'He returned to what he really was': Clive James's daughter on his poetic...
Artist Claerwen James on growing up with an extraordinary father – and how she bonded with him in his final months when they compiled an anthology of his favourite verseTen months before his death last...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Huia by Bill Manhire
Giving voice to a now extinct New Zealand bird, this is a plaintive but urgent warning about ecological fragilityHuiaI was the first of birds to singI sang to signal rainthe one I loved was singingand...
View ArticleFrance divided over calls for Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine to be reburied...
Petition says the poets, who were lovers as young men, were ‘the French Oscar Wildes’ and deserve to rest in the mausoleumFrance’s cultural elite are split over whether the remains of two of the...
View ArticleArchive, 29 September 1980: first Poetry Olympics held in Westminster Abbey
29 September 1980 Ten poets performed polemical poems, romantic ones, inspirational, tedious, long-winded and frankly inane onesAccording to its originator Michael Horovitz, the aim of the Poetry...
View ArticlePostcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz review – fearless, sinuous and...
Natalie Diaz’s second collection plunges the reader into Native American culture and bold takes on sexual loveNatalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California....
View ArticleMichael Rosen on his Covid-19 coma: ‘It felt like a pre-death, a nothingness’
Earlier this year, the beloved children’s writer spent six weeks on a ventilator with coronavirus. He talks about the magic of the NHS, the mismanagement of the crisis and how his near-death experience...
View ArticleTop 10 verse novels | Sarah Crossan
From Homer’s classical epic to Kae Tempest’s mythic struggles in modern London, these books show that poetry can be more immediate than proseVerse novels have been with us for millennia, yet when you...
View ArticlePetina Gappah: 'Last book to make me laugh? The cheese chapter in Three Men...
The Zimbabwean writer and lawyer on crying over Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, the influence of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the books she feels have been overlooked in 2020The book I am currently...
View ArticleAuthors hope The Lost Words followup will inspire action and change
The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris celebrates the magic of British wildlifeTheir last book of poems about everyday wildlife became an international cultural phenomenon. Now Robert...
View ArticleDerek Mahon, Belfast-born giant of Irish poetry, dies aged 78
Poet famed for A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford and Everything Is Going to be All Right, read on national TV as the pandemic hit, has died after a short illnessDerek Mahon, the Belfast-born poet who...
View ArticleKae Tempest: what I have learned from 20 years on the mic
The poet and musician reflects on the alchemy between artist and audience – and how storytelling unites a roomJames Joyce told me once: “In the particular is contained the universal.” I appreciated the...
View ArticleHow a TV baseball movie inspired late Lennon love song
Beatles expert studied dozens of obscure films to solve mystery of the 1980s track Grow Old With MeA month before he was shot dead in December 1980, John Lennon released the song Grow Old With Me, its...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Oh wert thou in the cauld blast by Robert Burns
A heartening song of love and hope to warm spirits as the outside world gets chillierOh wert thou in the cauld blastOh wert thou in the cauld blast,On yonder lea, on yonder lea;My plaidie to the angry...
View ArticleKae Tempest publishes first book since revealing they are non-binary
On Connection, which draws on their life struggles and creative joys, was written ‘for others who don’t fit’Kae Tempest: what I have learned from 20 years on the mic The award-winning poet and musician...
View ArticleRage, white supremacy and roses: the art that sums up the Trump era
CocoRosie’s call to arms, a mauling from Michelle Wolf, Arthur Jafa’s white supremacy montage and Melania Trump’s gardening … Guardian writers pick the moments that encapsulate Trump’s reign Since he’s...
View ArticleFrom standup to stanzas: Frank Skinner's terrific guide to poetry
The comedian’s new podcast is bursting with enthusiasm for poems. If standup forces him to be funny, here he forces himself to be true‘Phwooar – Ginsy Ginsy Ginsy, I love you so much!” You won’t find...
View ArticleI Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke review - wry and dry
The ‘bargain-basement Baudelaire’ looks back at his life with an unflinching gaze, plus plenty of gags and mad anecdotesWhen the teenage John Cooper Clarke announced he wanted to be a poet, his alarmed...
View ArticleLouise Glück wins the 2020 Nobel prize in literature
The Swedish Academy has chosen the American poet, citing her ‘unmistakable poetic voice’Louise Glück: where to start with an extraordinary Nobel winner The poet Louise Glück has become the first...
View ArticleLouise Glück: where to start with an extraordinary Nobel winner
Poet Fiona Sampson explains why she admires the 2020 Nobel laureate and picks her favourite poems from a long careerLouise Glück wins the 2020 Nobel prize in literatureI have been reading Louise Glück...
View ArticleLouise Glück: Colm Tóibín on a brave and truthful Nobel winner
Her brilliantly controlled poems offer a picture of the world as a struggle between ordeal and wonderIn Stanford in 2008, the Irish poet Eavan Boland told me how much she admired the work of Louise...
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