A wall mural at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London.
Amanda Young/Alamy
Broadcasters often reach for verse to inspire fans and heighten the drama of sporting events.
Charli XCX in a press photo for Brat.
HARLEY WEIR
Charli XCX’s Brat can be seen as part of a multimedia tradition of women’s writing that is honest and no longer afraid of being labelled ‘bratty’.
The Poor Poet – Carl Spitzweg (1839)
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In their different ways, these three poets demonstrate how to transform everyday realities into art.
recep kart/Shutterstock
Hessom Razavi – an ophthalmologist and poet – explains the workings and wonder of the eye, and the range of emotions he experiences treating diseases caused by modern life or without a cure.
Allen Ginsberg dancing (1969).
Columbus Metropolitan Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Poets take us outside ourselves. In their transmission of atypical experiences, they teach us empathy and compassion.
Garry Shead’s Flaming Kangaroo (1992).
Permission by the artist.
Critics have long wrestled with the question of how artists and writers influence each other. For Luke Johnson, an encounter with a painting took him in a wholly unexpected direction.
Emilio Garcia/Unsplash
Anne Carson’s playful new book, Wrong Norma, meaningfully makes apparently random connections – and the result is compelling.
Ben White/Unsplash
Gradually, with more life experience, I have gained perspective and poetic nerve.
Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus).
Bernard Dupont, via Wikimedia Commons
For poet Robert Adamson, the natural world offered a form of deliverance.
A Muslim protester shouts at security personnel on the streets of Shaheen Bagh, a neighborhood in Delhi, in 2020.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
Thanks to a strong oral Urdu literary tradition in South Asia, poems from the past linger in the popular imagination.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Writers have long rhapsodised about real estate – or the difficulty acquiring it – but contemporary authors are asking awkward questions about the inequities of our property obsession.
The Morning Comes (1793-1821), by William Blake.
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
A subtle and thoughtful show, full of shimmering connections that put Blake back in touch with European art figures and influences.
Spring in Central Park, New York. April 2023.
EPA-EFE/Sarah Yenesel
Haiku poems chart flowers appearing earlier and species retreating to the margins.
Nam Le.
Simon & Schuster
To ask whether 36 Ways to Write a Vietnamese Poem is a collection of poems or a single long poem is to step through the looking glass.
A perfectly imperfect tea bowl.
Zen Rial/Moment via Getty Images
‘Wabi’ and ‘sabi’ are Japanese words with long histories, but they are rarely used together in the way Western designers have come to use the term.
Taylor Swift performing at the Tokyo Dome, February 7, 2024.
Toru Hanai/AAP
There is nothing to lose and plenty to gain in teaching Swift’s Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together. There’s no dumbing-down, and no need for reductive assertions about who is “better”.
An image of a reclining Lord Vishnu with the alvar poets arrayed below him.
The Nadar Press Ltd., Sivakasi, ca. 1920s. From the personal print collection of Archana Venkatesan and Layne Little
In Hindu devotional poetry, love directed toward Vishnu can take many forms, including service, maternal adoration and the intense intimacy of lovers.
Sonnets still have a reputation for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman.
AndreasPraefcke/Wikimedia Commons
These moving poems are a reminder that on Valentine’s Day, it’s OK to celebrate a broader definition of love.
The Instapoet Rupi Kaur on her book tour.
MediaPunch Inc/Alamy
Literary critics and scholars need to take poetry that originated on social media more seriously.
Menelaus holding the body of Patroclus – Diana Mantuana (1535-1587).
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Reading Wilson’s Iliad, one senses something of the chant of Homer’s verse, even through the written word.