Manchester international festival 2021: the best poetry, from Arcadia to Poet...
Lemn Sissay and Hans Ulrich Obrist combine art and poetry to sublime effect, and an installation explores our place within natureParticipatory art at MIF 2021Live music at MIF 2021Community art at MIF...
View ArticleCamels, clowns and sex education: what to see at Edinburgh fringe 2021
The festival has shrunk because of Covid but there are plenty of shows in person and online this summer – here’s our pick of the first to be announcedSex Education Xplorers (S.E.X.)What did they miss...
View ArticleSylvia Plath’s letters to Ted Hughes among intimate items to be auctioned
The sale at Sotheby’s includes the poet’s wedding ring, drawings and a family photo albumA cache of Sylvia Plath’s letters and personal items – including her wedding ring, a captioned photo album and...
View ArticlePoet Slash Artist review – if this show is art’s future, it looks good to me
Home, ManchesterA show about the relationship between seeing and reading feels like a return to romanticism – a belief in the passionate expression of the spiritPoets and artists have been influencing...
View ArticleFlogged, imprisoned, murdered: today, being a poet is a dangerous job
In India, the author of a viral poem about Narendra Modi’s handling of Covid-19 has been demonised. But all around the world, from Myanmar to Belarus, poets are being persecutedDictators know the power...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Anima Anceps by Algernon Charles Swinburne
With a sharp and witty tongue, this melodious work reasons out the case against pious hypocrisyAnima AncepsTill death have brokenSweet life’s love-token,Till all be spokenThat shall be said,What dost...
View ArticlePoetry book of the month: Lyonesse by Penelope Shuttle – review
Combining two collections in one, the veteran poet immerses us in a mythical kingdom in this extraordinary flow of workThere is always the risk of overlooking an established poet as a known quantity....
View ArticleMonique Roffey: ‘William Golding’s The Inheritors gave me ideas for how I...
The Costa winner on the James Baldwin novel she most cherishes, devouring Willard Price adventures as a child, and the sex scene she wishes she had writtenThe book I am currently readingHow Much of...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Dinah’s Brother by Roger Robinson
My tears have flowed in floods,I am you brother and I haveprayed to this god above,to test me instead of you.It’s still rape though he calls it love?Bury me in a muddy graveof shame before I let him...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Thinking With Trees by Jason Allen-Paisant; The Craft of Poetry by Lucy Newlyn; Brilliant Corners by Nuzhat Bukhari; Forty Names by Parwana Fayyaz; and Auguries of a Minor God by Nidhi Zak/Aria...
View ArticleKate Baer on the burden of motherhood: ‘My book is like an angry friend’
When her no-holds-barred collection of poetry came out, Kate Baer was inundated with grateful messages. Why had it hit a chord with ordinary mothers struggling to be heard?Kate Baer wrote her first...
View ArticleMichael Horovitz obituary
Iconoclastic poet, editor and leading light of British counterculture during the 1950s and 60sThe poet and editor Michael Horovitz, who has died aged 86 after a fall, championed poetry as a vital and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: A Nocturnal Reverie by Anne Finch
This sensuous evocation of a moonlit walk is rich with precisely observed natural detailsA Nocturnal ReverieIn such a night, when every louder windIs to its distant cavern safe confined;And only gentle...
View ArticleAfter England’s football defeat, a poet reflects on what we can learn from...
As England mourns Sunday’s Euro 2020 result, International Booker winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has written Substitution applause, about the upside of going downAt primary school Marieke Lucas...
View ArticleHow I topped Michael Horovitz for a tip | Letters
The poet was able to to get money out of anyone, but was outmatched one Christmas by Mavis CheekThe talented Michael Horovitz was indeed “ever the impoverished poet” (Obituary, 11 July), and ever...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A defiant assertion of the poet’s power to overcome physical separation from her belovedSonnet Six from Sonnets from the PortugueseGo from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow....
View ArticleDeath and detergents: Spanish poet sets hospital laundry work to verse
Begoña M Rueda reflects on her prize-winning account of laundry work during the Covid crisisCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSpain was not long into the first wave of the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Maid’s Tale by MR Peacocke
A young woman newly ‘in service’ tries to make sense of the enigmatic flap her fellow servants are rushing to attend toThe Maid’s TaleI hadn’t been in service that long. Such a morning!I dodge out a...
View ArticleGeorge the Poet: ‘Who would play me in the film of my life? Me’
The spoken word artist, poet and rapper on his love of Harry Potter, tendency to over-explain, and the worst thing anyone’s ever said to himBorn George Mpanga in London, George the Poet, 30, studied...
View ArticleGuardian Australia’s Book Club: join us to celebrate the inaugural Australian...
We’ve joined forces with Red Room Poetry to bring present a very special poetry-themed edition of our interactive Zoom book club, with guests Omar Sakr, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Evelyn Araluen – and you!•...
View Article
