Laden with animals, conspiracy theories and apocalyptic visions, Muhammad Fanatil al-Hajaya’s poetry reflects how many Arabs – urban and rural, rich and poor – view the world.
It gets us nowhere to distinguish between page and stage poetry, except as terms in an analysis. There is bad and good on both sides. Both forms need to be kept alive and to flourish.
At the opening night of her private view and book launch, poet and artist Frieda Hughes appeared at the door of the Belgravia Gallery in Mayfair, a small but striking figure in a pillarbox-red suit. In…
Claudia Rankine, winner of the Forward Prize, has provoked discussions about poetry and race in the US. Why are these conversations not happening in the UK?
The Refugee Tales is a modern reconstruction of Chaucer’s classic pilgrimage – this time, telling the largely unspoken realities of immigration detention.
Mad Max: Fury Road has generated heated coverage since its release last month. But focussing on the film’s terse script may be missing the point: it should be read as a poem, and a provocative one at that.
Kate Daniels, the director of Vanderbilt’s creative writing program, recalls the life and work of her mentor, a man “devoted…to creating gritty and empathetic portraits of American blue collar workers.”
I was on a train recently reading a book of poems by Carol Rumens when the elderly man sitting across the table said, “Do people still read poetry?” He frowned as though rats had re-infested his basement…
As long as the history of English literature is taught in universities, the charm of the immortal poem “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns will endure in China. I first came across the poem by the national…
When Brian the farmer finished his poem the crowd went wild. Small wonder he earned the People’s Choice Award on the night. We were at a so-called poetry “slam” at a country hall in a place so tiny it…
This year the UK’s biggest poetry award, the TS Eliot prize, has gone to David Harsent for his 11th collection, Fire Songs. He joins a sequence of prestigious poets such as Ted Hughes, Derek Walcott and…
The excitement that accompanied the beginning of the Arab Spring has now largely died down, as a timeworn truth reiterates itself: when an oppressive power is toppled, a similar or worse one will often…
Oxford-educated and the possessor of considerable charm, Michael Massey Robinson was also a cad and a bounder. Convicted of extortion in London in 1798, he was transported to New South Wales where he worked…
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. I usually begin my end of life ethics lecture with one of Dylan Thomas’ best-loved…