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Image Description: A gold, decorated mask and a black fabric background. The mysterious and impenetrable dressings of both internal and external experience provide the theme for Maskwork, a haunting new collection of poetry by Gregory Leadbetter (Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University). Bewitching descriptions of masks – in the likeness of seraphs, witches, even […]
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Jen Campbell is a bestselling author and award-winning poet. Her most recent books include ‘The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night’, ‘The Girl Aquarium’ and a series of children’s picture books. I was lucky enough to talk to Jen about poetry, the importance of children’s voices, and the magic of online […]
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My name is Anushka Joshi and I am from Ahmedabad, India, a city where there was a pogrom in 2002 that led to the deaths of nearly two thousand people ((India: A Decade On, Gujarat Justice Incomplete." Human Rights Watch. April 17, 2015). The legacy of this is pervasive today: housing and education is de […]
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What is a poet? With the growth of social media platforms, the world of poetry has seen an increasing rise in amateur interest: following the increasing success of ‘populist’ poetry (yes, that means you, Rupi Kaur…), it seems that just about everyone has penned a stereotypically abstract musing on self-worth or a failed teen relationship. […]
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Image description: Plath’s gravestone Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are undoubtedly two of the 20th-century’s most celebrated poets. However, in the decades following their death, it seems that the public increasingly disregard their verse in favour of a deep fascination with their married life. Decades after Hughes’ death – and almost 60 years after Plath’s […]
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‘This morning I’m bored shitless by poetry’ declares Simon Armitage in one of the poems compiled in his latest collection, ‘Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic’, named after the weather station of the same name. It’s a bold line – especially considering his recent appointment as the new Poet Laureate – but is equally one which showcases […]
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The lecture theatre at Balliol college was bustling with enthused students on 6th February, as a plethora of exciting poets graced the room with undeniable vivacity and artistry. Among these poets was Stephen Romer, a talented orator and personality who selected a range of short poems to read, from thoughtful musings on love, to summers […]
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Image Credit: Sampson Low (CC BY 2.0) Note: the article that follows is a work of satire, and therefore should not be taken as factual After attempting to read the whole of Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” over the summer vacation, English undergraduate Heather Barnet is no longer able to speak normally. Barnet was trying […]
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Travel is a beautiful distorting mirror, one in which we can look back at ourselves and at different places, just like in books. Yet, this becomes even more spine-tingling when done through the lens of another age, through another’s eyes – this was my impression when I entered the world of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by […]
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Rupi Kaur’s debut collection ‘milk and honey’ liberated poetry from the archaism of regulated metre and stuffy subject matter. Her fluid and plain style is known for beautifully encapsulating the struggles of heartbreak, femininity and defiance. However, Kaur’s ambrosia formula of abstract sketches and lower case-lettered odes to self-love in ‘milk and honey’ seem at […]
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‘milk and honey’, Kaur’s debut poetry collection, is one of few commercially popular works of poetry in recent years. This is not to say that no other significant or impressive collections of contemporary poetry have been published, but rather that no other has achieved such global popularity. Upon publication, ‘milk and honey’ sold over 1.5 […]
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Safer Waters: Writing from a Distance It’s summer again, and I’ve been thinking about the sea. I often wonder if growing up on an island has meant that I can hear its siren call even here, in landlocked Oxford: a low foghorn sounding up the Thames, rattling the boathouses. Its undertow can be strong, too […]
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In Memoriam Mother Is crouching looking for her lost children Wondering whether she even had them Knowing that she did and in the grasp of The emptiness remembering the softness Of their cheeks remembering OH The hardness that is the emptiness but still She holds on in the terror in the ongoing go […]
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‘Demons Land’ answers the question “what might it mean for a poem to come true?” This exhibition relies on the premise that a life, or even history itself, can be made in the image of a poem. The poem in question is Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, an allegorical epic notorious for its complexity. As […]
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Luke Wright is one of the UK’s best spoken-word poets. That’s the safe thing to say. The right thing to say is that he eludes all attempts at definition, let alone comparison, while he is on the stage, building entire worlds out of his voice. His is the 21st century logos, the ‘Let there be […]
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How likely is it that you’ve heard of Vercelli? It isn’t a village. It’s Wikipedia article puts its 2009 population at 47,720. If you’re lucky enough to have sat (or are cursed enough to be sitting) your Preliminary Examination in English Language and Literature, Early Medieval Literature, c. 650–1350 (you’re definitely part of the in-crowd), […]
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Shortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize, Falling Awake – Alice Oswald’s latest poetry book – bears great expectations. The boasts of the blurb similarly place Oswald in the company of some of the greatest poets of recent times, with mentions of Heaney, Hughes, and Hill. However, even as it meets these expectations, Falling Awake shows […]
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A lonely choir fades into the background, replaced by a menacing, looped bassline. The angelic is replaced by the earthly, the serene by the disturbed. Earlier this year Leonard Cohen wrote a letter to Marianne Ihlen, after he was informed that a former lover and the woman who inspired one of his most famous songs […]
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As Americans head to the polls, Nasim Asl sat down with spoken word artist come rapper, George Watsky, to talk politics and poetry. As far as hip hop artists go, George Watsky is unusual. His journey to the genre has been a weird one. He brought out a collection of poetry and performed as a spoken […]
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