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Poem of the week: Psyche by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge's meditation on the soul moves swiftly from the butterfly's exalted state to the mundane misery of the caterpillarThis week's poem, Psyche, is one of Coleridge's Visionary Fragments, brief...
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Poem of the week: Engram by Ahren Warner
A droll, sophisticated take on first poetic inspiration – including some very adult reflections on its natureAlert to subtle linguistic nuance, a witty and wide-ranging Francophile, Ahren Warner has a...
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Poem of the week: Black Beans by Sarah Kirsch
Composed of small, domestic details, this love poem is also an oblique reflection on materialism and East German communismThis week's poem, Black Beans (Schwarze Bohnen) is by Sarah Kirsch, the...
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Poem of the week: The Solar Microscope by Walter Savage Landor
Victorian science provides the imagery for a droll vision of competing poets devouring each other's statusWalter Savage Landor begins his 1858 collection, Dry Sticks Fagoted, with a graceful but not...
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Poem of the week: At Lunch in Les Deux Magots by Lorna Goodison
A relaxed blend of plain and heightened language, this poem sets a contemporary spring day against the ghosts of literary heroesThis week's poem celebrates an urban springtime, a meeting of "ripe...
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Poem of the week: Look for Me by Vladislav Khodasevich
Wracked with grief, this poem lets the poet's lost friend speak from beyond the inescapable finality that has separated themThis week's choice, Look for Me, is a translation by the poet Peter Daniels...
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Poem of the week: from The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn by...
A dazzling blend of symbol, myth, descriptive realism and a poignantly authentic young girl's voiceThis week's poem takes the form of an extract from Andrew Marvell's The Nymph Complaining for the...
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Poem of the week: A Bird from the West by Dora Sigerson Shorter
In celebration of St Patrick's Day, here is an emotive ballad from one of Ireland's foremost nationalist poets in which an expat longs for her homelandBorn in Dublin in 1866, Dora Sigerson Shorter was...
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Poem of the week: Critique of Judgement by Andrew McNeillie
McNeillie's impressionistic picture of a remote landscape explores the existence of evil and the human response to beautyCritique of Judgement, this week's poem, is by Andrew McNeillie and can be found...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Returning, We Hear Larks by Isaac Rosenberg
Soldiers reaching camp after a nighttime mission are surprised by birdsong in this classic poem by the first world war greatThis week's poem, Returning, We Hear Larks, is one of Isaac Rosenberg's most...
View ArticlePoem of the week: 'On the Eastern Front' by Georg Trakl
John Greening's translation of a German poet's experience in the first world war sets the raw colour of combat against the ghostly shadows that followedThis week's poem is John Greening's translation...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Cradle Song at Twilight by Alice Meynell
An unsettling picture of a young woman and her infant charge reveals a writer far less 'ladylike' than we might expectThe author of this week's poem, "Cradle Song at Twilight", might have been the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Line of Beauty by Arthur O'Shaughnessy
A remarkably gentle vision of the end of days, and what little might surviveThe title of this week's poem, "The Line of Beauty" by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, will be familiar to many readers as the title of...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Free Fall by Thomas Kinsella
An expressly late poem, this is a dreamlike and oddly peaceful contemplation of last thingsBorn in 1928, Thomas Kinsella has significantly helped shape the course of poetry in Ireland, and beyond. His...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Never Entered Mind by Tom Raworth
This avant-garde poem fizzes with a splintering energy that keeps the reader asking questions and constructing possible meaningsThere are no daffodils or pagans dancing in this week's poem, by Tom...
View ArticlePoem of the week: A Quiet Neighbour by John Heywood
Wit, wordplay and affectionate teasing are at the fore in this subtle tribute to neighbourliness by the 16th-century Catholic intellectual and party animal John HeywoodA Quiet Neighbour, by the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Anniversary by John Donne
Written with a musical setting in mind, this metaphysical celebration of 'everlasting' fidelity sings with love and intellectual honestyJohn Donne was the grandson of last week's poet John Heywood....
View ArticlePoem of the week: Present Tense by Michael Schmidt
Recalling Donne's sermon on Job 19:26, with a bit of Ovidian metamorphosis thrown in, this modern meditation on memory and resurrection shifts between past, present and futureResurrection takes various...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Work by Niall Campbell
A consideration of how to write finds unexpected analogies with everything from whalers to nurses to waitersNiall Campbell's first full-length collection, Moontide, published last week by Bloodaxe,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Gulling Sonnet VI by Sir John Davies
Subtlety of expression and mischievous humour are the twin hallmarks of Davies' ironic evocation of a wardrobe for CupidThis week, in the sixth of a series of what he termed Gulling Sonnets, an eminent...
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