In her illuminating account of his early life, The Songs We Know Best (2017), Karin Hoffman dates the start of John Ashbery’s poetry writing life to 1943 when he was … Continue reading »

It might be interesting to speculate what answer in the spring of 1956 Charles Tomlinson might have given to the question concerning where poetry came from. He might well have … Continue reading »

This is the first translation of the prominent and popular Russian poet Maria Stepanova’s poetry  into English, by the poet Sasha Dugdale, for Bloodaxe, and also coincides with the publication … Continue reading »

These three very different books explore the scope and capacity of the long poem form using subtly different techniques and approaches. The connections between the books and between the phrases, … Continue reading »

‘One day, back in Cookham, he will turn this into pattern and meaning’ writes Rosie Jackson in ‘Macedonia, 1918’ from the collection Two Girls and a Beehive by Jackson and … Continue reading »

According to a recent article in the Guardian (‘A picture of domestic bliss’, 7 Feb 2021) interest in still lifes has surged during the Covid-19 pandemic. This claim is based … Continue reading »

Denise Levertov referred to ‘translations which truly appear to have ferried poetry safely across from language to language’[1] but the more distant the languages and cultures are from each other, … Continue reading »

Leeanne Quinn’s debut collection from 2012, Before You, contained a section of poems inspired by One Art: The Letters of Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop’s influence was apparent even from the vocabulary … Continue reading »

The scope offered by the long poem form brings space and time to think, and that is the reward offered by all three collections. Marvin Thompson’s Road Trip, James Byrne’s … Continue reading »

J.H. Prynne’s article, ‘Huts’, was published in 2008  by Textual Practice and it opened with a quotation from William Collins’s 1746 poem ‘Ode to Evening’:   Or if chill blustring … Continue reading »