Life in Squares review: ‘absurd, beautiful characters in a ridiculously...
Art, literature, exquisite interiors and copious copulation – do try to keep up with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury setIf only their passions had been as muted as their palettes – how different life...
View ArticleAnn Thomas obituary
My mother, Ann Thomas, who has died aged 88, began writing poetry when she was six, although she did not produce her first book of poetry, A Safe House, until 1996. Her second book, All Summer’s Ahead,...
View ArticleReaders recommend: songs about farming | Peter Kimpton
Ranches of cows, horses or sheep? Fields of rice, tea or wheat? Organise your orchard and pick an agricultural crop of songs to make a mass musical harvestWhy Brownlee left, and where he went,Is a...
View ArticleRalph Steadman, Ceri Levy and climate change poems – books podcast
We join Ralph Steadman in his studio as he teams up with Ceri Levy to put birds threatened with extinction in the frame, and hear how poets are responding to climate chaos Continue reading...
View ArticleFrom John Fowles with love: how the author’s first true romance and lost poem...
In 1951 John Fowles was an assistant teacher at Poitiers University when he fell seriously in love for the first time. More than 60 years on, Mike Abbott meets the student he fell for and uncovers the...
View ArticleHappiness by Jack Underwood review – ambitious, energetic poetry
A debut collection about the problems of love and selfhood reveals an unconventional talentTo have a tattoo done, Michael Donaghy wrote, requires “a whim of iron”. With Happiness, Jack Underwood’s...
View ArticleThe Penguin Book of Russian Poetry review – the importance of rhyme and reason
An ambitious anthology spanning 200 years is welcome – though some of the translators need to work on their rhymingThis anthology is ambitious – in scope, biographical apparatus and in what it expects...
View ArticleJourneys in literature: Moon Country by Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell
Two poets’ travels in Iceland, through its ancient sagas as well as its contemporary landscape, cast a disorienting but compelling spell I’m lucky enough to travel for work, to a jumble of far and...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Someone Else's Song by Kamala Das
The Indian poet’s fine handling of lyric form and metaphorical language combine powerfully in this elegaic, musical workI am a million, million peopleTalking all at once, with voicesRaised in clamour,...
View ArticleGrief demands more of a man than a stiff upper lip | Letters
Michael Bywater (When a manly pat on the back won’t do, 1 August) correctly points to the salience of culture in shaping our responses to grief, but when he writes “We have grown to distrust...
View ArticleRobert Conquest obituary
Historian and poet who exposed the full extent of Stalin’s terror during the Soviet eraAmong the western historians of the Soviet Union, Robert Conquest, who has died aged 98, had a unique place. In...
View ArticleThe lives and limericks of Robert Conquest
The poet and historian died on 3 August, having published more than 20 books on Soviet history. But how many people know about his love of a silly rhyme?A week during which the last surviving Dambuster...
View ArticlePoster poems: seeking refuge and asylum
War, poverty, and famine are driving a new wave of human migration. Please share your poems about seeking refugeThe Channel tunnel is besieged by the dispossessed. In the Mediterranean, even the Irish...
View ArticleHow Sara Baume made it on to the Guardian first book award longlist
Spill Simmer Falter Wither, the Irish novelist’s tale of one man and his dog, has been chosen from the many books suggested by Guardian readers. Here we take a look at some of the highlights from an...
View ArticleHen Harrier Poems by Colin Simms review – a remarkable tribute to an...
Ahead of the shotguns booming out for the ‘Glorious’ Twelfth, this striking collection underlines the plight of these beautiful hawks and the campaign to save themBetween 1837 and 1840 on the Glengarry...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: A Fable for the 21st Century
by Tishani Doshi Existing is plagiarism — EM CioranThere is no end to unknowing. We read papers. Wrap fish in yesterday’s news,spread squares on the floor so puppy can peeon Putin’s face. Even the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Decline and Fall by Nic Aubury
A poetic parody of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Major-General’s Song with its own satirical target – the demotion of classics from the literary curriculum(A cautionary tale which may or may not be sung to...
View ArticleMy Mother’s House explores death, grief and memories as a Minecraft poem
Poet Victoria Bennett and digital artist Adam Clarke’s ‘poem-world’ shows popular video game as a platform for art and expressionMy Mother’s House is the most moving poem I’ve ever played. It’s the...
View ArticleLee Harwood obituary
Author of more than 20 books of poetry who also translated the work of Tristan TzaraLee Harwood, who has died aged 76, created a uniquely open and intimate body of poetry. Committed to describing...
View Article
