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Oulipo: freeing literature by tightening its rules
By imposing multiple restrictions on the processes of writing, this group of French writers seek to find what literature might be, rather than what it isYou might think Raymond Queneau was guilty of a...
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Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer – review
The letters that passed between two great poets over 25 years are essential reading for anyone interested in making poetryAt first glance the friendship between Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer, whose...
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The Machine/The Masque of Anarchy – review
Campfield Market Hall/Albert Hall, Manchester International festival★★★/★★★★★Like all the best festivals, the one in Manchester opens up the city. But while Alex Poots, the festival's director, says...
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Poem of the week: Elegy by Sidney Keyes
Candid and unsentimental, the teenage poet's tribute to his departed grandfather is striking in its originalitySidney Keyes was a few weeks old when his mother died of peritonitis, and his father,...
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Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and ST Coleridge, edited by Fiona...
It may be the scourge of students, but a collection that deserves to be thought of as poetry's punk moment is pure pleasure second time roundHaving had a child recently go through A-level English, my...
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In defence of mumbling: there's a poetry in our quietness | Laura Barton
The BBC's Tony Hall has got it wrong. The world has got too loud, but I sense the whisper of a quiet revolutionEverything seems loud these days. Ringtones, radios, car horns. Bus passengers bellowing...
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The top 10 literary works about ancestors
Philip Larkin blamed them for everything while Darwin took the longer view. Novelist Daisy Hildyard chooses the best poems, books and plays about our human inheritanceI was thinking about ancestors...
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William Blake's cottage up for sale for first time in 85 years
For a mere £650,000 you can own the Grade II cottage in west Sussex where the writer and artist worked on his poem MiltonThe west Sussex cottage that William Blake lived in from 1800 to 1803, when he...
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Letter: The girls of West Suffolk county grammar fell under Oliver Bernard's...
I had the good fortune to attend the West Suffolk county grammar school for girls in Bury St Edmunds in the 1960s when Oliver Bernard joined the staff. Those of us studying English and drama had...
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Q&A: John Cooper Clarke
'Being unapologetic means never having to say you're sorry'John Cooper Clarke, 64, grew up in Salford. He worked as a lab technician before becoming a performance poet and touring with the Sex Pistols,...
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The Divine Comedy by Dante, translated by Clive James – review
Clive James's translation of Dante is an impressive featPoets can't help themselves from translating Dante, even if they are only going to do small chunks, as Byron did, having a stab at Francesca of...
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Poem of the week: Actaeon by George Szirtes
A version of the Greek myth, refocused through the eyes of an ageing 21st-century man, retells the story suggestively slantFrom Victorian times at least, women writers have been retelling classical...
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Let's seek inspiration from Dorothy Parker – and revive the salon | Christina...
When members of the Algonquin Round Table had soirees they didn't have 'outcomes' in mind. They wanted an argumentOn Thursday night I hosted a salon. If that sounds a bit pretentious, I'm afraid it...
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Hannah Lowe's top poetry writing tips
Forward prize-shortlisted poet Hannah Lowe, who will be judging this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition, offers her top tips to young poetry writers1. Read!Read lots of different poems,...
View ArticlePoetry Lines at London's Southbank Centre – audio slideshow
London's South Bank is filled with poetry representing each of London's 33 boroughs this summer. Imtiaz Dharker and Cheryl Moskowitz read poems inspired by the City of London and WandsworthDavid...
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Mind by Michael Rosen
The former children's laureate responds in verse to the fresh princeI don't mind waitingI do mind being told I'm waitingI don't mind good newsI do mind being told which news is goodI don't mind being...
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The poet laureate's on holiday – can you write a poem fit for a prince?
In the absence of an official poem from Carol Ann Duffy, please mark the new royal arrival with a poem of your ownCheering crowds, waving flags, commemorative crockery– all that's missing to mark the...
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Summer voyages: In Pursuit of Spring by Edward Thomas
Written just before the first world war, this vivid account of a journey through the English countryside is a vivid and poignant portrait of a vanished ageIn Pursuit of Spring is the classic literary...
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What is Patricia Lockwood's poem Rape Joke really saying?
The New York poet's verse, which has gone viral, is an oblique mini-masterpiece. But is it an attack on rape jokes – or about something entirely different?Wow. Patricia Lockwood is damn clever. With...
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The Professor of Poetry by Grace McCleen – review
Grace McCleen's second novel is a deft campus romance between an aloof poetry professor and her one-time mentorProfessor Elizabeth Stone, the heroine of Grace McCleen's incandescent second novel, is a...
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