Reading American Cities: Boston in books
The capital of New England literature offers many a literary guide through its past, present and future. What would you add? Let us know in the comment section and we'll include it in next week's...
View ArticlePoems, palaces and butts of sherry: exhibition brings poets laureate to life
Edinburgh Art Festival show explores appointed poets from Dryden to Duffy noting falling deference to the monarch but revived delight in the perk of the sherry sack"A crate of Oloroso sounds like a...
View ArticleSpoken word: poetry that speaks directly to teenagers
Think poetry is boring? Think again. Frank Adarads introduces us to a thriving modern poetry scene taking the internet and music festivals by stormIt is easy to dismiss poetry as boring. Certainly...
View ArticleEdinburgh fringe 2014 in pictures: Murdo MacLeod's best shots week one
Our man with the cam goes behind the scenes to snap Mark Watson playing darts, Carol Ann Duffy reading Tennyson and Simon Callow talking up the Roman poet Juvenal also featuring Richard Herring...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Look-out by Ian House
This poem for peace eschews flag-waving and forced sentiment in favour of a still moment of ceasefireThis week's poem is Look-out by Ian House. It's from an unusual kind of commemorative anthology, The...
View ArticleJosie Long: Why I love Walt Whitman
'He's up for genuinely exploring his own experiences. That's what I aim for in standup'When I was 12, I sang in my local choir what a cool dude. We would do adaptations of Walt Whitman's poems,...
View ArticleReading American Cities: Washington DC in books
Despite being the political centre of America, literature set in and about Washington is not particularly urban. What would you add? Let us know for next week's readers listBlog: Boston in...
View ArticleRichard Dawkins, Will Self and doodles: picks of the Edinburgh book festival
George RR Martin came back, Jackie Kay and Will Self delighted their crowds and Richard Dawkins talked about his childhood ... A lot can happen in two days at the international book festivalBertha...
View ArticleHebridean poet wins UK's richest poetry prize with debut collection
Niall Campbells Moontide takes £20,000 Edwin Morgan prize with joyous evocation of Scottish island landscapeA 29-year-old poet from the outer Hebrides has won the UKs richest poetry prize with a debut...
View ArticlePhill Jupitus, Hannah Silva, Hollie McNish and the poetry of protest
Thirty years after making his debut as Porky the Poet, Jupitus is still protesting. So whats new in political poetry?A book festival session on protest poetry on Saturday took a nostalgic Phill Jupitus...
View ArticlePoem of the week: And if I did, What Then? by George Gascoigne | Carol Rumens
Wryly addressing a failure of romantic fidelity, with a very modern suspicion of work that 'smells of the inkhorn', this 16th-century lyric still fizzesGeorge Gascoigne (1539?1577) had a disappointing...
View ArticleChaucer in 2014: Patience Agbabi and Lavinia Greenlaw's fresh takes -...
Agbabi updates the Canterbury Tales with contemporary characters, and Greenlaw reinvents the poetry of Troilus and CriseydeListen to more of our daily festival podcastsContinue reading...
View ArticleChicago: reading the midwestern metropolis of American literature
From the socially tough novels of naturalism, to intellectually demanding modernism, this city provides a thrilling challenge to the reader. What would you add? Let us know in the comment section and...
View ArticleIranian poet and women's rights advocate Simin Behbahani dies
'Lioness of Iran' who was nominated twice for the Nobel prize in literature dies aged 87 in Tehran hospitalFamed Iranian poet Simin Behbahani, who wrote of the joys of love, demanded equal rights for...
View ArticleNew Seamus Heaney collection to be published
An anthology of later work by the Nobel laureate will feature a last poem, In Time, written for his granddaughter SíofraSeamus Heaney obituary by Neil CorcoranA poem written for his granddaughter and...
View ArticleThe Moon Before Morning by WS Merwin review beautiful
Merwin brings themes of memory, the natural world and love of place rapturously to lifeWilliam Merwin is curiously under-read in Britain. Not so in his native US, where he was until recently poet...
View ArticleSlam poetry: a celebration in diversity
Searching for an art form that allows you to share your true identity with a crowd? You need slam poetry as site member sunsetskyfire reveals during our Amnesty teen takeover, slam poetry attracts the...
View ArticleThe Poets' Daughters review a meticulous double portrait
An elegantly interlocking biography of Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge shows us that greatness casts a long shadowThey might have believed that children should run "wild and free", but William...
View ArticleThe Saturday Poem: The Birthday
by Michael LongleyThis is our first birthday without you,My twin, July the twenty-seventh.Where are you now? I'm looking out for you.Have you been skinny-dipping at AllaranWhere the jellies won't...
View ArticlePoem of the week: A Work of Fiction by Louise Glück
Glück's prose-poem combines meditation with anecdote as she remembers the moment of loss after finishing a novelThe expansive, leisurely poems in the new collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night, by...
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