Unpublished Ted Hughes poems about partner Assia Wevill to be sold
The recently found notebook of fragments and finished work has been described as the poet’s ‘most direct’ response to the suicide of his partner and daughter in 1969A series of deeply personal...
View ArticleAll Down Darkness Wide review – a superb memoir of love and depression
The poet’s powerful account of his romance with a depressed young Swedish man is a revealing portrait of language, passion and beliefThis extraordinary memoir by the poet Seán Hewitt suggested itself...
View ArticleLong gone, but speaking clearly to our age – Shelley, the poet of moral and...
Friday marked the bicentary of the great radical writer who wanted culture to spark the imaginations of ‘ordinary’ people“Shall rank corruption pass unheeded by,Shall flattery’s voice ascend the...
View ArticleOwl and Pussycat author Edward Lear’s no-nonsense talent for capturing the...
An exhibition of sketches by the English author reveals his artistic skills and life as ‘something of a sad clown’His nonsense verse and limericks have delighted generations of readers, with The Owl...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Iota and Theta … by Osip Mandelstam
The flautist’s art becomes a means to convey the mortal challenges faced by the artist in a totalitarian regimeIota and theta, the fluteof the Greeks gives no recitals –unsculptured and short of...
View ArticlePeter Mackridge obituary
Pioneer of Modern Greek studies in British universities fascinated by questions of language and identityWhen Peter Mackridge, who has died aged 76 of cancer, embarked on his academic career, “Greece”...
View ArticleAdjoa Andoh, Russell T Davies and Michaela Coel elected to Royal Society of...
The Bridgerton actor, Doctor Who writer and I May Destroy You creator are among 60 new fellows appointed to the UK’s charity for the advancement of literatureBridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh, I May Destroy...
View ArticleDear Bradford: a love letter to a misunderstood city – documentary
From Muslim ‘no-go areas’ to Brexit-voting white nationalists, stereotypes continue to be perpetuated about Bradford 21 years after the ‘race riots’. Farhaan was born in the city in the 1980s to a...
View ArticleZulfikar Ghose obituary
My uncle Zulfikar Ghose, who has died aged 87, earned his living as a poet, teacher, novelist and literary critic in Britain during the 1950s and 60s before spending much of the rest of his life as a...
View ArticleA complicated story: why we need nuanced depictions of abortion in books
A long-dormant topic has now been given a moving, powerful and timely literary anthology, beautifully edited by Annie FinchThe first abortion I encountered in literature isn’t named. In Ernest...
View ArticleJune Huh, deep thinking and the value of idleness | Letters
Trevor Jones and Tim Watson reflect on an editorial about the mathematician and would-be poet Prof June HuhWith reference to your editorial on maths and poetry (8 July) and the mathematician and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Break, Break, Break by Alfred Tennyson
A sharply anguished lament for the poet’s beloved friend and inspiration Arthur HallamBreak, Break, BreakBreak, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Reflection by Peter Scupham
A peaceful look back at a ‘high summer’ and its evanescenceReflectionLooking at blue, looking through blue,he watched slow floaters rise and die;flowers were talkative that high summer,their fluid...
View ArticleRathbones Folio prize ‘refreshing format’ to expand to three categories
Winners for fiction, nonfiction and poetry will each receive £2,000 and then compete for the overall £30,000 award Novelists Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Guy Gunaratne are to judge a new, expanded...
View ArticleMemoirs by Robert Lowell review – a poet’s life
A vivid account of childhood, depression and the postwar American literary scene, from the author of Life Studies In 1975, the poet Robert Lowell wrote to his friend Elizabeth Bishop: “How different...
View Article‘Standing on your own’: Ukrainian rapper on connecting with his country’s...
Jockii Druce, 22, gives voice to young people reflecting on Ukraine’s relationship with Russia and its colonial legacyWhen the invasion started, young Ukrainians were glued to their phones. The high...
View ArticleLinton Kwesi Johnson: ‘I certainly did not see myself as an angry young black...
The poet and activist’s life in verse has chronicled black British history as it was being made. He talks about remaining hopeful, integrity, and taking 20 years to find his voiceThe new Penguin...
View ArticleThe fight to save poet Vicente Aleixandre’s house in Madrid
Campaigners want government action to save Velintonia, where the Spanish poet received writers including Federico García LorcaThe cedar-dwarfed, pale yellow house at 3 Vicente Aleixandre Street in...
View ArticleRobert Lowell: Memoirs, edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc –...
A collection of the poet’s stately prose from the 1950s reveals his shift into confessional writing and the bipolar disorder that led to hospitalisation and regretsIn an exceptionally gifted generation...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet LXX by Charlotte Smith
A lonely poet has been warned against a wandering ‘lunatic’ but feels more envy of his mental state than fear On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because it was...
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