Poem of the week: Atavism by Elinor Wylie
A picturesque scene in New England discloses unsettled and unsettling spiritsAtavismI always was afraid of Somes’s Pond:Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,Where laughing boys catch...
View ArticleMemories of the Welsh Dial-a-Poem service | Letter
A piece on John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem in New York takes reader Fay Cornes back to the Cardiff-based version of the early 1970sThe poet Ralf Webb’s article (He’s a poet and the FBI know it: how John...
View ArticleBioluminescent Baby review – ode to the insect world
Fiona Benson’s collection of poems about fireflies, mosquitoes and the like takes us into a glowing parallel universeI had not expected to spend long with these poems, assuming a collection devoted to...
View Article‘We have to fight for what is right’: Patti Smith on gender, Sally Rooney and...
In the run-up to the climate conference, the rock’n’roll poet reflects – with a little help from her daughter – on a life spent breaking barriers, hanging out with Dylan and learning to InstagramMore...
View ArticleGordon Millan obituary
My friend Gordon Millan, who has died aged 74, was a scholar of French literature of the belle époque and an authority on the great French poet Stéphane Mallarmé.Gordon was born in Kirkcaldy, in Fife,...
View Article‘My Elizabeth Barrett Browning film needs a woman’s touch – but where are all...
Screenwriter of biopic about the radical poet says the industry must do more to get women behind the camera lensA new film about a 19th-century poet and early feminist is crying out to be filmed...
View ArticleBrendan Kennelly obituary
Irish poet, academic and critic best known for his controversial works Cromwell and The Book of JudasThe poet Brendan Kennelly, who has died aged 85, invited readers to embrace and understand their...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Before the Map by Carola Luther
An uneasy kind of pastoral looks back to the discovery and rediscovery of languageBefore the MapAt night, I feel at homewith these hills. They lie down beside me like cattlein the dirt they are...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Howdie-Skelp by Paul Muldoon; Oak by Katharine Towers; Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia; New and Selected Poems by Ian DuhigHowdie-Skelp by Paul Muldoon (Faber, £14.99)Very few poets, living or otherwise,...
View ArticleA strange poem for strange times: a response to Cop26 | Simon Armitage
I was trying to chart the peculiar dream-like state we seem to be in, says the poet laureateI wanted to react to Cop26 – so many of my friends and colleagues have been emboldened by the conversation it...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Musings by William Barnes
Regret over the passage of time is delivered with reticence but powerful emotional authenticityMusingsBefore the falling summer sunThe boughs are shining all as gold,And down below them waters run,As...
View ArticleWriting political poetry in difficult times: there’s a reason fascist regimes...
Black Lives Matter, bushfires and Covid raged around Melbourne author Maxine Beneba Clarke as shetapped into an ancestral tradition of using art to express the unthinkableSome authors write for escape....
View Article‘We’re taking the man out of the myth’: the musical reclaiming Rumi from...
A new stage production aims to tell the Sufi poet’s story beyond his aphorisms – and challenge assumptions about Islam and the Middle East in the processHe is everywhere and nowhere. The words of Jalal...
View ArticleJohn Agard becomes first poet to win BookTrust lifetime achievement award
Reading charity pays tribute to ‘incredible words’ of Afro-Guyanese author, who came to Britain in 1977 where he has become a staple of English lessonsThe Afro-Guyanese writer John Agard has become the...
View ArticlePortrait of a poet in his own home | Brief letters
Robert Frost | Randox | Sleep study | Eider ducks | Climate change songsOn the morning of 9/11, my husband and I were the only visitors at the home of Robert Frost, high in the White Mountains in New...
View ArticleFrom Paradise Lost to the Lord of the Rings: top 10 epics in fiction |...
From classic tales such as Paradise Lost to ‘counter-epics’ by Anne Carson and Tim O’Brien, these stories lend real grandeur to their subjectsWhat are epics? Typically, they are defined first by their...
View Article‘What the hell is an HSC exam?’ Poet Ocean Vuong pokes fun at perplexed...
Renowned author shares Instagram messages from year 12 students who complained about his ‘confusing’ text in English examThe acclaimed Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong has hit back with humour...
View ArticleBlanked verse: the power of erasure poetry
Poets have been constructing new work by selectively redacting others’ texts for decades, but Instagram and our political moment have spotlit this startling techniqueWeapon of war, language-game, act...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Montale’s Lemons by Ishion Hutchinson
An intense encounter with the light-filled verse of Eugenio Montale is complicated by more wintry feelingMontale’s LemonsMy first snow, I open the pagesof Montale, the scent of ironand light coming out...
View ArticleThe addictive world of competitive chess | Brief letters
Chess | Swifts | Flowering lemon trees | John Clare | LV=How sad that you present such a monochrome image of the chess world of which I have been a keen member for many years (Editorial, 12 November)....
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