Andrew Motion wins Ted Hughes award for poetry work about returning soldiers
Former poet laureate wins annual prize established by his successor for radio project’s ‘skilful shaping’ and ‘magical transformation’ of conversationsAndrew Motion has won the Ted Hughes award for new...
View ArticleResurrection in literature – quiz
This Easter weekend our thoughts turn to rebirth, new life and chocolate. But can you rise again to the challenge of our resurrection books quiz? Continue reading...
View ArticlePoster poems: Pathways
As the spring begins to beckon us outside, this month we’re on the trail of your metrical feetThe writer Robert MacFarlane has carved a trail in the minds of the book-reading public in recent years,...
View ArticleOrdinary Light by Tracy K Smith review - powerful meditation on daughters and...
The Pulitzer-winning poet tries to answer her mother’s question – “What were you searching for?” – in a lyrical prose work in which food plays a significant part“Did I ever wonder who my mother used to...
View ArticleWaving or drowning? Amy Jenkins on her debt to Stevie Smith: 'this is not...
Stevie Smith is ripe for rediscovery – not only her hair-raisingly original work, but her rejection of a life dominated by men. Her Novel on Yellow Paper inspired Amy Jenkins to begin writing and...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Corkscrew Hill Photo
by Roger Philip Dennis Winner of this year’s Poetry Society’s National Poetry CompetitionAll afternoon she counts the soundsuntil the fly-specked room crackles with silence. Even the song thrush...
View ArticleWhy did we see Don Draper reading Dante’s Inferno in Mad Men?
The books that the show’s characters read are more than just period props – they offer eagle-eyed fans an extra insight into their thinking. As we get ready to close the chapter on the final series, a...
View ArticleStevie Smith, steel soul of the suburbs
Rachel Cooke reviews the life and career of the singular English poet and novelist, whose first book, Novel on Yellow Paper, is reissuedStevie Smith was the first poet I read. I can’t remember how I...
View ArticleAmber Tamblyn's Dark Sparkler: an unsettling meditation on early fame
The former child star performed her new book of poems with Yo La Tengo in New York, taking a gimlet-eyed aim at the pressures Hollywood places on women“A child star actress is a double-edged dildo,”...
View ArticleMalcolm Bennett obituary
Forthright and unpredictable poet and author, he co-created the noir-inspired pulp magazine Brute!The poet and author Malcolm Bennett, who has died aged 56 from as yet unexplained causes, used his...
View ArticleWhere Go the Boats? A poem in a little child’s head | Letter
Michael Rosen’s moving piece on the government’s view of how poetry should be taught (Letter from a curious parent, 7 April) brought back to me one of those moments in any teacher’s career when they...
View ArticleClive James to publish new essay collection this summer
Latest Readings will be the second book this year from the writer who was diagnosed with terminal leukemia in 2010Just weeks after his most recent poetry collection hit the shops, Clive James’s...
View ArticleA tale of two poets, Thom Gunn and Elizabeth Bishop
After a rocky first meeting, the two became friends. Colm Toíbín traces the similarities in their outlook and describes how, by virtue of their poems, they both moved from self-effacement into the...
View ArticleDisinformation by Frances Leviston review – a bracing and exciting collection
The scope and seriousness of Leviston’s second book invite comparison with Elizabeth Bishop and Richard Wilbur What do we think we know, and how, and what are we to make of it? In contemporary poetry...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Flair
by Elaine Feinstein That whole wet summer, I listened to Louis Armstrong.Imagined him arriving in New York after Funky Buttdance halls, wearing hick clothes: thosehigh-top shoes with hooks, and...
View ArticleGeorge the Poet on protesting with poetry
‘Some people use poetry to express heartache, but I use it to broadcast a message’. Below: three of the best political poemsI’ve been writing poems for 10 years. It started with rap music: I was 14...
View Article‘Art gets things out in the open’ – young British Muslim artists tell their...
What does the work of young Muslim artists tell us about cultural tensions in the UK over the past 15 years? As a new generation of poets, playwrights and painters emerges, we meet four who are...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by...
A stately sonnet, composed early in the industrial revolution, renders the crowded sprawl of the metropolis as a Romantic idyllComposed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802Earth has not anything...
View ArticleGünter Grass obituary
Nobel-winning German author who arrived on the literary scene in 1959 with the bestselling novel The Tin Drum• Günter Grass, Nobel-winning German novelist, dies aged 87• In quotes: 12 of the best• His...
View ArticleGünter Grass, Nobel-winning German novelist, dies aged 87
Author of The Tin Drum and figure of enduring controversyGünter Grass in quotes: 12 of the bestHis four key worksObituary: Günter Grass, 1927-2015The writer Günter Grass, who broke the silences of the...
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