Poem of the week: Grey by Edwin Morgan
A meditation on the plain and ordinary aspects of life finds virtue in the unspectacular – but also provides some formal dazzleGreyWhat is the nub of such a plain grey day?Does it have one? Does it...
View ArticleClive James: ‘My granddaughter’s school was connected by video to the...
Now when she and I ask each other questions, both of us pause before answering. It’s a space conversation Too suddenly gone, Sir Terry Wogan was the most charming after-dinner speaker I ever heard,...
View ArticlePoetry, breastfeeding and sex
Poet Hollie McNish felt she wasn’t ready to be a mother when she got pregnant at 26, six years ago. She is also a poet who has channelled her feelings about parenthood into verseBreastfeeding and sex...
View ArticleWendy Cope, Simon Armitage, Andrew Motion … love sonnets for the 21st century
Contemporary poets revisit Shakespeare’s verse for Valentine’s DayMy glass can’t quite persuade me I am old –In that respect my ageing eyes are kind –But when I see a photograph, I’m toldThe dismal...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Square Ring
by Ian Duhigfor Tom DuhigA Sixties man thing: Dad, us, circling to bondas hard as Ingemar Johansson’s glue in the adaround our huge box, its screen a snow globeof American static. The night Johansson...
View ArticleOn my radar: China Miéville’s cultural highlights
The writer on a moving comic about life in 80s Turkey, disquieting composer Carolyn O’Brien and poet Caitlin Doherty’s tribute to the first dog in spaceBrought up in north-west London, author and...
View ArticleCatullus’ Bedspread by Daisy Dunn review – ancient Rome’s most erotic poet...
A finely crafted biography of the poet and libertine fascinates without being titillatingThe subtitle of Daisy Dunn’s first book – “the life of Rome’s most erotic poet” – may prove something of a...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount by Ben Jonson
From the introduction to a sharp Elizabethan satire, these lines still come about as close to music as words can getSlow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears; Yet slower, yet, O faintly,...
View ArticleFathieh Saudi obituary
My Jordanian friend Fathieh Saudi, who has died aged 76, was a doctor, writer and poet. She studied medicine in France and worked as a paediatrician in Lebanon from 1976 to 1982, producing L’Oubli...
View ArticleUnseen JRR Tolkien poems found in school magazine
Two works by the Lord of the Rings author discovered in the 1936 annual of Our Lady’s School in OxfordshireTwo poems by JRR Tolkien, in which The Lord of the Rings author writes variously of “a man who...
View ArticleOmar Musa, Australia's star slam poet, brings 'in-betweener' perspective to US
The Malaysian Australian poet will share his debut book, Here Come the Dogs, an intimate portrayal of race and class issues in Australia, in New York next month“I will never forget the black sky, the...
View ArticleChapter and verse: how Saul Williams broke out of the lyricists' lounge
Slam poetry, acting and activism – there’s not a lot Williams hasn’t tried, and on the release of his latest album MartyrLoserKing he explains why Reddit AMAs and J Cole can be dull and why his new...
View ArticleAid work: an insult to the poor? - poem
A Zimbabwean aid worker shares his reflections on the NGO sector through a poemDecades ago, I heard life was simple and it was soWhere there was need, a hand would helpWhere there was a tear, a heart...
View ArticleMeasures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo review – ‘language is my home’
Literary tradition and linguistic play square off in a timely collection about belongingReaders of Vahni Capildeo’s previous poetry collections will not be surprised by the verbal intensity and wide...
View ArticleThe Saturday poem: Bad Moon
by Claire AskewThe moon must be sick of being in poems – always gripped by fingers of late honeysuckle,always filtered in the lake through the jetty’s slats,always silvering the flicked tails of the...
View ArticleThe 100 best nonfiction books: No 4 – Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (1998)
These passionate, audacious poems addressed to Hughes’s late wife, Sylvia Plath, contribute to the couple’s mythology and are a landmark in English poetryPoetry will be braided into this series like a...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Autumn Rain by DH Lawrence
Intensely alive to the details of the natural world, Lawrence here combines the energy of his free verse with formal inventionAutumn RainThe plane leaves fall black and wet on the lawn;Continue reading...
View ArticleThe sequel to Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: women, look upon these works and...
Anthony Holden on the ‘female’ sequel to Poems That Make Grown Men Cry – the surprise bestselling anthology he put together with his son BenWhile my son Ben and I were compiling our 2014 anthology,...
View ArticleJhalak book prize launched for under-recognised UK writers of colour
Prize creators hope it will ‘inspire the publishing industry to look beyond its present narrow margins’Following the recent backlash against lack of diversity in UK publishing, a new annual literary...
View ArticleHubert Essakow: Terra review – new Ben Okri poem accompanies earthy dance
Print Room at the Coronet, LondonDancers’ limbs twist and thread in this highly atmospheric conclusion to an elemental trilogy that veers between the airy and the groundedThe tiny Print Room theatre...
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