Kim Moore wins Forward poetry prize for ‘phenomenal’ poems about everyday sexism
All the Men I Never Married took the £10,000 award for best collection, while Stephanie Sy-Quia and Nick Laird were also winners in other categoriesKim Moore’s “phenomenal and powerful” collection of...
View ArticleMichael Rosen writes poem in tribute to NHS nurses after Covid recovery
Children’s author who spent 48 days in hospital with virus calls NHS ‘a brilliant and wonderful invention’Michael Rosen doesn’t remember much of his 48 days in an intensive care ward when he was struck...
View ArticleThe best poetry books of 2022
Meditations on modern Britain, 100 queer poems, and evocations of the natural world are among this year’s standout collections• The best books of 2022The year began with Joelle Taylor’s C+nto &...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Holy Sonnet XIX by John Donne
The great love poet is here locked in an anxious wrestle with his religious conscienceOh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:Inconstancy unnaturally hath begottA constant habit; that when I would notI...
View ArticlePhilip Larkin’s letter about the Ilkley screamer | Brief letters
Ted Hughes poetry reading | Avanti trains | Hoarding toes | A measure of squidge | Deep dive into jargonThe incident of the audience member screaming at the Ilkley festival when Cave Birds was...
View ArticleFor Ukrainians, poetry isn't a luxury, it's a necessity during war |...
Poetry is fulfilling a very human need – to make sense of the senseless and tell their stories“There is so much poetry coming out of Ukraine now that I’m barely keeping up with it,” the Ukrainian...
View ArticleThe best recent poetry – review roundup
Embark by Sean O’Brien; Liquid Flesh: New and Selected Poems by Brenda Shaughnessy; Visions & Feed by Maria Sledmere; Improvised Explosive Device by Arji Manuelpillai; Forevernoon by Ásta Fanney...
View ArticleThe unconscious suffering of the replacement child | Letters
Kristina Schellinski on Louise Glück and Annie Ernaux, and Jim Cosgrove on why overdoing the labelling of children as ‘replacements’ is offensiveRe Mary Adams’ letter (Louise Glück and the trauma of...
View ArticleOn my radar: Colm Tóibín’s cultural highlights
The Irish writer on New York’s hidden music scene, poetry and the wonders of PeruBorn in County Wexford, Ireland in 1955, author Colm Tóibín studied at University College Dublin and published his first...
View ArticleThe best books to give as presents this Christmas
Authors and Observer critics choose the books they will be giving as gifts this year – and the one they’d like to find in their own stockingAuthor of Love Marriage (Virago)Continue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: 7th Nerve by Rhiannon Hooson
A hi-tech medical exam draws its subject back to a more archaic, essential experienceContinue reading...
View ArticleThe Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis review – a classic...
This behind-the-scenes look at an epic poem depicts details of TS Eliot’s life and his reliance on Ezra Pound’s editorial inputA century ago, a man with a double life published one of the most...
View ArticleDon’t give up your day job: how Australia’s favourite authors are making ends...
According to new research, writing books brings in $18,200 a year on average. This leaves the celebrated authors we spoke to hustling seven days a weekGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIf you...
View Article‘I’ve been banned since the beginning’: Jason Reynolds talks to Joseph Coelho
The UK children’s laureate and America’s ambassador for young people’s literature discuss finding a voice and how to get kids readingJoseph Coelho and Jason Reynolds have plenty in common. Both are...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Grey Evening by DH Lawrence
The desolation of losing a lover inspires a forceful and imaginative lament for their lossWhen you went, how was it you carried with youMy missal book of fine, flamboyant Hours?My book of turrets and...
View ArticleHans Magnus Enzensberger obituary
German poet, writer and editor determined that West Germany should not ignore its Nazi pastThere was a touch of Socrates about the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who has died aged 93. While...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Zucchini by Peter Balakian
Sensuous memories of his grandmother’s cooking leave the poet reflecting on the struggles she enduredMy grandmother cored themwith a serrated knifeContinue reading...
View ArticleThe classic ocean poetry taking on troubling new meanings
We hear the call of the sea in poems from Coleridge and Eliot to Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, but those words also sound a warning – if only we would listenTS Eliot wrote The Dry Salvages as second world war...
View Article2023 in books: highlights for the year ahead
The best fiction and nonfiction to look forward to in the new year, from Zadie Smith to Simon Schama, Margaret Atwood to Rory StewartContinue reading...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Self-Unconscious by Thomas Hardy
A curiously jaunty account of the bright life of nature a man misses while wrapped up in his own plansAlong the wayHe walked that day,Watching shapes that reveries limn,And seldom heHad eyes to seeThe...
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