Readers recommend: songs about nostalgia | Peter Kimpton
Looking back with a bittersweet melancholy? Suggest songs that hark back to the past using the five senses, musical echoes or any other trigger tricks of memory“I don’t like nostalgia, unless it’s...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: Storm by Michael Longley
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeWind-wounded, lopsided nowOur mighty beech has lost an arm.Sammy the demolition...
View ArticleThe Saturday Poem: Albatross (after Baudelaire)
ByJust to amuse themselves, deckhands will often takeA great sea-bird, an albatross – One of those that plane above the ship’s white wakeAs it pitches over briny chasms, shipwrecks, dross.No sooner...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: X by Imtiaz Dharker
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeHand shaking on the stop-cock, she looksat the X, the warning cross,the water-tap...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Sheaves by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The American poet displays uncharacteristic romantic and metaphysical tendencies, while pondering a golden field of wheat and the passing of timeWhere long the shadows of the wind had rolled, Green...
View ArticleSimon Armitage: making poetry pay | Aida Edemariam
In a culture that has consigned poetry to the margins, Armitage has become something very rare: a genuinely popular British poet. Aida Edemariam hits the road with the busiest man in verseOne Indian...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: Last Snowman by Simon Armitage
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeHe drifted south down an Arctic seaway on a plinth of ice, jelly...
View ArticleWole Soyinka dismisses claims he is too grand and old for Oxford poetry chair
Nobel laureate hits back at criticisms from former supporter Melvyn Bragg, who has now switched allegiance to his rival, Simon ArmitageCandidates for one of the most prestigious posts in poetry are...
View ArticleMagazine backtracks on Philip Larkin poem claim
Piece heralded by Times Literary Supplement as unpublished Larkin work is most likely by Hull poet Frank Redpath The Times Literary Supplement has removed from its website a poem that it claimed was an...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: Turbines in January by Colette Bryce
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeA thousand synonyms for windmake up your song.Those busy armsmay juggle any...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: The Rhinoceros by Robert Minhinnick
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeOn the Steel Beach1.Continue reading...
View ArticleProof copy of The Bell Jar found by student expected to fetch thousands
Early version of Sylvia Plath novel, attributed to pseudonym Victoria Lucas, reveals last-minute changes to textIn a literary version of Cash in the Attic, a rare proof edition of Sylvia Plath’s The...
View ArticleNancy Dell'Olio opens Keats festival with call for love letter-writing...
‘I’ve always been inspired by Keats because of his connection with Rome’, says Italian celebrity at reopening of London museumTaking her inspiration from John Keats, who wrote to Fanny Brawne that her...
View ArticleSimon Armitage better for Oxford post | Letter from Melvyn Bragg
Your report on the Oxford professorship of poetry (27 May) claims that I said that Wole Soyinka’s age was a cause for concern. This is not so. Geoffrey Hill (also over 80) was a fine choice. I have had...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: Silent Sea by Rachael Boast
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeWe were the first that ever burstInto that silent sea- ST ColeridgeContinue...
View ArticleThe Boys of Bluehill by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin review – distinctive and...
A murmur of nuns, dens, ruins … Ireland’s secret histories and the pain of the past echo through this powerful collectionThe late Peter Porter had a peculiar blind spot where modern Irish poetry was...
View ArticleSophie Heawood: Think the world of poetry is a gentle one? Sharpen your quills…
‘Poetry is more entertaining than anything Simon Cowell ever produced, and far more vicious’So Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate, might get the job of professor of poetry at Oxford University–...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: At the community acupuncture clinic
by Matthew Siegelthe forms are long ropes for climbinginto the heaven of good health.They are held together with a clip,a little mouth clamped down.Continue reading...
View ArticleEdward Thomas: from Adlestrop to Arras review – the man behind the poet
Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s biography of the first world war poet claims to uncover the trials and torments that made him ‘the father’ of modern British poetryIn this full-scale biography of the Great War...
View ArticleA climate change poem for today: The Question by Theo Dorgan
UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate changeWhen the great ships come back,and come they will,when they stand in the skyall...
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