Poem of the week: The Red Poppy by Louise Glück
This poem by the Nobel laureate is a fierce short parable about environmental devastationThe Red PoppyThe great thingis not havinga mind. Feelings:oh, I have those; theygovern me. I havea lord in...
View ArticleScotland’s new makar Kathleen Jamie: ‘Poetry is at the heart of our culture’
The writer, ‘not naturally a public eye person’, reveals her ambitions as national poet with convulsive changes to the country and climate loomingKathleen Jamie’s tenure as makar – Scotland’s national...
View Article‘Cat Torturers names withheld’: Edith Sitwell’s gossipy address book found
Detailing hundreds of the poet’s acquaintances and why they irked or charmed her, its entries are busy with names from Gore Vidal to Elizabeth Arden and the Queen MotherEdith Sitwell was known for her...
View ArticleOn my radar: Claudia Rankine’s cultural highlights
The poet and playwright on her love of The White Lotus, the example of Naomi Osaka, and what stayed with her from the George Floyd murder trialClaudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, playwright and a...
View ArticleCountry diary: all around the Bone Caves, the stillness is spectacular
Assynt, Sutherland: Here lay the bones of bears, wolves and humans, the past looming heavy on the presentThe signs at the start of the glen tell me that a mile and a half beyond lie caves that held the...
View ArticleMartin Figura creates poetic record of life during pandemic at Salisbury...
Figura worked with staff to produce poems reflecting their experiences during the Covid crisisCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageOne poem imagines an NHS nightshift worker at...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Before Exile by Louise Mack
A moving, ballad-like poem based on the Australian writer’s own experience of leaving her home countryBefore ExileHere is my last good-bye,This side the sea. Good-bye! good-bye! good-bye! Love me,...
View ArticleLouise Glück: Poems 1962-2020 review – a grand introduction to the Nobel...
A new Penguin collection of the American poet’s work brilliantly showcases the spare beauty of her writingWhen Louise Glück won the Nobel prize last year, she was, to many in the UK, an unknown...
View ArticleHenry Normal: ‘Comedy’s like sugar. It makes things better but I wouldn’t eat...
The producer whose TV hits include The Royle Family and Gavin and Stacey on finding the poignancy in life’s little moments, and heading back to the comedy circuit with his poetryComedians become...
View ArticlePoem of the month: Doctor! by Holly Pester
in the middle of an unspiritual seizure*to the doctor* I am concernedabout my flushes and blood pressureis it a small note on my cheek forever?he was as amazed as cardiacThese freaks you’re holdingA...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus; The Sun Is Open by Gail McConnell; Single Window by Daniel Sluman; The Kids by Hannah LoweRaymond Antrobus’s second collection, All the Names Given(Picador),...
View ArticleA little bird told me: how a magpie taught me I could be a father
Charlie Gilmour never wanted to have children – his father had abandoned him at six months and he feared he’d do the same. But then a magpie came into his life and changed everythingIt wasn’t long...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Beer for two in Böckler Park, Berlin by Lucy Burnett
A gently subversive love poem that makes language laugh as it falls over itselfBeer for two in Böckler Park, BerlinYou asked me for a love poemand I gave you a text message and a handful ofimaginary...
View Article‘I don’t care’: text shows modern poetry began much earlier than believed
Academic finds that lines widely reproduced in the eastern Roman empire are ‘stressed’ in a way that laid the foundations for what we recognise as poetryFor Taylor Swift, the “haters gonna hate”, but...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet 65 by William Shakespeare
This reflection on ‘sad mortality’ is a shining tribute to the power of loveSonnet 65Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless seaBut sad mortality o’er-sways their power,How with this rage...
View ArticleJohn Cooper Clarke: ‘I draw the line at flapjack, falafel and tripe’
The poet relates tales of his childhood, run-ins with Bernard Manning – and explains why he wishes Ken Loach would lighten upDr John Cooper Clarke, Salford’s favourite son, arrives in the whitewashed...
View ArticleChris Torrance obituary
My friend Chris Torrance, who has died aged 80, was an important member of the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 70s, and an inspiration and mentor to many young and aspiring poets in south Wales...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Thames by John Challis
Bobbing and jostling with assorted fragments, London’s unsettled river here loses and finds its human pastThamesAfter a day of keeping tugs and waste disposal barges,sailing racers, showboats and...
View ArticleGilgamesh Dream Tablet to be formally handed back to Iraq
The 3,600-year-old tablet that shows parts of a Sumerian poem will be returned by the US to the country it was taken from in 1991A 3,600-year-old tablet showing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh will be...
View ArticleThe Green Knight review – Dev Patel rides high on sublimely beautiful quest
Director David Lowery conjures up visual wonders and metaphysical mysteries from the anonymously authored 14th-century chivalric poemChrist’s sacrifice and the erotic death-wish of earthly glory: these...
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