happy birthday Elizabeth Bishop 🎈

On 5th February 1963, Sylvia Plath wrote her last two poems. I wrote about how one of them, "Balloons", is a neglected statement of what she wanted to do in poetry, which has room for both Winnie the Pooh and W.B. Yeats someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/pinks-13-b...

When Ted Hughes died in 1999, he left an unfinished translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the great medieval poem about New Year. Here is Hughes relishing the eerie passage where Gawain seeks out the wild Green Chapel of the Green Knight on New Year's Day ('Scouts': high overhanging rocks)

Wallace Stevens

ok images pilfered from Tom Cook at the other place. THE BEST DONNE POEM... and i will link to this blogpost in lieu of doing alt-text - simply bc it's not going to fit in these two images, apologies aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2009/05/noct...

As England's Green continues to rightly sweep up every award going, a reminder that you can read my TLS review from some time ago here: www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/eng...

poem by abbas ibn al-ahnaf, translated by abdullah al-udhari and g.b.h. wightman (published in the anthology birds through a ceiling of alabaster)

two poems by Robert Creeley

Geoffrey Hill

A Sunday well spent. Morning reading Anne Carson, afternoon writing a poem about the neverending cosmic horror of life on earth, now time for a wine tasting

Anne Carson

New poem in And Other Poems

I can't express how excited I am to share today's conversation with one of my favorite living writers, the extraordinary Bhanu Kapil. With the reissue of the long unavailable Incubation: A Space for Monsters we look across her writing life entire Audio: tinhouse.com/podcast/bhan...

Loved visiting Eton today and seeing, amongst other things, one of the 5 existing originals of Keats's death mask, some of Shelley's graffiti, and the oldest classroom in continuous use in Europe (potentially the world)

What about melt waffle

Funnily enough I just nearly broke my ankle at the Temple of Asklepios

Many paragraphs Donna Tartt writes have opening sentences so good they could be the start of a short story: "Though Mrs. Fountain had not poisoned the cat, she was nonetheless pleased that it was dead."

DOM LEONARD THE POET?

An excellent ghazal by Jericho Brown, which also sounds - from the rhythm, not just the refrain - like it's got Barrett Browning's Musical Instrument playing in the background

Making mayonnaise from scratch is self care

Watching the only good film ever made

Shakespeare is never great at endings, but my god every word of this is magnificent

Evaristo Prize for African Poetry open for submissions! brittlepaper.com/2023/10/subm...

Evangelists over the road playing Christian rock so loudly that I can't focus on reading Saint Augustine. Is this what you want

RIP Louise Glück, what a sad surprise

“I can read racists, misogynists, Soviets, American capitalists, because when an artist is good . . . there is going to be something that is nurturing there. When I am picking up the book, I just want great art.” Teju Cole interview: [Gift link]

Saw The Zone of Interest last night, a film in which nothing unpleasant happens on-screen but is nonetheless indescribably horrible. I had to purposefully un-tense my body every 5 minutes. Invades your imagination and makes you imagine the worst things imaginable happening behind the wall

Jaw-droppingly good as you shifted it my arms it was the sea changing the shingle that changes it

Love these poems from Ivor Gurney, the short poem songmaster

Mona Arshi, Daljit Nagra and Matthew Hollis are reading at the Coronet Theatre next week - the Coronet poetry club line-up never misses. Tickets here: www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/poe...

John Crowe Ransom