poetry
'I let it emerge': an interview with Fiona Benson on the cusp of the TS Eliot Prize announcementFriday, 20 January 2023
Fiona Benson’s new collection of poems, Ephemeron (Jonathan Cape, 2022), tries to capture those things that are always moving out of grasp. It does this through four sections: the first, “Insect Love Songs”, thrums with a lyric transience, zeroing-... Read more... |
Best of 2022: BooksSaturday, 31 December 2022
From Kafka’s spry sketches to Derek Owusu’s novel-poem, and Jaan Kross’s Estonian Wolf Hall to Katherine Rundell’s spirited biography of John Donne, our reviewers take the time to share their favourite books of 2022. Before his death, Franz... Read more... |
10 Questions for Bruce Lindsay, biographer of Ivor CutlerTuesday, 13 December 2022
Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room by Bruce Lindsay, is the first full-length biography of the Glasgow-born poet, author, performer and songwriter. The book will be published on the centenary of Cutler’s birth, 15 January 2023. Cutler... Read more... |
PJ Harvey - Orlam: In Conversation with Max Porter, The Old Market, HoveFriday, 11 November 2022
In an intimate evening with Polly Jean Harvey MBE, the double Mercury Prize winning artist sang an altogether different kind of tune than you might expect.Reading from her new book of poetry, Orlam, a coming of age story about a not-girl-not-boy,... Read more... |
Derek Owusu: Losing the Plot review - the finest perfumeThursday, 10 November 2022
Derek Owusu’s debut That Reminds Me won the Desmond Elliot Prize in 2020. When asked what it was that she loved most about Owusu’s semi-autobiographical 117-page book, Preti Taneja, chair of the judges (and winner of the prize herself in 2018)... Read more... |
TS Eliot: Into The Waste Land, BBC Two / Four Quartets, Starring Ralph Fiennes, BBC Four review - a great 100th birthday present to a giant of modern literatureMonday, 17 October 2022
Can you make modern poetry come to life on a TV screen? The BBC has had two stabs recently at answering this question, as part of the centennary celebrations for TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, seen by many as the greatest poem of the 20th century. One... Read more... |
Album: Dry Cleaning - StumpworkMonday, 17 October 2022
There are many reasons that I am obsessed with Florence Shaw. It's not just that as a long time sufferer of Resting-Bitch-Face I identify hard with her deadpan nonchalance, it's also pure props that she's brought spoken-word-set-to-music into the... Read more... |
Treason The Musical In Concert, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - plenty of musical gunpowder but not enough plotThursday, 25 August 2022
A semi-staged concert performance of a musical is a little like a third trimester ultrasound scan. You should see the anatomy in development, the shape of what is to come and, most importantly, discern a heart beating at its centre. But you can’t... Read more... |
Amalie Smith: Thread Ripper review - the tangled web we weaveWednesday, 03 August 2022
Sitting in the park on a hot summer’s day, life began to imitate art. I had been soaking up the sun’s now overpowering rays for over an hour and was beginning to feel its radiating effects.Golden green filaments of grass moved back, the trees swayed... Read more... |
Quo vadis, Three Choirs Festival review - a hundred minutes of smug serenity and flowing pietyTuesday, 26 July 2022
Once upon a time the Three Choirs Festival conjured up a single image, that of the English Oratorio – the grand choral solemnification of everything that was most profound in Anglican thought (though ironically its greatest exemplar, Elgar’s Dream... Read more... |
Phoebe Power: Book of Days review - the clack of walking poles, the clink of scallop shellTuesday, 26 July 2022
The word “shrine” somersaults me back to the path of the Camino de Santiago. I have lost count of the faces that smiled up from photos positioned in the hollow of trees, some with little plastic figurines for company, others set in stone next to a... Read more... |
Album: Kathryn Williams - Night DrivesFriday, 22 July 2022
Kathryn Williams’ creativity leaves most singers standing. She’s always up to something and it’s usually interesting. As well as multiple albums over two decades, including one themed around Sylvia Plath and another created with the poet Carol Anne... Read more... |
