From chinoiserie to Fu Manchu: how Britain’s Oriental romance turned sour
“The sploshof soup on blue-vine china brings back my father,and lets me hear the lapping of the river,hauling in its cargo. Porcelain and tea,the rolls of Chinese…
Maud Martha review: an American classic finally lands in the UK – seven decades late
How to begin talking about Gwendolyn Brooks? She was one of the major American poets of the 20th century. She was a writer of great power and…
A broken-down bank clerk and a month in Margate – how TS Eliot wrote The Waste Land
It’s 1921, and in Margate the sunniest October on record is fading into a cool November. On a bench in a shelter down by the beach, a…
Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell: at last, the biography John Donne deserves
“Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Revelations 3:16.) Whatever problems God had with his servant John…
Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell: at last, the biography John Donne deserves
“Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Revelations 3:16.) Whatever problems God had with his servant John…
This elaborate TS Eliot tribute is a slightly wasted opportunity
If, on one rather surprisingly uncruel April morning, TS Eliot were to rise from his resting place in East Coker, reach for a pair of headphones and…
John Cooper Clarke, Eventim Apollo, review: punk poetry that veered from the impeccable to the awful
As two and a half thousand people made their way through the glass doors of the Hammersmith Apollo, a bare-faced lie awaited them in the foyer. A…
Discover the greatest writer of sex in the English language
You cannot claim a man is an alchemist and fail to lay out the gold. This, then, is an undated poem, probably written for the woman he…
Discover the greatest writer of sex in the English language
You cannot claim a man is an alchemist and fail to lay out the gold. This, then, is an undated poem, probably written for the woman he…
Colm Tóibín: ‘Ireland only produces Guinness, Viagra – and poets’
Three years ago, Colm Tóibín found himself lying in the very spot where Leopold Bloom once slept. It was not a soothing experience. Pumped full of drugs,…
Before his terrible Ukraine poem, Bono tried to help Sarajevo – and it worked
“It’s about 11 o’clock here in Sarajevo,” replies Carter. “There’s a general fear in Sarajevo The town is getting smaller. The perimeter is being fought over and…
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra review: superb, sympathetic satire on talentless writers
Gonzalo Rojas, a Chilean poet in his twenties, has become a stepfather to his girlfriend’s six-year-old son. This, Gonzalo frets, might make him both padrastro (stepfather) and…
Philip Larkin deserves to be celebrated, not cancelled
Larkin is an Englishman, steeped in a sense of the English past. His poetry is that of a man conscious he is living in an old country,…
Was Pygmalion the first incel?
Even more tellingly, she is not given a name – that was one of the few details I took from other sources. She is only called the…
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head by Warsan Shire review: not just Beyoncé’s favourite poet
London’s first Young Poet Laureate, Warsan Shire was catapulted into the spotlight when her poetry was used in the film of Beyoncé’s 2016 “visual album”, Lemonade. And…
Sonnet factories, puzzled censors and Stasi tears: East Germany’s bizarre effort to weaponise poetry
This was, in Becher’s mind, a reaction to Nazi philistinism. (Think of that line often misattributed to Goering: “Whenever I hear the word culture, I unlock the…
How Edith Sitwell’s Jazz Age experiment scandalised London
A century ago, on January 24 1922, in a Chelsea drawing room, there premiered a startling entertainment that baffled almost everyone present. Across the room, a large…
The Telegraph Poetry Competition 2022: Juliet Stevenson reads the winning poem
Isabella Mead: ‘Balloon’ The war years: when women could harness the moon,Gran in her twenties, blue overalls,ran the winch for the launch of barrage balloons,handling steel cables…
How on earth do you send a telegram in Chinese?
Telegrams, for instance, could only be sent in Chinese by assigning each character a number between four and six digits long. “Whereas English could be English, and…
50 masterpieces that will make you cry
POP MUSIC by Neil McCormick In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (1955)The great crooner’s turbulent, short-lived second marriage to Ava Gardner resulted in this moody,…
TS Eliot Prize-winner Joelle Taylor: ‘The internet has killed off our subculture’
Joelle Taylor cuts a sharp figure as she walks through Soho: three-piece suit, burgundy tie, oxblood brogues and what she calls a “tsunami quiff”. For the poet…
TS Eliot Prize review: 10 books jostling for the richest award in poetry
The T S Eliot Prize is poetry’s Booker, the richest award for a book of verse published in the UK. I wonder what Eliot himself, that allusive polyglot,…
Do you live in a big country house? Now all you need is a poet to immortalise it
And what of the poems themselves? Like any big-themed anthology, Hollow Palaces is necessarily a mixed bag of brilliance and dross. Geoffrey Hill’s spirit-of-England sonnet “The Laurel…
So much for Joe Biden’s approval – Amanda Gorman’s poetry needs an editor
Earlier this year, almost 100 million people watched the American poet Amanda Gorman perform as part of a ceremony at the very heart of her nation’s identity:…
Penelope, review: Tom Stoppard’s 21st-century Odyssey sells its heroine short
Why are writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood, Wole Soyinka, Kamila Shamsie, Stephen Fry, Anne Carson and now, Tom Stoppard (who has reworked the Odyssey from the…