Poetry

‘How the War Began’ by Thomas Jordan, 1663. ‘I’ll tell you how the war began: The holy ones assembled (For so they called their party then Whose consciences so trembled). They pulled the bishops from their seats, And set up every widgeon; The Scotch were sent for to do feats With oat-cakes and religion. They plucked communion-tables down, And broke our painted glasses; They threw our altars to the ground, And tumbled down the crosses; They set up Cromwell and his heir, The Lord and Lady Claypole; Because they hated Common Prayer, The organ and the maypole.’ Three-hundred and fifty years ago, in September 1662, congregations in churches all over

Julia Copus’s new collection The World’s Two Smallest Humans exists in four parts, each in their own way circling the theme of loss. Two parts – ‘The Particella of Franz Xaver Süssmayr’ and ‘Hero’ – take on historic themes, the first inhabiting that of a man in 1791 ‘translating direct from the silence’ of Mozart’s shorthand for The Magic Flute while also caring for Mozart’s wife, Constanze. The second channels history too, in this case an Ovidian past made new, rejigged for a few pages in contemporary idiom. Both brief sections work well. But the collection really gets going in the two other larger sections – ‘Durable Features’ and ‘Ghost’

‘Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford’ ‘Here lies wise and valiant dust, Huddled up ‘twixt fit and just: STRAFFORD, who was hurried hence ‘Twixt treason and convenience. He spent his time here in a mist; A Papist, yet a Calvinist. His prince’s nearest joy, and grief; He had, yet wanted all relief. The prop and ruin of the state; The people’s violent love, and hate: One in extremes loved and abhorred. Riddles lie here; or in a word, Here lies blood; and let it lie Speechless still, and never cry.’ If Nick Clegg lived in bloodier times he might have ended up like Strafford by now. Executed on the eve

As Roger McGough approaches 75, his latest collection of poems As Far As I Know shows him writing with the same blend of mischievous word play, subversion of cliché and distinctive sense of humor that makes him one of Britain’s most popular poets. McGough became a prominent force in the late 1960s when his poems were included in ‘The Mersey Sound’: a Penguin anthology that has since sold over a million copies. To date, McGough has published over fifty collections of poetry for both adults and children. His work has always reached a wide audience due to its incredible accessibility. Along with Mike McGear and John Gorman, McGough, was a

Don Paterson was born in 1963 in Dundee. He moved to London in 1984 to work as a jazz musician, and eventually began to write poetry. In 1993, Faber published his debut collection, Nil Nil, which won the Forward prize. In total, he’s published seven collections and three books of aphorisms. Paterson has won the prestigious T.S. Eliot prize for poetry twice. Other awards include: the Whitbread prize, and The Geoffrey Faber memorial prize. He received an OBE in 2008, and teaches poetry at the University of St Andrews.  His recently published Selected Poems, covers a remarkable career that spans twenty years, ranging from the half-dead Scottish towns and deserted

Epigram 7 from The letting of humours blood in the head-vaine ‘Speak gentlemen, what shall we do to day? Drink some brave health upon the Dutch carouse? Or shall we to the Globe and see a play? Or visit Shoreditch for a bawdy house? Let’s call for cards or dice, and have a game. To sit thus idle is both sin and shame.’ This speaks Sir Revel , furnished out with fashion, From dish-crowned hat unto the shoe’s square toe, That haunts a whore-house but for recreation, Plays but at dice to cony catch or so, Drinks drunk in kindness, for good fellowship, Or to a play goes but some

“My shame was my father wasn’t there,” says Nick Makoha, the London poet who represented Uganda at the recent Poetry Parnassus. This frank vulnerability is at the core of his first collection of poetry and his new theatre performance, ‘My Father and other Superheroes.’ Uganda is a source of tension for Makoha as both the place of his birth but also a place he fled, a place from which he feels distant. “Most people are from somewhere else,” he says. “So the story of the exile isn’t the minority, we’re the majority. Look at T.S. Eliot, by all rights and purposes he belongs to America. He liked French poets, Italian

