Peach Pig by Cecilia Knapp review – truth becomes her
The debut collection by a former young people’s laureate for London is arrestingly frank in its exposure of everyday worries and profound melancholyThere is a deliberately overexposed quality to...
View ArticleWhere to start with: Sylvia Plath
You will have heard of the great American poet, but how much of her work have you actually read? This handy primer suggests some good ways inWithin Sylvia Plath’s short life, she produced works that,...
View ArticleMichael Asser obituary
My husband, Michael Asser, who has died aged 80, was a librarian who rose to be head of Oxfordshire county council’s large multi-disciplinary department of museums, arts, libraries and leisure before,...
View ArticleTom Mason obituary
My friend Tom Mason, who has died aged 74, was a senior lecturer in English at the University of Bristol and an author of books and essays on literature. He and I collaborated on two books, Selected...
View ArticleOn my radar: Derek Owusu’s cultural highlights
The poet and novelist on Chuck Klosterman’s take on the 90s, time-travel as a never-ending party and how Beyoncé helped him embrace albumsBorn in London in 1988, Derek Owusu is a poet, writer and one...
View ArticleTS Eliot’s Waste Land was a barren place. But at least a spirit of optimism...
A century on, the epic masterpiece speaks to today’s anxieties about loss of traditionHe promised “a new start”.I made no comment. What should I resent?Continue reading...
View ArticleTS Eliot’s women: the unsung female voices of The Waste Land
As the epic poem turns 100, devotee Jude Rogers examines the work’s thrilling, intriguing female characters and the women who inspired Eliot, including his first love, Emily Hale, to whom he wrote more...
View ArticleGerald Stern, prize-winning American lyrical poet, dies aged 97
New Jersey’s first poet laureate, Stern wrote about his childhood, Judaism, mortality and the wonders of the contemplative lifeGerald Stern, one of the US’s most loved and respected poets, who wrote...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Poetry for Supper by RS Thomas
The contested virtues of spontaneity and slog, when it comes to producing art, spark off a lively pub debate‘Listen, now, verse should be as naturalAs the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Heritage Aesthetics by Anthony Anaxagorou; Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen; Cane, Corn & Gully by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa; Slide by Mark PajakHeritage Aesthetics by...
View ArticleWhat connects The Bear star Ebon Moss-Bachrach and poet Simon Armitage?
By a series of cunning connections involving Lena Dunham and Forward prize winner Caleb Femi, we speed all the way from a Chicago diner to the UK poet laureateSometimes you suddenly start seeing an...
View ArticleClouded Reveries review – ode to otherworldly Irish poet with a scalpel of a pen
Ciara Nic Chormaic’s documentary following writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa offers an often literal visual rendering of the poet’s ethereal perspectiveTo listen to how writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa describes...
View ArticlePoem of the week: No Remedy by Drummond Allison
A complicated meditation on vexed personal relationships is leavened with energetic inventionNo remedy, my retrospective friend,We’ve found no remedy;Nor from these fields the briared and barbed wire...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Claim by Jane Draycott
A meditation on the arduous labour of the gold rush resonates with modern-day environmental destructionSo many came to that portionof the claim, the water not too deep there,and left with tiny grains...
View ArticleJoelle Taylor’s C+nto & Othered Poems, about butch lesbian culture, wins...
In the UK’s only dedicated awards for LGBTQ+ literature, Adam Zmith’s history of poppers and children’s book Nen and the Lonely Fisherman were also honouredSpoken word poet Joelle Taylor has won the...
View Article‘An acutely difficult time’: companies respond to Arts Council funding decisions
In our third set of case studies exploring the impact of Arts Council England’s new funding round, we hear from Eclipse in Leeds, Oldham Coliseum and Hexham’s Bloodaxe BooksOrganisations head into the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Foxglove Country by Zaffar Kunial
A complicated pastoral explores the semantic undergrowth hidden in the English languageSometimes I like to hide in the wordfoxgloves - in the middle of foxgloves.The xgl is hard to say, out of the...
View ArticleThe Thirteenth Angel by Philip Gross review – on Earth and in heaven
Gross’s attractive intelligence and questing eye are to the fore in his 27th collection, a contender for the TS Eliot prizeMastery is what you would wish for in a 27th collection and it is what you...
View Article‘That orange, it made me so happy’: 50 poems to boost your mood
Humour, beauty, solace ... the right poem can bring a ray of sunshine. Andrew Motion, Kayo Chingonyi, Tishani Doshi and other poets recommend the verses that lift their spiritsBrian BilstonPoet and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Twa Corbies by Anonymous
In this possibly very ancient Scottish ballad, two carrion crows cast a cold and hungry eye over a dead knightAs I was walking all alane,I heard twa corbies making a mane;The tane unto the t’other...
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