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Vita Sackville-West's erotic verse to her lover emerges from 'intoxicating...
Scholar finds writer's poem to mistress Violet Trefusis as it falls out of book during conservation work at her Sissinghurst homeWhen Vita Sackville-West married the diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson in the...
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In praise of... English eggs: From the archive, 30 April 1912
The Manchester Guardian's resident poet pens an ode to the British fowl(According to a Reuter message from Adelaide, a team of six South Australian pullets has established a new world's record for...
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Bodleian buys 'significant' Gerard Manley Hopkins manuscript
Oxford library purchases draft of poet's 'Binsey Poplars', in which he mourns the destruction of local trees, for almost £50,000A manuscript of "Binsey Poplars", Gerard Manley Hopkins's celebrated...
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Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) opens to public
Online archive of more than 2m books, documents, photographs and artworks from all over US now available to view for freeGold paint glowing, there's an illuminated manuscript page from The Book of...
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Message for Mars: Nasa seeks haikus
Nasa is looking for haikus in the form of a 'message for Mars' that will accompany their Maven mission in NovemberI have not entered a literary contest since I was 11, when I was utterly convinced my...
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Found at Sea by Andrew Greig – review
A book-length poetic sequence set in remotest Orkney conjures up images of lives lived in isolation"And then went down to the ship, / Set keel to breaker, forth on the godly sea," runs the epigraph...
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Why we're watching: Ryan Van Winkle
The poet, 35, has created an intense one-on-one poetry experienceVan Winkle can't be his real name. It is. I triple-checked. The American poet is based in Edinburgh and his first collection, Tomorrow,...
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Arts head: Sara Blair-Manning, the John Clare Trust and Cottage
The heritage chief talks access to poetry, volunteers, and why Maria Miller is wrong about cultural organisations in the regionsHi Sara, can you tell us about the John Clare Trust and Cottage?The John...
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Rory MacLean's top 10 books on Burma
From George Orwell to Aung San Suu Kyi, author Rory MacLean looks at 10 books that chart the country's tumultuous historyBurma is three lands for the British reader. First, it's the old colony of...
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Carol Ann Duffy unveils poems inspired by Cambridge's museums
Jo Shapcott, Jackie Kay, Don Paterson and seven other poets join laureate's Thresholds project to find poetry in subjects ranging from the first bird to slaveryFrom National Poet of Wales Gillian...
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Farewell Taylor Mead: Warhol muse and saint of the avant garde
A tribute to 'the last beat poet', the man whose buttocks were immortalised in a notorious Warhol movieThe day I met Taylor Mead, the Andy Warhol star, underground poet and actor who has died aged 88,...
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Muscovy by Matthew Francis – review
Matthew Francis's modernist tricks of the light are full of suspense and charismaBetween 1663 and 1665 Andrew Marvell travelled round Russia on a fantastical and, as it turned out, pointless trade...
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Poster poems: the erotic
Call it lust, lunging or love, actually – now is your chance to seduce us with your celebration of the eroticThe recent discovery of a previously unknown explicit love poem by Vita Sackville-West to...
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The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth Edition edited by...
If there is one thing we learn above all else from this book, it is that poetry is something people do everywhere, and have been doing ever since there was languageIt was James Dyson, inventor of not...
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The Saturday Poem: Soul Song
by Michael Symmons RobertsSoul SongDid you hear of the man who hada woman tattooed on his back:her thighs on his, calf to calf, tapereddown to ankles, heels; her slender armsetched on the pales of his...
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Poem of the week: The Unquiet Grave
Concise and musical, this is one of the most popular versions of a much-reworked ballad of aching love and lossThis week's poem is among the most beautiful of the "Child" ballads. It's an unusually...
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Arts head: James Runcie, Southbank Centre
The head of literature and the spoken word talks criticism, commissioning and why the greatest risk is to play it safeHi James, can you tell us a bit about your role as head of literature and the...
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The Saturday Poem: Old Father Thames
by John AgardOld Father Thamesof the flowing patriarchal locks See how the Ganges still breathesin your West India docks. See how the Nile's distant kissstill finds the cheeks of your metropolisOld...
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Does Prozac help artists be creative?
More than 40 million people globally take an SSRI antidepressant, among them many writers and musicians. But do they hamper the creative process, extinguishing the spark that produces great art, or do...
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Poem of the week: Sonnet 30 by Robert Sidney
A lover's lament to personified 'Absence', the melancholy here is contained by a remarkably elegant rhetorical techniqueThis week's poem comes from a collection of sonnets, songs, pastorals, elegies...
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