Metamorphosis, a temporary exhibition at the National Gallery, London, showcases a range of contemporary artistic responses to Renaissance painter Titian’s Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto metamorphosis paintings, inspired by Ovid. Daisy Dunn looks at the new poetry inspired by the collaboration.   When the hapless youth Actaeon peeled back a curtain dangling in a forest glade, he might just as well have been uncovering a religious icon as playing voyeur to a bevy of naked beauties. This, at least, is the way Titian saw it when he decided to paint the luscious velvetine hanging before the unwitting voyeur in his Ovid inspired canvas, Diana and Actaeon. Titian knew

from Timber ‘There is a Necessity all men should love their country: He that professeth the contrary, may be delighted with his words, but his heart is there. Natures that are hardened to evil, you shall sooner break, then make straight; they are like poles that are crooked, and dry: there is no attempting them. We praise the things we hear, with much more willingness, then those we see: because we envy the present, and reverence the past; thinking ourselves instructed by the one, and overlaid by the other. Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing, settled in the imagination; but never arriving at the understanding, there to

UP: SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE Faber’s new Shakespeare’s Sonnets app is rated 12+ on account of its ‘Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity’. After watching Andrew Motion’s  come-to-bed reading of Sonnet 142 we’re surprised it escaped an X-certificate. Who needs 50 Shades when you’ve got the third sexiest poet laureate (after Ben Jonson and Ted Hughes) wearing nothing but polka-dot pyjamas and braces? ‘Love is my sin’ indeed!     UP: 60s SUMMER READS Now’s the time of year when literary pages replace serious stuff like reviews with drivel about what famous people are reading on their holidays. A depressing symptom of our celeb-obsessed age, it’s tempting to think, but a glance

I can’t help thinking that the literary editor is having a little chuckle to himself, in his own private way, as he hands me Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way to review. What he knows is that, for my sins, I have never been anywhere near the Pennine Way, the long stretch that runs from Edale, Derbyshire, to Kirk Yetholm on the Scottish border. And yet here it is in my hand, a travel diary of sorts, dedicated to Simon Armitage’s 2010 sweaty ramble ‘backwards’ from the Scottish end to his hometown, Marsden, situated near its beginning. Thankfully, neither familiarity with the moors nor a particular

While the Ancient Greeks ceased hostilities for the Olympic Games, this summer will be business as usual in many parts of the world. Exiled poets from Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, China, and Uganda presented their work yesterday afternoon at the Southbank center, participating in the ongoing Poetry Parnassus. Readings took place in the cavernous, skylit, Front Room at QEH. Yet the solemnity of spoken word kept being interrupted by river watchers on the terrace coming in to order more drinks at the bar or the walkie-talkie of the janitor as she made her way around the audience, sweeping up rubbish. Mir Mahfuz Ali, who was shot in the throat by a

Possessing a meticulously detailed and layered style, as well as having an exceptional ability to describe nature, Jorie Graham’s poetry is primarily concerned with how we can relate our internal consciousness to the exterior natural world we inhabit. In 1996, The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974-1994, earned Graham the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She is currently the Boylston professor of poetry at Harvard University. Her forthcoming book, Place will be her twelfth collection to date. She spoke to the Spectator about why poetry needs to be reclaimed to the oral tradition, how technology is corrupting our imagination, and why her work is laced with contradictions and paradoxes.

The fuss stirred up by the mere suggestion that poetry might be part of the school curriculum was extremely suspicious. Just as George Osborne quietly announced his u-turn on the charities tax during the less soporific sections of Leveson, the proposal that children should have to learn poetry off by heart smacked of a smoke screen.   What evil is lurking in the small print of Gove’s national curriculum? Will school dinners get even smaller? Have all our schools been sold to Google?   But when it comes to poetry, there seem to be two main objections to Gove’s plan. First, though Gove may ostensibly want to give teachers more