How far can you travel on a sofa? I’ve been working on and off for a number of years in the world of sofas, God forgive me. So I was surprised I hadn’t heard of the “sofa poem by Seamus Heaney” that a colleague referred to the other day. She was ... Read More...
Poetry
Nige salutes the extraordinary lit-crit of Christopher Ricks... Despite the heat having knocked out most of the thinking parts of my brain, I've been reading (technically re-reading, as I read it when it came out some 40 - 40! - years ago) Christopher Ricks's Keats and Embarrassment. It presents the poet's ... Read More...
Keats, Chatterton, Shelley, Byron, Wollenstone, Burns... they all died in their prime. But what would it have meant, for art and for the world, if they had lived their full three score and ten? Professor Nick Groom offers a counterfactual history of the long-lived Romantics... What would have happened if John ... Read More...
Stephen discovers a remarkably vivid account of a young boy's unwitting encounter with a great poet... While idly browsing through Notes and Queries (the back issues of which - going back to its inception in 1849 - may be found in the Internet Archive), I came upon a wonderful account (written ... Read More...
In today's poetry feature, Brit gives us some decidedly unsettling children's verse... There are many horrific poems, nursery rhymes and stories aimed at children, but for true terror we need look no further than the words and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman, and his famous 1845 collection of 'Merry Tales and Funny ... Read More...
Stephen continues his exploration of the poetic conceit that 'all the world's a stage'... If Life is indeed a drama or comedy in which we are actors, I will hazard a guess that most of us see ourselves as the leading man or the leading lady in the entertainment. James Simmons's ... Read More...
The paranoiac feeling that 'All the world's a stage' has troubled many poets... The poetic conceit that life may be compared to a work of art - most commonly, a play - is an old one. At some point in our lives, the thought may occur to us that we are ... Read More...
Last year we ran a post by Jonathan Law about the mysterious disappearance in the 1970s of the strange and brilliant poet Rosemary Tonks. Last month, new information about her vanishing act came to light. Here is Jonathan's original post, with an update... If you’ve ever come across the work of Rosemary Tonks, then I think I ... Read More...
In this week's poetry feature, W H Auden and his debt to Robert Frost... At this time of year small piles of sand begin to appear along the seams of the sidewalks. The ants have awakened, and have begun their work. Who knows what is going on beneath our feet? Complicated ... Read More...
Prepare to weep for your lost youth and joy... First Heart-Rending Elegy In Loopy Copse, when I was young, all golden were the shrubs and trees. All golden I remember them, and Bonkers Maisie from the farm. Maisie was unkempt and mad, just like her brother and her dad. Her sister left them long ago. ... Read More...
