If you love George Orwell, never read his poems
He may have been a brilliant novelist and essayist, but the writer’s newly published poetry collection is, to put it politely, ‘not terribly good’Name: George Orwell.Age: Born 1903; died 1950; image...
View ArticleTrespassers on the rooftops: a secret history of Mexico City's cultural...
In the 1920s, Mexico City’s roof spaces, or azoteas, becamea laboratory for modernist creativity, offering a space where artists and thinkers could push the boundaries of culture and bridge the gaps in...
View ArticleOnly connect – poetry's hidden power to break down barriers
Poetry’s delicate dance between the said and the unsaid opens up new ways of thinking across disciplinary boundaries, says Ruth PadelPoetry connects. Wherever I’ve worked, I’ve seen poems making bonds...
View ArticleWaiting for the Past by Les Murray review – matter-of-fact extravagance
A transcendental collection creates a lived-in world that is both celebrated and lamented Serious consideration of the gifts reserved for age is likely to be sobering. Les Murray does not deny it....
View ArticleA new anthology for Remembrance Day
In 1915, pocket broadsheets of inspiring literature chosen by leading figures of the day were distributed to the troops. One hundred years on we asked writers and poets to select the pieces they would...
View ArticleMy hero: Allen Ginsberg by Steve Silberman
He was the happiest, most awake middle-aged man I’ve ever metIn 1977, I saw Allen Ginsberg read poetry for the first time in New York City. I was 18 and already familiar with poems such as “A...
View ArticlePoster poems: canals
Scenes of forgotten industry, secret urban networks or picturesque leisure resorts, these quiet waterways suit verse. Get on board with yoursComing, as I do, from a long line of people who worked on...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Defence of the Islands
by TS EliotLet these memorials built of stone – music’senduring instrument, of many centuries ofpatient cultivation of the earth, of Englishversebe joined with the memory of this defence ofthe...
View ArticleStephen Spender prize – a judges’s perspective
Allen Prowle’s translations of Dutch poet Rutger Kopland’s ‘Johnson Brothers Ltd’ was chosen from 299 entries spanning 46 languages to win this year’s Open categoryTranslation is an act of close...
View ArticleWho is the mysterious ‘Stetson’ in TS Eliot’s Waste Land? One scholar has a...
Hidden anagram points to the poet himself as the bank clerk hailed in a London crowd, claims amateur fanIn a letter to his brother in 1922, TS Eliot once enigmatically wrote that he hoped to solve his...
View ArticleOn my radar: Ben Whishaw’s cultural highlights
The actor on a lost classic by novelist Elizabeth Harrower, Todd Haynes’s Carol, the punk spirit of artist Maria Lassnig and the dirty, energising energy of Captain Beefheart’s Clear SpotBen Whishaw...
View ArticleThe Poems of TS Eliot: The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and...
‘The Waste Land could be a forerunner to the works of Pam Ayres. Note the driving urgency of its commas’In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo (2)I have measured out my life with...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Search by Christine Marendon
A sequence of sharply visual impressions animates a wild animal’s darting mind as it comes upon a hunter – and meets its fateSearchBowls of milk in the rain. A rabbit’s wet head.Here’s someone walking...
View ArticlePoetry, shall I compare thee to Picasso's paintings or an Instagram snapshot?
Do we read poetry for a quick therapeutic fix or seek in its complexities something as overworked, stressed and broken as we are? Both, of course – so here are five Australian poetry collections to add...
View ArticleTo strive, to seek, to find … a career in poetry
The previous and current young poet laureate for London offer their tips for a career in poetry, from online networks to how to combat a blank page Continue reading...
View ArticleLost Shelley poem execrating 'rank corruption' of ruling class made public
Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things, a ferocious attack on war and oppression, becomes Bodleian Library’s 12 millionth bookAn incendiary lost poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in which the young...
View ArticleWhat's the best reading for heartache?
For Coldplay’s Chris Martin, ancient Sufi poetry and a spot of Victor Frankl are the bookish balms of choice. What are yours?“Your missus has left you and you don’t know where to turn, do you go down...
View ArticlePoet makes Guardian first book award shortlist with 'hymns to the male body'
Only the second time poetry has reached the shortlist, Andrew McMillan’s Physical lines up with novels, short stories and Russia reportage for 2015 prizeThe heady scent of sensuality surrounds the 2015...
View ArticleA long way to the shortlist: choosing the Guardian first book award finalists
Reading through the enormous variety of debuts – from biography to memoir to poetry and fiction and beyond – has been a tough but exciting challengeThere is something wonderfully expectant about a...
View ArticleGentrification in Tottenham? It’s a real property horror story | Emma Brockes
In the districts dubbed SoTo and NoTo punters are queuing up to re-sell flats that don’t exist. Isn’t this how the crash occurred?For anyone without substantial investments, reading about the property...
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