Poem of the Week: Hymn to Aphrodite by Frederick Seidel
A brew of the sacred and profane by a rebel classicist, delivered gulp by gulpHymn to Aphroditeποικιλόθρον’ ἀθανάτ’ ἈφρόδιταSappho, Fragment 1Continue reading...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi; New Selected Poems by Frederick Seidel; Notes on the Sonnets by Luke Kennard; A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi; and Crossing Lines: An Anthology of Immigrant...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Don't Marry Johnny Panic by Mizzy Hussain
Brahmacari Monica, don’t marry Johnny Panicnor meet his trickster of a sister at the station.She’s the mistress orchestrator. O she’s ameesni one. She’ll sew sequins and wax on aduck-egg blue dress for...
View Article'The whole canon is being reappraised': how the #MeToo movement upended...
Poets and publishers say a surge of new writing has followed the movement, profoundly changing Australian letters in sometimes unexpected waysWhen Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, co-editors of...
View ArticleGay, communist, female: why MI5 blacklisted the poet Valentine Ackland
A biography of the Dorset poet, who was a lover of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, traces her struggle ‘to live as herself’With the help of Dorset police, MI5 were confidently closing in on three...
View ArticleAdam Zagajewski obituary
Poet and leading voice of Poland’s Generation of ’68, who wrote ‘to understand the world’The poet Adam Zagajewski, who has died aged 75, was one of the leading voices of Poland’s Nowa Fala (new wave),...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Think, now, whose hand … by Patricia McCarthy
This work moves beyond its immediate inspiration, the coronavirus pandemic, to tell a more universal storyThink, now, whose hand …(ix)Continue reading...
View ArticleWhy cities emptied by Covid-19 are perfect for modern flâneurs
Copying the approach of Baudelaire’s quizzical stroller can help us escape lockdown – even if he needs a little updatingCharles Baudelaire, whose 200th birthday on 9 April will be celebrated with stamp...
View ArticleIn Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova review – a family history
A compendious family scrapbook that tells the story of a turbulent century of Russian lifeRussian poet Maria Stepanova, born in 1972, came of age amid all the upheaval of the post-Soviet 90s, and the...
View ArticleCountry diary: fine gulls on a warm tide-flow
Aberteifi, Ceredigion: Settled into the grass of Rosehill Marsh with telescope and tripod, I’ve been particularly focused on larus fuscusThese last three or four weeks the gullery upstream of Cardigan...
View Article'A poem about a dream': Wendy Cope on Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
The poet on her early obsession with poetry, inventing her own struggling male poet and only realising the core theme behind her collection after it was publishedKingsley Amis described writing poems...
View ArticleOn my radar: Nick Laird's cultural highlights
The poet and novelist on politics, pugs and reading plays over ZoomBorn in 1975 in Cookstown, Northern Ireland, poet and novelist Nick Laird attended the University of Cambridge before working in law...
View ArticleHarry Guest obituary
My friend and long-time walking companion Harry Guest, who has died aged 88, was a prolific and talented poet who produced 14 collections of his work. Harry created dazzling evocations of varied...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Because by Grace Schulman
A complicated song of praise for a world that is part heaven and part hellBecauseBecause, in a wounded universe, the tuftsof grass still glisten, the first daffodilshoots up through ice-melt, and a...
View ArticleWar of the Beasts and the Animals, and In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova...
The Russian poet’s eloquent writing is caught between a pursuit of the past and the meaninglessness of memorialisingTranslated poetry seldom finds its way into this column. It is too high risk: there...
View ArticlePoet laureate Simon Armitage publishes elegy for Prince Philip
The Patriarchs – An Elegy deliberately avoids the sycophancy Philip hated, the poet says, and is instead ‘in service of all people like him’Read the full poem belowSimon Armitage has written a poem to...
View ArticleMonica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me by John Sutherland review – a poisonous love
In thrall to Larkin’s genius: racism, drink and despair in a generous account of a tortured relationship over four decadesPoor Monica Jones. She would have liked to marry Philip Larkin but he kept her...
View ArticlePrince Philip: royal family releases photo montage set to elegy by Simon...
The royal family have released a reading of The Patriarchs – An Elegy by Simon Armitage to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral. The poet laureate said that he wanted the poem to address the duke’s...
View ArticlePoem of the week: To Vladimir Nabokov … by Anthony Burgess
Part showy display of literary style, part grumpy personal letter, this is a rich celebration of the power of writingTo Vladimir Nabokov on His 70th BirthdayThat nymphet’s beauty lay less on her...
View ArticleWatch David Hare read new satirical poem about Boris Johnson – video
Playwright David Hare has written a new poem, Agony Uncle, about Boris Johnson's handling of the coronavirus crisis. Written in the tradition of 18th century satire, the poem castigates the UK prime...
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