Slide by Mark Pajak review – relax, you’re in safe hands
The Liverpudlian’s composure, compassion and controlled imagination shine through in his polished debutMark Pajak’s debut does not read like a debut: there is no fumbling beginner’s luck, no rough...
View ArticleToday I Killed My Very First Bird review – a gangster’s life laid bare
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh In an atmospheric staging, with poetic dialogue, Jason Brownlee sketches the cruel twists of a violent and abusive London childhoodAccording to the villain played by...
View ArticleJohnny Depp and Jeff Beck to review claims they stole incarcerated man’s poem
Song from pair’s album 18 appears to take several lines from Hobo Ben by Slim Wilson without giving creditRepresentatives for Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck have said the duo will review allegations they...
View ArticleDavid Hare: ‘There is an awful lot of pious theatre at the moment’
The playwright on branching out into poetry, contemporaries he admires and his need to challenge audiences’ beliefsDavid Hare, 75, is the author of more than 30 stage plays, many of them dealing with...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Legend by Hart Crane
Written in the 1920s, this is a young man’s daring and defiant assertion of his sexualityLegendAs silent as a mirror is believedRealities plunge in silence by ...Continue reading...
View ArticlePhilip Larkin flinched from intimacy – how would he have coped with social...
A century after the poet’s birth, Imtiaz Dharker introduces her own poem about the grumpy great, Swiping left on LarkinThis year marks 100 years since the birth of the great English poet Philip Larkin,...
View ArticlePoet Nikita Gill: ‘I worry about people getting tattoos of my work. What if I...
Her touching verses about heartbreak, fat-shaming and body hair have made her Britain’s most-followed poet on social media – and now she’s heading for TVWhen Nikita Gill was growing up, she was...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
It Must be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho; Imperium by Jay Gao; The Illustrated Woman by Helen Mort; The Arctic by Don Paterson; 12 Pamphlets by Selima HillIt Must be a Misunderstanding: New and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet on Reading Burns’ To a Mountain Daisy by Helen Maria...
A fierce defence of his battles with ‘adverse fortune’ suggests Robert Burns was invigorated by the confrontationContinue reading...
View ArticleOn my radar: Kayo Chingonyi’s cultural highlights
The award-winning poet on his favourite New York record store, the mindfulness of taking photos on film cameras, Ann Patchett’s captivating essays and the lyrical appeal of MedellínBorn in Zambia in...
View ArticleMohamed Ibrahim Warsame, one of Somalia’s greatest poets, dies aged 79
Somali social media has been flooded with tributes to the man better known as ‘Hadraawi’Messages of condolences continue to pour in from around the world following the death of Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: In Winter the Steep Lane by Peter Sansom
A spare, haunting depiction of a tricky winter walk points the way to everyone’s final destinationis often icyone in four, and todayit brings meto my hands anddodgy kneesContinue reading...
View ArticleAna Luísa Amaral obituary
Portuguese poet of the everyday and translator of works by Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare’s sonnetsAna Luísa Amaral, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was one of Portugal’s foremost poets. Her work,...
View ArticleWinters in the World by Eleanor Parker review – tracking the Anglo-Saxon year
An magical exploration of the weather literature left behind by the poets, scientists and historians of Anglo-Saxon BritainIf the airless, sultry, stuck summer left you longing for autumn or, indeed,...
View ArticleFirst fiction work by Nobel prize-winning poet Louise Glück to be published...
The 64-page ‘prose narrative’ Marigold and Rose: A Fiction – about twins in the first year of life – will be published in OctoberThe first work of fiction by American poet and Nobel laureate Louise...
View ArticleChildren’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels
Bad manners in the jungle; a magical inner-city tree; galactic danger; a conservationist call to arms; plus the best new YA novelsWrong! by Ciara Flood, illustrated by Lucia Gaggiotti, Farshore,...
View ArticleThey muck you up… Philip Larkin’s lament on sewage in our seas | Letter
Helen Taylor is impressed by the current relevance of the poem Going, Going, commissioned 50 years ago by the Department of the EnvironmentPrompted by your cryptic crossword marking the centenary of...
View ArticleLemn Sissay: ‘I’m not angry any more, but it’s a daily battle not to be’
The poet and broadcaster, 55, on the power of forgiveness, growing up in care, loving poetry from the age of 12 and getting his OBEFrom the age of 12, all I wanted to do was read and write poetry. When...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures by Ernest Dowson
A fin-de-siècle poet’s attempt to retain the beauty of a lost love is built around unsettlingly violent imageryI took her dainty eyes, as wellAs silken tendrils of her hair:And so I made a...
View ArticleThe Arctic by Don Paterson review – poetry from the last-chance saloon
Paterson tackles everything from nuclear apocalypse to the male appendage in this confident, blackly humorous collectionThe Arctic defies categorisation. It is a staggeringly miscellaneous collection,...
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