Lust, loss and linguine: the lockdown love poems of Tim Key
Like everyone else, the comic spent 2020 walking around his flat. Unlike everyone else, he also wrote a book of poetry. He introduces two excerptsThey’re curious old things, lockdowns. The first one,...
View ArticleWhat we can learn from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's years in lockdown
After being diagnosed with a severe respiratory illness, the poet was forced to live in isolation. Her response offers great insights into how to cope, writes her biographerThe expression of...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sleeping Out by Jane Routh
A snowy night camped out under the stars provides the stage for a close encounter with a mysterious creatureSleeping OutNo wind in the pines —I didn’t believe the forecastyet pulled my bivvy...
View ArticleHow to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil review – unsettling reflections on...
The British poet, inspired by the tale of a California couple who shared their home with a migrant, examines the nature of hospitality in this TS Eliot prize-winning bookBhanu Kapil, poet and...
View ArticleTS Eliot winner Bhanu Kapil: 'It's hard to study something by standing in...
The poet’s latest collection, How to Wash a Heart, was partly inspired by a news story about a liberal white couple taking in an Asian refugeeBhanu Kapil’s fourth poetry collection, Schizophrene,...
View Article‘You can smell the sweat and hair gel’: the best nightclub scenes from culture
Writers and artists including Róisín Murphy, Tiffany Calver and Sigala on the art that transports them to the dancefloor during lockdownThere have been many notable nightclubs in film history. The Blue...
View ArticleA joy forever: poetry world prepares to mark bicentenary of John Keats
Two hundred years after his early death, plays, readings and new poetry will honour the legacy of the much beloved authorAlmost 200 years ago, on 23 February 1821, the English poet John Keats died of...
View ArticleUnfinished manuscripts that lay behind Palestinian critic’s stated contempt...
Scholar Edward Said longed to write novels, yet never succeeded, a new biography revealsEdward Said was clear and firm: the work of a critic, he argued, is more important than the work of poets and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: A Grey Day by William Vaughn Moody
Some surprisingly buoyant and cheering verses from a neglected American writerA Grey DayGrey drizzling mists the moorlands drape,Rain whitens the dead sea,From headland dim to sullen capeGrey sails...
View ArticleJohn Keats: five poets on his best poems, 200 years since his death
From Ode to a Nightingale to Modern Love, Ruth Padel, Will Harris, Mary Jean Chan, Rachel Long and Seán Hewitt choose their favouritesChosen by Ruth PadelRuth Padel has written Songs of the Night, a...
View ArticleThe Great British Art Tour: why is Keats at Guy's hospital?
With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights and hidden gems from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Stuart Williamson’s statue of...
View ArticleNude selfies: are they now art?
Lockdown has triggered a boom in the exchange of intimate shots – and now a new book called Sending Nudes is celebrating the pleasures and perils of baring all to the cameraHave you ever sent a nude...
View ArticleLawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights bookshop, dies aged 101
Poet and countercultural pioneer put on trial for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl went on to become a beloved icon of San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, painter and political...
View ArticleLawrence Ferlinghetti obituary
Poet whose outlook spanned anarchism, ecology, publishing and the City Lights Bookstore in San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, artist, activist and founder of San Francisco’s famous City Lights...
View ArticleThe soul of the city: San Francisco honors literary hero Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The co-founder of the City Lights Bookstore had global stature but remained a neighborhood fixtureBy early afternoon, a small memorial of flowers and a can of Pabst had begun to accumulate outside the...
View ArticleStruggling in lockdown, I have found solace in the wisdom of my grandmother |...
My grandmother tells me off for bemoaning my life. Her memories of losing everything and beginning again continue to inspire me, writes poet Nikita Gill“You are the granddaughter of a family that has...
View ArticleTwo Way Mirror by Fiona Sampson review – a fine life of Elizabeth Barrett...
A portrait of the poet and ‘public prophet’ spotlights her entanglements with empire and race but doesn’t neglect the schlockier pleasures of biographical speculation“How do I love thee? Let me count...
View ArticleBefore the purge: when the avant garde swept Georgia – in pictures
For a brief period from 1918, modernist art and poetry flourished in Georgia – until the Red Army’s arrival ushered in censorship and the Great Terror of 1937Continue reading...
View ArticleWrit in water, preserved in plaster: how Keats' death mask became a...
The recent sale of a cast for £12,500 is a testament to the Romantic poet’s enduring legacy, on the bicentenary of his deathThere’s no mention of John Keats’s name on his tombstone – in fact you might...
View ArticleActs of pettiness delight me | Hannah Jane Parkinson
The pettiest person in the world is Donald Trump. It is the only thing to recommend himThough I am a huge fan of parochial wars over loud flute-playing dominating local newspapers, and adore a...
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