‘A poem is a powerful tool’: Somali women raise their voices in the nation of...
A childhood encounter with a hyena inspired Hawa Jama Abdi’s first verse. Now she is part of an arts project designed to encourage women storytellers - and unite all SomalisWhen Hawa Jama Abdi was...
View ArticleArmando Iannucci’s epic Covid poem: ‘It’s my emotional response to the past...
When Covid stalled his film work, the writer took revenge on the virus in the form of a poem about Britain, Brexit and the pandemic – exclusively extracted here Where do you start with the pandemic? It...
View Article‘Elite v plebs’: the Oxford rivalries of boys who would never grow up to be men
A feud at Balliol College ended for ever when all five involved died in the first world war. Now the tale is to be told on the London stageIt was even more elitist than Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, whose...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Concert by Edna St Vincent Millay
When a woman insists she must go to hear the music on her own, a telling argument ensuesThe ConcertNo, I will go alone.I will come back when it’s over.Yes, of course I love you.No, it will not be...
View ArticleThe Sun Is Open by Gail McConnell; Cheryl’s Destinies by Stephen Sexton – review
Keen wit and literary grit infuse the work of two Belfast writers who both show how poetry can transcend the everydayThis is the month to salute two Belfast poets: the first revisits something that has...
View ArticleHow to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X Kendi awarded MacArthur ‘genius grant’
Writers Daniel Alarcón and Reginald Dwayne Betts have also been named on the list of 25 new fellows to receive $625,000 from the foundationThe bestselling historian Ibram X Kendi has been awarded a...
View ArticleGerda Mayer obituary
My friend Gerda Mayer, who has died aged 94, was a talented poet with a gift for expressing the deepest of feelings in the simplest of ways. Her poetry is mostly observational, with its subjects being...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
The Owl and the Nightingale, translated by Simon Armitage; Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück; Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles; Five Books by Ana BlandianaThe Owl and the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Wife of Usher’s Well
This ancient ballad, shaped over centuries, explores ghosts, love – and the power of time itselfThe Wife of Usher’s WellThere lived a wife at Usher’s Well,And a wealthy wife was she;She had three stout...
View ArticleNational Book Awards 2021: Robert Jones Jr and Lauren Groff among finalists
The winners of the prestigious US awards, in five categories, will be announced in a ceremony in NovemberThe finalists for this year’s National Book Awards have been announced, including nominations...
View ArticlePatti Smith review – punk, poetry and the raw power of connection
Royal Albert Hall, LondonFrom punk ragers to stories of Blake and Bunyan, the poet laureate of dissent wrings blood, sweat and love out of every second of stage time Not many rock shows begin with a...
View ArticleLyrical tearaways: removable verses adorn streets for National Poetry Day
From Bristol to Glasgow, five poems will be displayed in public on the theme of choice. The writers introduce their works“Who can she be but, helplessly, herself?” reads a line from Imtiaz Dharker’s...
View ArticleOn my radar: Edmund de Waal’s cultural highlights
The ceramicist and writer on the poetry of Louise Glück, the music of Max Richter and the best secret meeting spot in LondonBorn in Nottingham in 1964, Edmund de Waal is an artist, master potter and...
View ArticleWhat’s our message to outer space? We are not so brilliant here on Earth |...
The prize-winning poetry of the Azerbaijani president’s daughter and the Dubai Expo both lack inspirationYou might think of poets as poor – starving in their garrets, receiving tiny sums for their...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Love and Death by Lord Byron
Both Romantic and realist, what is thought to be the poet’s final work is a passionate declaration of unrequited loveLove and Death1.Continue reading...
View ArticleTS Eliot prize unveils ‘voices of the moment’ in 2021 shortlist
Ten collections in competition for the £25,000 award ‘should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight’, say judges“Ten books that sound clear and compelling voices of the moment” make up this...
View ArticleHe’s a poet and the FBI know it: how John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem alarmed the Feds
After receiving hundreds of thousands of calls, the poet’s project almost broke the New York telephone exchange – leading to an FBI investigation. Will it cause similar chaos in the Instapoet era?In...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Centred on the realisation that time may not be linear, the poet explores what we now call deja vuSudden Light by Dante Gabriel RossettiI have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell:I know the...
View ArticleWhy shouldn’t a writer for children talk of refugees, persecution and...
The We’re Going on a Bear Hunt author on how researching his family’s fractured history resulted in his latest poetry collectionThere was always the mystery of my father’s uncles. My father was an...
View ArticleLuke Kennard wins Forward poetry prize for ‘anarchic’ response to Shakespeare
Notes on the Sonnets took the £10,000 award for best collection, while Caleb Femi and Nicole Sealey came out on top in the other categoriesLuke Kennard has won the Forward prize for best collection for...
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