Poetry
Who is Sylvia – what is she?
In May 1956, three months after meeting Ted Hughes, one before they will marry, Sylvia Plath writes to her mother…
A beautiful place to die: Italy and the Romantic poets
People can be mightily protective of their Romantic poets. When I worked at the Keats Shelley House, overlooking the Spanish…
BBC4’s Bob Geldof on WB Yeats was one of the best literary documentaries I’ve seen
In recent years there’s been a fashion for arts documentaries presented by celebs rather than boring old experts — presumably…
What I’ve learned reciting poems in the street
It was past midnight in Norwich. There was a keen wind rifling up London Street. It was dark and it…
How to view the view
Landskipping is about viewing the view, from the 18th century to the present. From the title (which is the only…
Charles Foster: ‘I need to be more of a badger’
Being a Beast is an impassioned and proselytising work of philosophy based on a spectacular approach to nature writing. That…
The confessions of Gerard Manley Hopkins
‘I am 12 miles from a lemon,’ lamented that bon vivant clergyman Sydney Smith on reaching one country posting. He…
How pop is Peter Blake?
Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…
Rex Whistler: ‘a desolate sense of loneliness amidst so much fun’
When Hugh and Mirabel Cecil’s book In Search of Rex Whistler was published in 2012, the late Brian Sewell reviewed…
National Poetry Day's mistake: letting normal people do the reading
Imagine what Brennig Davies must have felt like just before 11 o’clock last Tuesday evening. The 15-year-old was about to…
An unauthorised, and unconvincing, biography of Ted Hughes
In Testaments Betrayed, Milan Kundera says: ‘Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they…
David Jones: painter, poet and mystic
David Jones (1895–1974) was a remarkable figure: artist and poet, he was a great original in both disciplines. His was…
Cut-ups, hallucinations and Hermann Goering: the extraordinary life of Brion Gysin
Among my more bohemian friends in 1980s London, Brion Gysin was a name spoken with a certain awe. He was…
Late Night Woman’s Hour assumes that all women think about is dating, desire and drinking
Late Night Woman’s Hour has created a Twitter storm with its twice-weekly (Thursdays and Fridays) doses of ‘mischievous and unbridled…
‘Doorways to the unknown’: Clive James’s Latest Readings
In the preface to his great collection of essays The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden claimed: ‘I prefer a critic’s notebooks…
Jonathan Galassi’s fictional poet made me doubt my knowledge of American literature
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
A new translation of the Iliad
‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…
Helen Vendler is full of condescending waffle (and not just when she’s attacking me)
Is it possible to tell a good poem from a bad one? To put the question another way: are there…
Edward Thomas: the prolific hack (who wrote a book review every three days for 14 years) turned to poetry just in time
Edward Thomas was gloomy as Eeyore. In 1906 he complained to a friend that his writing ‘was suffering more &…
This radio programme almost made me like Piers Morgan
An extraordinary black-and-white photograph of a young black boy taken on the Isle of Wight by Julia Margaret Cameron in…
What’s On in South Devon gave me three choices: functioning psychotic preacher, bingo or a poetry evening
I’m such a constitutional lightweight lately that I’ve started looking on the website What’s On in South Devon for things…
There’s nothing wrong with getting into Thomas Tallis on the back of Fifty Shades of Grey
Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the…
The Shading Out of Poetry by Deadline
Like old-time washerwomen floodwater is sousing trees and shrubs out on the drainage. Floating wrack dribbles seaward from their labour.…
Tom Eliot — a very practical cat. Did T.S. Eliot simply recycle every personal experience into poetry?
The musical Cats reopened in the West End in December, with a judge from The X Factor in the lead…
The risks of being an Englishman on Burns Night
I’m rubbish at public speaking and detest it. Even the thought of reciting an English poem of my choice at…
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