It can be very easy to stay in your own corner of the world, especially after building a life there …
On going about your own life when a loved one is suffering: W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”
After I spent some time memorising Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, I decided to move on to learning W. H. …
Homer as a “surprisingly accurate observer of anatomy”: The Iliad, injury, and mortality rates
No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he …
Nick Cave’s chosen “sad poem of loss”: “The Widower in the Country” by Les Murray
Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2012.Image credit Sally May Mills. I was very saddened to …
Allen Ginsberg on never working again (and living a “literary and quiet city-hermit existence” instead)
Carl Solomon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs at the Gotham Book Mart …
‘Feast on your life’: Tom Hiddleston on Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love” for accepting ourselves
I read it to my dearest friends after dinner once, and to my family at Christmas, and they …
Navigating a Confusing World with Whitman’s “Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances”
Walt Whitman photographed at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Samuel Murray, 1891."Of the Terrible …
Reading W.B. Yeats’s “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” as a Meditation on Life
Today I'm sharing with you something that's a little different. I've just started a university …
Poetry for Letting Go: In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Lately I've been reflecting on good poems to learn by heart, and "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary …
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On Visiting Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s Home, to Better Enjoy His Poetry
I recently spent three days in the English Lake District, which could only mean one thing: a …
8 Books for Every Bookworm to Have in Their (Miniature) Library
My book collection has invaded every room of my house and continues to grow at an alarming rate. …
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“Let My Country Awake” by Rabindranath Tagore to Inspire Individual and Social Change
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late …
Keeping Poets Alive: Why You Should Know About Jack Clemo
Clemo's Selected Poems, publishedby Bloodaxe Books (out of print butavailable second hand)How do we …
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Robert Frost: A Homesick Poet Stuck Mid-Atlantic?
On the point of returning to the United States from England, where he had lived from 1912-1915, …
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