Poem of the week: Caracal by Pascale Petit
A desert lynx in a zoo prompts an elegiac reflection on death and natures carnivorous cycle The big-cat house at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris is the focus of Pascale Petits new...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Natural and Social Science by Michael Donaghy
This elegant poem by the late Irish-American writer showcases his talent for free-range anecdote, smart satire and humourMichael Donaghys Collected Poems, reissued by Picador, reminds us that the...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Once there came a man by Stephen Crane
The 19th-century American poets free-verse parable about a nonsensical war reminds us that conflict rouses desire as powerfully as loveStephen Cranes poems are distinctive. Typically, theyre short,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Lament for Stinie Morrison by Kit Wright
The British poet tells the tale of a Russian-Jewish immigrant sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an unpopular landlord in 1911Kit Wrights work is a bracing reminder that rhythm is a...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Hydromaniac by Rosemary Tonks
A poem that first appeared in 1967 explores the thirst of desire, necessary as wine, water and gin-fizzRosemary Tonkss two collections of poetry excited many young English readers in the 1960s. So...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Three Harps by Vernon Watkins
This lyrical work by the Welsh poet is a fine elegy on the death of his close friend Dylan ThomasThe poem cannot live until it has been willing to die, Vernon Watkins declared in The Second Pressure on...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Peasants by Marin Sorescu
A fictional government report on the most benighted citizens of Ceauescus Romania, this is satire written in a time when all hope of change seemed futileMarin Sorescu, one of Romanias most widely known...
View ArticlePoem 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...
View ArticlePoem 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: 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...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Anne Cluysenaar's Diary Poems
Two entries from a poet's calendar use similar forms and language to engage with matters very grand and very smallAnne Cluysenaar's recent collection, Touching Distances: Diary Poems is a poet's...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Sonnet of Irreconcilables by Christopher Middleton
A classical music broadcast foregrounds fears of a cheapening of culture, and the possibility of mass brutalisation, in this late work from a poet with a unique and original voiceThis week's poem,...
View ArticlePoem of the week: The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb
Itself familiar from many anthologies, this sad and sweet descant on emotional losses has a singular magicI've often wondered how Charles Lamb came up with the form of this week's anthology favourite,...
View ArticlePoems of the week: Selima Hill
Four short and sharp looks at the social pressures weighing on young women are both witty and unsettlingSelima Hill's new collection The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism has an intriguing, faintly sexual...
View ArticlePoem of the week: Desert Flowers by Keith Douglas
Not long before his cruelly early death, Douglas matched the grim reality of war with a lyric passionSeventy years ago, the poet Keith Douglas was killed during the Allied invasion of Normandy on 9...
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