massive. I...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Glacier by Gillian Clarke
Finding an unsettling symmetry between ecological catastrophe and the Aberfan Welsh pit village disaster, this sonnet conjures a fragile beauty GlacierThe miles-deep Greenland glacier’s lost its...
View ArticleMichael Rosen home from intensive care after coronavirus
The 74-year-old children’s author tweeted ‘I’ve survived!’ after leaving hospital, having been admitted at the end of MarchMichael Rosen has finally made it back home after going into intensive care...
View ArticleRoger Robinson meets Rachel Long: 'I feel like a mosquito taking on Godzilla'
Continuing our series of cross-generational conversations between black British artists, poets Roger Robinson and Rachel Long discuss the prejudices of the white publishing world and the power of...
View ArticleDiversity in poetry on the rise – but 'resistance to inclusivity' remains
UK report finds magazines and newspapers now featuring twice as many poets and critics of colour as in 2009The poetry world has made progress on diversity, a new report finds, but “resistance or...
View Article‘There’s no such thing as a socially distanced mosh pit’: artists on the...
Poet laureate Simon Armitage and comedian Lolly Adefope love the buzz of performance. Here’s what we’re all missingReady, steady... Oh: Olympics, Glastonbury and Euro 2020 stars on the summer we’ve...
View ArticleMichael Rosen: ‘The incredible NHS saved my life’
The children’s author and poet, 74, talks about surviving coronavirus, enjoying getting older and moping all weekend when Arsenal loseI’m only alive because my wife and our friend who is a GP had a...
View ArticleMichael Rosen: ‘I am only finding out now how I was saved from coronavirus’
Home at last after seven weeks in intensive care, the poet pays tribute to ‘incredible’ NHS doctors and nursesCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe poet Michael Rosen is only...
View ArticlePoetic justice: black lives and the power of poetry
Leading black British poets including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Grace Nichols and Raymond Antrobus share their thoughts on protest, change and the trailblazers who inspired them. Introduction by Kadish...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Incendiary Art: Ferguson, 2014 by Patricia Smith
The US poet’s reaction to the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown is a searing elegy for black lives destroyedIncendiary Art by Patricia Smith is published by Bloodaxe Books in the UK, and...
View ArticleFour new collections up for the Forward poetry prizes – review roundup
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz; Citadel by Martha Sprackland; Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles; and The Air Year by Caroline BirdNatalie Diaz interview: ‘It is an important and dangerous time...
View ArticleNatalie Diaz: 'It is an important and dangerous time for language'
The Native American and Latinx poet’s Postcolonial Love Poem has been shortlisted for the Forward prize for best collectionFour new collections up for the 2020 Forward prizes – review roundupReading...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Prayer at Seventy by Vicki Feaver
God of thresholds, guideof souls between worlds,have mercy on me:God who, when I asked youif I could pass my last yearswith less anxiety,Continue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sic Vita by Henry David Thoreau
Before he became a pioneering ecological thinker, Thoreau was a poet and this youthful work contains the blueprint for his developmentSic Vita(“It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots...
View ArticleBenjamin Zephaniah: 'Coppers were standing on my back and I thought: OK, I’m...
The poet and novelist has had a turbulent lockdown, with two relatives lost to Covid-19 and George Floyd’s death bringing back memories of his cousin, Mikey Powell, who was killed by the police in...
View Article'Living legend' Linton Kwesi Johnson wins PEN Pinter prize
The pioneer of dub poetry has been hailed for his ‘political ferocity’ and ‘tireless scrutiny of history’Linton Kwesi Johnson: ‘It was a myth that immigrants didn’t want to fit into British society. We...
View ArticlePoetry book of the month: Antiemetic for Homesickness by Romalyn Ante – review
An NHS nurse pines for her native Philippines in her captivating debut as a poetRomalyn Ante is a nurse who came to the UK from the Philippines when she was 16 and is now based in Wolverhampton. This...
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