Oliver Bernard's double street tribute to John Heath-Stubbs
Oliver Bernard read two poems by John Heath-Stubbs in the street in Bayswater on Wednesday – or rather he read the same poem twice. It was a short poem, and people are not good at taking in poetry at...
View ArticleIf creativity can lead to madness, is art therapy really such a good idea?
I was recently at a fundraising dinner for Mind, the leading mental health charity in the UK. One of the big themes for the evening (other than Stephen Fry's investiture as president), was the idea of...
View ArticleCan Brian Eno make poetry cool?
I love a bit of Elizabeth Bishop as much as the next English Lit. grad but, let’s be honest, contemporary poetry is seriously uncool. There are, of course, exceptions (John Ashbery, Rosemarie Waldrop,...
View ArticleCarol Ann Duffy's tribute to Stephen Lawrence. Is this really the best she...
Carol Ann Duffy has written a poem on the death of Stephen Lawrence. It was composed in response to the recent conviction of two men for his murder. See what you think: Cold pavement indeed the night...
View ArticleCarol Ann Duffy's poetry is demotic and immediate – and there's nothing wrong...
Geoffrey Hill and Carol Ann Duffy are very different sorts of poet, but simply because they are both poets, they have more in common with each other than either has with those of us who are not poets....
View ArticleSave us from melodramatic thespians reading poetry
I couldn't agree less with Lord Saatchi that actors make ideal readers of poetry. Given the chance, I'd expel actors from my poetic republic, on pain of hearing an endlessley repeated reading of...
View ArticleWhatever you think of Günter Grass, he's no Nazi
Günter Grass is a great writer: a great German writer and a great European one. He is now 84. Sometimes in old age writers, like many other elderly people, turn away from the world. Sometimes they feel...
View ArticleA fallen war poet whose name should live on
History is written by the winners, or so the old saying goes. When it comes to First World War poetry, it was written, not just by the winners, but by the winning officers. Well, the famous poems were,...
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