Ready for war: my journey from peaceful poet to revolutionary soldier
Formerly an anti-war poet, Maung Saungkha has endured a harsh training regime to prepare for armed struggle against Myanmar’s military juntaRead more in our Reporting Myanmar seriesDays after the...
View ArticleA sense of community is more vital than ever | Letters
Bob Usherwood writes that public libraries were once at the heart of the communities they served. Plus letters from Michael Meadowcroft and Adam HartJulian Coman’s article quotes a list, from the...
View ArticleThis be the verse for the Queen’s jubilee: Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and...
David Evans recalls Philip Larkin’s poem for the silver jubilee and his pastiche of what he imagined Ted Hughes might writeThe Queen’s reign was already being marked as extraordinarily enduring 45...
View ArticleThe Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
Philip Oltermann’s account of how the Stasi decided to use poems as a means of fighting capitalism is fascinating, strange and troublingThe folk singer Woody Guthrie famously scrawled “This machine...
View ArticleShall I compare thee to a frozen food aisle? How to write a love poem in 2022
In a world where emotions are cheap and the truth even cheaper, how can we write authentic odes to our beloved? Sharon Olds, Maged Zaher and Lil Nas X show one poet the wayWhat do poets talk about when...
View ArticleMyanmar’s first literary work since coup reveals ‘courage and altruism’ of...
Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring was born from a desire to preserve online expressions of outrage, grief and dissent, say editorsThe first literary work to emerge from Myanmar since the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: To … by Percy Bysshe Shelley
For Valentine’s Day, we return to one of the first Romantic poems I fell for, which reveals a lot about ‘what men call love’One word is too often profanedFor me to profane it,One feeling too falsely...
View ArticleC+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor review – punchy tales of lesbian life
The winner of the TS Eliot prize offers a rallying cry for gay unity amid prejudice and deathJoelle Taylor, the 54-year-old Lancastrian and poetry slam champion, is a fighter on the page. C+nto, the...
View ArticleLiving in a woman’s body: Mama’s War – an original poem
In her latest work, the South African actor and writer Lebogang Mashile tackles the exploitation and sexism faced by Black womenMama’s WarMama’s gone viral Mama’s screen shuffles fasterThan hashtags...
View ArticleGeoff Roberts obituary
My friend Geoff Roberts, who has died aged 92, made his living as a teacher but had a large hinterland beyond his work in the classroom, including as a part-time illustrator and writer.Much of Geoff’s...
View ArticlePomp, circumstance and very bad poetry | Brief letters
Jubilee poems | Royal bias | Lisztomania | SubpostmastersDavid Evans’ letter on poetry commissioned for the Queen’s silver jubilee (11 February) was amusing and instructive. Larkin’s serious submission...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Dear Life by Maya C Popa
After the convulsions of emotion that love has landed her with, the poet wishes for more restrained feelingI can’t undo all I have done to myself,what I have let an appetite for love do to me.Continue...
View Article‘Is the world listening?’: the poets challenging Myanmar’s military
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and beyond are using poetry to come to terms with atrocities – and as a form of resistanceIt has now been a year since the military coup, and the breeze of democracy has...
View ArticleTop 10 books about Welsh identity | Richard King
In poetry, memoir, fiction and history these books show Wales’s self-definition becoming surer and more confidentIn 1997 Wales voted in favour of devolution by a margin of 50.3%, one of the narrowest...
View ArticleNess by Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood audiobook review – a sinister...
Actor Stephen Dillane narrates the rhythmic prose poem, inspired by a Suffolk nature reserve and cold war military baseOrford Ness is a narrow shingle and marsh spit off the Suffolk coastline that...
View ArticleThe Guardian view on ordinary histories: often quite extraordinary | Editorial
Historic England’s proposal to celebrate the places where “ordinary people” have worked, lived or socialised is very welcomeIn his 1939 poem The Unknown Citizen, WH Auden imagines a composite of a...
View ArticleWarsan Shire talks to Bernardine Evaristo about becoming a superstar poet:...
One is a breakout poet, the other is a Booker-winning champion of Black talent. They swap notes on class, impostor syndrome and the day pop’s biggest star came knockingWhen an email from Beyoncé’s...
View ArticleLemn Sissay and Valerie Bloom look back: ‘I was a wild child when she met me’
The poets recreate an old photograph from when they first bonded – and reflect on more than 30 years of friendshipLongtime friends and celebrated poets Lemn Sissay and Valerie Bloom were introduced in...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Woods, and Us by Alison Brackenbury
The benefits of growing up close to nature are remembered in a world where it is has become much more remoteWoods, and UsI grew up in a wood.Well, no. I slept in bedbut spent my days by blackbirds....
View ArticleObscure poetry collection’s sales soar after TikToker dreams about it
The publisher of The Fifth Window by poet Russell Thornton has ordered a reprint after orders flooded in following viral fameAn American TikToker has sent sales of an obscure Canadian poetry collection...
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