Poetry
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
Islands of inspiration: a poet’s life on Shetland
Jen Hadfield is not only spellbound by the moods of the ocean and the hectic weather but by the Shaetlan dialect itself – which ‘struck me immediately as a poetic language’
A middle-aged man in crisis: How to Make a Bomb, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
Travelling home from an academic conference, Philip Notman suddenly feels sick and disorientated. But it will take a long time for him to identify the cause, and possible cure
Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal
Bengalis are renowned for their love of discussion and argument, and a new collection of short stories reflects this passion for cultured conversation
Four female writers at the court of Elizabeth I
Of Ramie Targoff’s gifted quartet, Mary Sidney was particularly admired by her contemporaries for her translation of the Psalms into English verse
Emily Dickinson was not such a recluse after all
Far from being closeted in her bedroom, her letters show that she was still travelling in her mid-thirties, and taking pleasure in gardening and the glories of nature
The healing power of Grasmere
Following in Wordsworth’s footsteps, Esther Rutter finds new self-confidence and happiness in the entrancing surroundings of Dove Cottage
Flaubert, snow, poverty, rhythm … the random musings of Anne Carson
It is thrillingly difficult to keep one’s balance in Carson’s topsy-turvy world as she meditates on a wide range of subjects in poetry, pictures and prose
The real problem with ChatGPT is that it can never make a joke
When Andy Stanton commands the AI program to tell him a story about a blue whale with a tiny penis, the result, as it unfolds, drives him a bit insane
An obituarist’s search for the soul
Snatches of memoir, poetry and observation from a writer whose main preoccupation is recording the lives of others
The changing face of Ireland
A dead poet’s dangerous aura continues to haunt his daughter and 23-year old granddaughter in this story of an unhappy family set in rapidly changing Ireland
Tangled threads
The painted-over figure of Baudelaire’s muse eventually emerging from Courbet’s great canvas provides one of many haunting images in this complex novel
The illiterate poet who produced the world’s greatest epic
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
The making of a poet: Wilfred Owen’s ‘autobiography’ in letters
How, between 1911 and 1917, Owen became the dazzling poet we know and love is the story told in Jane Potter’s new edition of his selected letters
The lonely passions of Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan
Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing
In the footsteps of the Romantic poets
Shelley, walking as a boy through his ‘starlight wood’, looking for ghosts and filled with ‘hopes of high talk with…
A poet finds home in a patch of nettles
Towards the end of a long relationship – ‘resolved to have a conversation about the Future, which meant Separating’ –…
The sad, extraordinary life of Basil Bunting
Funny old life, eh? Small world, etc. In one of those curious, Alan Bennett-y, believe-it-or-not-but-I-once-delivered-meat-to-the mother-in-law-of-T.S.-Eliot-type coincidences, it turns out…
Hearing Percy Bysshe Shelley read aloud was a revelation
Last week I heard the actor Julian Sands give a virtuoso performance of work by Percy Bysshe Shelley to mark…
‘That little venal borough’: a poet’s jaundiced view of Aldeburgh
‘To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England,’ E.M. Forster declared in a radio broadcast in May 1941, but…
Letters: Who’s responsible for Putin’s rise if not Russians?
Russian misrule Sir: Your editorial (‘Sanction Schroder’, 21 May) laments that western sanctions may be harming ordinary Russians, given that…
Is T.S. Eliot’s great aura fading?
Cracks are beginning to appear in T.S. Eliot’s once unassailable reputation, says Philip Hensher
Quietly devastating: Benediction reviewed
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
The nightmare of making films about poets
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
