Colum McCann: 'I’ve never finished Finnegans Wake by James Joyce – I’ve...
The novelist on the influence of Benedict Kiely, the comforts of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine and feeling changed by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible ManThe book I am currently readingI am rereading Jim...
View ArticleA joyless trudge? No, thanks: why I am utterly sick of ‘going for a walk’
As a Canadian living in the UK, there’s one thing I still don’t get about the British: what’s so great about trudging through a muddy field to nowhere?‘Fresh air is medicine’: British ramblers on the...
View Article'I felt a strange grief when I found my birth mother': Jackie Kay on The...
The poet explains how researching her history led her to tell the story from three perspectives: the birth mother, the adoptive mother and the daughterIn one way, I’d been writing the poems in The...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Human Voice from a Distance by Judith Willson
The ghostly traces of song in the first sound recording inspire a haunting reflection on historical lossContinue reading...
View Article'Shocked by the uproar': Amanda Gorman's white translator quits
International Booker winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld will not translate inaugural poet’s work into Dutch after anger that a Black writer was not hiredThe acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has...
View ArticleVladimir Nabokov's Superman poem published for the first time
In The Man of To-morrow’s Lament, rejected by the New Yorker in 1942, the Lolita author imagines the superhero mourning his inability to have children with Lois LaneA lost poem by Vladimir Nabokov,...
View ArticleRoger Robinson: 'I read Chris Rock's memoir on a flight, tears of laughter...
The poet on the Bernardine Evaristo book he wishes he wrote, the influence of Kwame Dawes and his love for Banana YoshimotoThe book I am currently readingAbout 10 years ago I was recommended a Colum...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
The Stone Age by Jen Hadfield; The Mermaid’s Purse by Fleur Adcock; Comic Timing by Holly Pester; and Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana HeadleyIn The Stone Age (Picador) Shetland-based Jen...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Now All That Shined Is Shit by Luke Wright
Some felon’s sunk my sovereign sun inside his cloudy keksand given me the slip. Today is doctor’s waiting roomsand dog shit on the dance floor. Today my heartache clingsto me like burs, and everyone’s...
View Article'It’s devastating': Margaret Atwood on a musical project honouring women...
In 2015, Nathalie Warmerdam was killed by an ex-partner. Now her brother Joshua Hopkins has teamed up with the author to write a song cycle highlighting such everyday atrocitiesFive years ago, Nathalie...
View ArticleMarieke Lucas Rijneveld writes poem about Amanda Gorman furore
Exclusive: in Everything inhabitable, published in the Guardian, the Dutch writer responds to controversy over the decision to appoint a white translator to the black poet’s bookThe International...
View ArticleAmanda Gorman tells of being followed by security guard who said she looked...
Poet, acclaimed for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, tweeted ‘this is the reality of black girls’Amanda Gorman, the poet who won acclaim for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has...
View ArticleEverything inhabitable: a poem by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
Published here exclusively in English, the Dutch writer responds to the controversy over their decision to resign as Amanda Gorman’s translatorNever lost that resistance, that primal jostling with...
View ArticleStevie Smith’s poems suit a pandemic, even if they’re as soothing as...
Fifty years after the poet’s death, works that were never meant to console are newly resonantToday is the 50th anniversary of the death of Stevie Smith. She was 68, and had been suffering from a brain...
View ArticleLost in translation: the dead end of dividing the world on identity lines |...
Race should not be a factor in who turns the poetry of Amanda Gorman into DutchIn 1768, the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder paid a visit to the French city of Nantes. “I am getting to know...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The rain in the night by Heidi Williamson
The enduring grief of the Dunblane primary school massacre in Scotland, 25 years ago, is discreetly and powerfully portrayedThe rain in the nightThe past is falling on the houselightly, insistentlywith...
View ArticleWhat I learned from reading books by women from every country in the world |...
In three years, I’ve been enchanted, surprised and shocked by the stories told by women of all nations – and inspired by the solidarity they showThree years ago, when I set out to read writing by a...
View ArticleTop 10 books about the body | Molly McCully Brown
Stories are lived in bodies, and made in them, and these books – from memoir to fiction, poetry and beyond – illuminate a central part of human experienceIn some ways, every book is about the body. No...
View Article'Not suitable': Catalan translator for Amanda Gorman poem removed
Victor Obiols told he had wrong ‘profile’, the second case after Dutch writer resigned from same role The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at US president Joe...
View ArticleFrom Soul Train to Beyoncé: the joy of black performance in America
In A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib set out to celebrate black artists across music, dance, comedy and more, who succeeded even when their own country refused to honour themWhen I began A...
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