poetry

To Robert Browning There is delight in singing, tho’ none hearBeside the singer; and there is delightIn praising, tho’ the praiser sit aloneAnd see the prais’d far off him, far above.Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world’s,Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,No man hath walkt along our roads with stepSo active, so inquiring eye, or tongueSo varied in discourse. But warmer climesGive brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breezeOf Alpine highths thou playest with,…

The concept of “genius loci” – the spirit of a place, often with a connotation of protection or nurturing – is the foundation of Esther Rutter’s revivifying blend of memoir, literary history and travelogue. Eliding three books into one, she explores her own terrifying mental collapse and tentative recovery, the lives of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and their confrère Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the efforts to preserve the Wordsworths’ cottage at Grasmere within the context of the Lake District as…

Michael Ondaatje has always been a poet – it is how he began his career 50 years ago – although he is more famous as a novelist and especially for his 1992 Booker prize-winning The English Patient (which also won the Golden Man Booker in 2018). In A Year of Last Things, he is writing about last – and lost – things. He is not interested in the known quantity, has always been more at home with the unknown, and is extraordinarily attuned to hauntings, to the idea that missing pieces are likely to inform whatever remains. The…

Holidaying With Dad During the DivorceHis car is a nervous breakdown,scattering chrome along the motorway.He gasps through panic attacksin tunnels and medieval towers.The falconry display goes on regardlessand eejits in velour have a crackat each other with plywood lances.I’m in a fugue state, headphones gluedto me as mum calls to accuse him of kidnapping.Come for a drink, he says.No. Retreat to the Travelodge,dry my one pair of decent flaresrancid from days of rain,in the mysterious trouser press.My anger flits and…

Open AI has blown everyone’s mind with its generative video model, Sora. However, it is not likely that the model will be available to try for free. Besides, it’s not available for the public yet, even if you are paying for premium access. But that’s okay because generative video will be big this year, and OpenAI is not the only player in town. Here are some options if you want to generate some videos of your own for free. Runway ML: Runway ML is possibly the best competitor to Sora out…

You have read your poems at literature festivals in more than 40 countries. What was it like to be in India? Have you been here before? PREMIUM Cuban poet Victor Rodriguez Nunez reading out his work at the Mumbai Poetry Festival 2024 (Courtesy the Mumbai Poetry Festival) This is my second trip to India. I have participated in festivals in New Delhi and in Goa and now Mumbai and Kolkata. India is a marvellous country, with a cultural richness that I hope everyone admires as much as I do. When did you begin to…

On the Death of Mr Purcell1Mark how the lark and linnet sing:With rival notesThey strain their warbling throats,To welcome in the spring.But in the close of night,When Philomel begins her heavenly lay,They cease their mutual spite,Drink in her music with delight,And listening and silent, and silent and listening, and listening and silent, obey.2So ceased the rival crew, when Purcell came;They sung no more, or only sung his fame:Struck dumb, they all admiredThe godlike man,Alas! too soon retired,As he too late began.We beg…

Spring Equinox, 2021First summer nightin a world remade,streets are carless,silence walks the roads.Flamboyant, a kitefloats flame on blue,flexes wings and the fork of its tailand turns on a breath.Miles high above the fields,over flights of rooks, crows, gulls,over the cities, the clouds,the atmosphere,in the vault of heaventhe ozone layer clearsof particulates, of nitrogen dioxide,and we breathe again.In this clean new silenceall sound is birdsong,a small windin the trees,the fall of a petal,an opening leaf,the turn of…

Nikki Giovanni was born on the wrong side of the tracks, in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Mulvaney Street, during the era of segregation. Now 80, she remembers her childhood in a red-lined neighbourhood, demarcating a cordon sanitaire separating it from prosperous white suburbs. “My grandfather was a Latin teacher. He’d sit on the porch and people would come by saying ‘Evening ’fessor’. Reverend Abrams lived on the other side of our street and Mrs Abrams raised chickens. We built a church and there was a real community but…

What drew you to translate this collection? David Yang (Courtesy Pushkin Press) Kafka has long been one of my favourite writers, so I jumped at the opportunity. I was immediately blown away by the art style, as I felt Nishiokya Kyodai did a fabulous job at capturing the uncanny and disorienting sense of impending doom that I had always gotten from reading Kafka’s prose. Moreover, since I had majored in German literature in my undergraduate days, I thought it was the perfect chance to combine my background in…