In Other People’s Countries, a memoir of his Belgian childhood, Patrick McGuinness writes: “I sometimes think it’s getting worse, this past business, that it’s rising up in me like damp creeping up a wall…
Drivers in parts of Southern England and Ireland have been finding fine red dust on their vehicles – sand blown all the way from the Sahara desert. There is now even a pollution warning because of the…
It’s a kind of literary miracle. Fragments of two new poems by Ancient Greek poet Sappho have been discovered, making it possible for us to be among the first people to read these texts for more than 1,000…
On 25 January, people all over the world will congregate to feast upon a spicy sheep’s stomach – but not before they’ve recited a poem in its honour. The occasion is Burns Night, the poem is Robert Burns’s…
The decision to award the TS Eliot poetry prize to Northern Ireland poet Sinéad Morrissey has been greeted with the usual poorly punctuated grumblings about how poetry has lost its way, together with mainly…
Tomorrow, a new book by the Adelaide-born performance poet and playwright Christopher Barnett will be launched in Melbourne. Titled when they came/ for you: elegies/ of resistance, it’s the first time…
The anniversary of Armistice Day is chance to reflect on a shameful chapter in the history of journalism. Millions were killed and maimed during World War I, about a million from Britain and its empire…
At 9.30am on Saturday I drove past the Westgate Mall on my way to the National Museums of Kenya. I needed a coffee after a late night, and contemplated stopping but for no particular reason I drove on…
The sudden death on Friday of the Irish Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney has focused international minds and media on the power of poetry to affect our lives. This is especially true from an environmental…
The world of political poetry has suffered some significant losses in recent months. Václav Havel, a poet long before he was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic…
The following is a poem commissioned by The Conversation from Sydney City Poet, Kate Middleton on the year that was. Did you read about the MARS-500 simulation? Six men in isolation sharing a broken English…