Letter: Charles Tomlinson obituary
To his undergraduate students at Bristol in the 1960s, Charles Tomlinson was that rare thing, an acute literary critic who was also a working poet and a consummate practitioner of his art.In a School...
View ArticlePoem of the week: from The Bard. A Pindaric Ode by Thomas Gray
With invigorating pace and rhythm, British history is presented as a vivid mix of tragedy and triumphII.1 (Strophe)Weave the warp, and weave the woof,The winding-sheet of Edward’s race.Give ample room,...
View ArticleThe bucolic noble savage – alive in my head?
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The thrush’s gaze was defiant, proud – but I wondered if I read into it what I wanted to seeThe thrush held its prize in its beak, a worm plucked from the hedge, like a dog...
View ArticleMira Gonzalez’s poems are quietly defining texts of the digital era
The young poet has become unwittingly involved in a social media stir about Lily Allen’s marriage. What’s all the fuss about?It was the Instagram image that launched a thousand rumours. Three weeks...
View ArticleUnseen Ezra Pound poem sold at auction
An unpublished pastiche sonnet written to friend Isabel Codrington, extolling her ‘rare worth’, fetches £7,500An unpublished poem by Ezra Pound, in which the American poet extols in an Elizabethan...
View ArticlePJ Kavanagh obituary
Poet, actor, broadcaster and author of the memoir The Perfect StrangerOn St George’s Day 1951, the second day of the battle of the Imjin river, Second Lieutenant Patrick Kavanagh of the Royal Ulster...
View ArticleReaders recommend: songs about dogs | Peter Kimpton
Wild wolves to whippets, fleet foxes to patient pointers, fluffy, ferocious or faithful, give your canon of canine songs a walk - it’s time they had their dayWoof! Their eyes roll, they wag and...
View ArticlePoster poems: the alphabet
These most fundamental components of all writing have long fascinated poets, and spell out your challenge for SeptemberIf William Carlos Williams’s “a poem is a small (or large) machine made out of...
View ArticleLeading writers hope to shift refugee debate with crowdfunded anthology
Monica Ali, William Boyd and Marina Lewycka among the authors recruited with aim of shifting public perspectivesMajor authors including Monica Ali, William Boyd and Marina Lewycka are lining up to...
View ArticlePhysical by Andrew McMillan review – hymns to intimacy
This collection boldly assesses the state of modern masculinity‘What is masculinity if not taking the weight / of a boy and straining it from oneself?” In “Strongman”, Andrew McMillan takes his young...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Mercies
by Don PatersonShe might have had months left of her dog-years,but to be who? She’d grown light as a nestand spent the whole day under her long earslistening to the bad radio in her breast.On the steel...
View ArticlePoem of the week: In His Other House by Jee Leong Koh
Exile brings severance, but it can also bring confidence: moving from Singapore to New York enabled Koh to find himself as a gay man and a poetIn His Other HouseIn this house there is no need to wait...
View ArticleNational Book Festival signals optimistic future for storytelling
Panels on publishing affirmed literature’s value, while new poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera reveals his first project, La Casa de Colores, a collaborative poemThe theme of this year’s National Book...
View ArticleWhite poet used Chinese pen name to gain entry into Best American Poetry
Editors kept Yi-Fen Chou’s poem in the 2015 anthology, published today, even after the author revealed his real identity to be Michael Derrick HudsonControversy has enveloped the prestigious Best...
View ArticleFinding minority writers isn't 'racial nepotism'. It's the cure for bigotry |...
A recent spat involving the Best American Poets 2015 anthology reveals the extent of problems around diversity and cultural appropriation in literatureIn America, the work of writers of color is...
View ArticleLetter: Lee Harwood was a very fine poet and a very good man
I worked very closely with Lee Harwood when he and I were elected chair and treasurer of the Poetry Society in 1976-77, a time of great upheaval and bitter disputes. We were each active in the Labour...
View ArticleNew Seamus Heaney translation to be published next year
Nobel laureate began work on a version of the Aeneid’s Book VI, which describes the hero’s journey to the underworld, after the death of his own father in 1986 Seamus Heaney’s translation of the...
View ArticleLetter: As a schoolboy PJ Kavanagh prayed to St Jude that he might be tall...
PJ Kavanagh once considered becoming a monk but decided he liked girls too much. As a schoolboy he prayed to St Jude that he might be tall and attractive to women. The patron saint of hopeless causes...
View ArticleJoy Harjo wins $100,000 poetry prize
Poet of Muskogee Creek heritage wins Wallace Stevens award from the Academy of American Poets for ‘proven mastery’Poet Joy Harjo, known for wedding social consciousness to her Muskogee Creek heritage...
View ArticlePoet Claudia Rankine says next book will be on culture of cancer
Rankine, who has influenced Black Lives Matter, talked with artist Carrie Mae Weems about race, bodies and how surviving cancer inspired her latest workOn the courts of the US Open in Queens on...
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