Guardian first book award 2013: finding the 10th title
Our search for the 10th title for the award longlist threw up nominations of all stripes. But poetry has triumphedIn defiance of some tricky technological issues – for which please accept additional...
View ArticleReaders choose Guardian first book award's 10th finalist
The Shipwrecked House by Claire Trévien marks the second year running that a poetry collection is the public's nominationA "playful and surreal" collection of poems has won a place on the Guardian...
View ArticleGeorge the Poet: 'Go Home' - video
Performance artist George the Poet takes on the government's mobile ad campaign against illegal immigrantsPhil MaynardGeorge Mpanga
View ArticleMay Sinclair: the readable modernist
While the 'Men of 1914' take all the attention, this approachable innovator has been outrageously neglectedThe "Men of 1914" – writers such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot and DH Lawrence – are as...
View ArticleWhat I'm looking out for at Camp Bestival
From John Cooper Clarke to Janine Butcher, Richard Hawley to Mr Tumble, here are this year's most anticipated momentsCamp Bestival is the impish younger brother of the ever-expanding Bestival shindig,...
View ArticleTranslation of Giacomo Leopardi's Zibaldone published
Italians consider him one of their greatest minds, but 19th-century poet and philosopher remains somewhat unknownSchopenhauer referred to him as his "spiritual brother"; Italians consider him one of...
View ArticleThe Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry edited by Ian Hamilton and Jeremy...
Adam Newey is baffled and buoyed by the updated version of the poet's Who's WhoShe's a fickle creature, literary fame. While your Eliots and Audens can rest easy in the knowledge that their celebrity...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Communion
by Claire TrévienThe weather's gained weight,sags its pebbled belly against the tipsof the city's horns.I've slumped, waiting for it to decide,grotesque piñata, whether to burst or rapture itself...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery by Meg Bateman
Published here with its Gaelic version, 'Nighean is Seanmhair aig a' Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta', this is a sharp look at youth and ageThe Edinburgh-born poet Meg Bateman is acclaimed for her work in...
View ArticleCan you improve on F Scott Fitzgerald's improving reading list?
Fitzgerald thought he'd prescribed 22 essential books to his nurse. But your second opinions are encouragedIt was 1936, one of the most difficult periods in F Scott Fitzgerald's life: he had just...
View ArticleNigel Williams's top 10 books about suburbia
From John Betjeman to Zadie Smith, the creator of The Wimbledon Poisoner picks the best depictions of characters on the outskirts of lifeMy new novel is set in suburbia but it is not – exactly - about...
View ArticlePoster poems: Found poetry
Cut-up or collage, the challenge this month is to concoct something new from other people's wordsOne night sometime in the early 1930s a New Jersey doctor left a note for his wife on the door of their...
View ArticleThe Water Stealer by Maurice Riordan – review
The Irish poet comes into his own with this charming collectionLooking for a single image to epitomise post-independence Ireland in his study, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, Daniel Corkery settled...
View ArticleIn search of Shakespeare's dark lady
Without a true story of adultery and retribution, Shakespeare's intimate, sexually charged sonnets might never have been published. Saul Frampton reveals the part played by the playwright's arch rival...
View ArticleThe Saturday Poem: Her Birth
by Rebecca GossHer BirthOn the wall, petunias, painted in Walberswick.I call to you, sayThat's a good omen,that's a good sign,before buckling,gripping the hospital bed.Walberswick is whereI holidayed,...
View ArticleRewind radio: TS Eliot's India; Twenty Minutes – The Planets; In Search of...
The roots of TS Eliot's quintessentially English masterpiece, The Waste Land, lie far from home – in IndiaTS Eliot's India: Many Gods, Many Voices Radio 4 | iPlayerTwenty Minutes: The Planets Radio 3 |...
View ArticleFidelio – Edinburgh festival 2013 review
Festival TheatreJonathan Mills, director of the international festival, has a taste, it would seem, for perversity and outrage when it comes to opera production. During his tenure we have seen the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Lock Me Away by Clive James
An unsettling meditation on the mental disarrangements of encroaching senility manages a rare balancing of poetry and comedyAs a poet, Clive James shares some qualities with the English "Movement"...
View ArticlePatti Smith to pay tribute to poems of Robert Louis Stevenson on stage
Legendary punk singer will read odes that 'spoke to her' as a child, as well as performing Allen Ginsberg's work at EdinburghShe was the dark queen of New York's punk performance scene who lived with...
View ArticleMusic at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury – review
Giving equal weight to the man and his work, this is the perfect introduction to a parson-poet who has fallen out of fashionBiography is one of the most marketable genres of our age, and literary...
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