Mourners pay tribute to Günter Grass: "One of the most important authors of...
Tributes are paid to Günter Grass on Monday in his city of birth, Gdansk, and German hometown of Lübeck following the death of the Nobel prize winning author who died today in hospital on Monday....
View ArticleWhy live, when you can livestream? | Peter Bradshaw
The Periscope app, sold to Twitter for $100m, turns us into instant broadcasters. I’m hookedThe other day I read a description of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace: “fifty percent selfie sticks, fifty...
View ArticleMark Bowden's composition that will take you out of this world
A Violence of Gifts, Mark Bowden’s ambitious new piece, takes inspiration from the latest scientific findings about the origins of the universe. Paired with Haydn’s Creation and Holst’s The Planets in...
View ArticleIf I were prime minister for a day, I’d make paying tax a joy | Ian McMillan
And because everyone would pay it, Britain would have a library on every street corner. Then the Queen could go in and borrow a copy of Rights of Man. Joy!In the early hours of my day in charge of the...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: The Laughing Receptionist in the GP’s Surgery
by Paul DurcanWhen I nip into the GP’s surgeryTo pick up a repeat prescriptionFor anti-depressants and sleeping pillsI find the fair-haired receptionistOn her elbows with laughter,For no reason other...
View ArticlePoem of the week: from Briggflatts by Basil Bunting
The opening stanzas to this landmark work show how much can be contained in a few dense but ringingly musical linesBriggflattsIBrag, sweet tenor bull,descant on Rawthey’s madrigal, each pebble its part...
View ArticleRace, wit and mansplaining: female authors debate at Los Angeles books festival
Trying to address the literary world’s reputation as an old boys’ club, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books included a number of panels in which women discussed humour, race and their own writing“I...
View ArticleSenses stirred by blackthorn’s snow
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: Ephemeral yet eternal, the blackthorn blossom is so emotive it pulls at all the senses“Into the scented woods we’ll go,” wrote the poet and novelist Mary Webb, “And see the...
View ArticlePop-up events showcase rare literary treasures around the globe
This Thursday, antiquarian book fairs will spring up in locations the world over – from a woolshed in the Australian bush to the top of a Chicago skyscraper. Here is all you need to know, plus some of...
View ArticleWorld Book Night: how poetry helps reluctant readers take flight
This year, the annual event to promote reading is giving away an anthology of poems for the first time, and the response has been extraordinarily positive“Is it mine? Can I keep it?” Kieran has just...
View ArticleReaders recommend: songs about ambition | Peter Kimpton
Hopes, dreams and plans … can they be hardened into action? Whether they stay as fantasy or become reality, suggest songs that capture what we want to become“Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine,” said...
View ArticlePoems of our Earth – in pictures
From William Blake’s Robin Red Breast in a Cage to Benjamin Zephaniah’s National Anthem, Wendy Cooling and Piet Grobler share poems that celebrate the beauty of the world – but also point out where...
View ArticleRupert Brooke’s patriotism offers an antidote to Ukip | David Boyle
The poet died a century ago, but his vision of a gentle Englishness – articulating something about a nation that lacks a clear idea of itself – has a new importance today“That there’s some corner of a...
View ArticleAtthis review – Sappho’s passions in a subtle song cycle
Linbury Studio, LondonGeorg Friedrich Haas’s 2009 work, sung with authority by Claire Booth, describes the unstable trajectory of the poet’s relationship with a younger womanIn November, the Royal...
View ArticleFaber New Poets by Rachael Allen, Will Burns, Zaffar Kunial and Declan Ryan –...
Goonhilly, John Coltrane and the River Jhelum inspire four fledging talentsIf, as the aphorist once quipped, wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly, young poets have a tough...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: In the Vicinity of the Crank-House
by Anthony ThwaiteI am becoming a connoisseur of walking sticksComparing my own stout stump with the slender ferrule,The harsh metal wand, or the pair of hospital crutches.Not lameness or amputation,...
View ArticleFirst world war poet Rupert Brooke dies: from the archive, 27 April 1915
The death of Rupert Brooke leaves us with a miserable sense of waste and futility, yet it is impossible to withhold even the most precious personalitiesThe Soldier, by Rupert BrookeThe news that RUPERT...
View ArticleThe Young Romantics poem of the year 2015
Read the poem that won Daniella Cugini first prize in the Keats-Shelley Young Romantics prize: PresencePlus find out about the other winners in the competition judged by Carol Ann DuffyEarlier this...
View ArticlePoem of the Week: Aggression Diary by Annemarie Austin
The art here is in the omission, whereby the ordinary is made mysterious, its strangeness exposed, and at the heart we find an unspoken act of violenceAggression DiaryThey had become concerned about...
View ArticleKate Tempest album cover added to National Portrait Gallery collection
Dav Stewart’s photograph for Tempest’s album Everybody Down will go on display in the exhibition Picture the PoetA 2013 photograph of a pensive Kate Tempest is the latest album cover image to be...
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