A Laureate’s Lot (Issue 92)

When the late Hilary Mantel finished her Wolf Hall trilogy, ending a twelve-year relationship with Thomas Cromwell – and, at … More

Poets versus Dictators (Issue 91)

The daily norms which two years ago most people took for granted have mutated yet again. Most starkly for Ukrainians … More

What is natural-sounding speech, and why is it so valued? Raymond Williams’ discussion of ‘nature’ in his Keywords was fraught … More

Jonathan Van-Tam has a way with metaphors. The Deputy Chief Medical Officer’s clear football analogies for tackling Covid-19 are a … More

‘Poetry in school,’ said Simon Armitage this September, ‘is one of those few occasions when you can experience language for … More

At some stage in their careers most serious poets attend writing workshops. These events differ widely. Some are closed shops; … More

More elegies landed on our desk this September than in February. Even dialect poems seemed both to celebrate language and … More

What are poetry magazines for? ‘It’s hard to see how a little poetry magazine can make anything happen except satisfy … More

The epigraph on the cover of this magazine is “poetry on the page… speaking in your mind’s ear.” Some people … More