Permanent Afternoons: The Underworld in the Poetry of Sean O’Brien
John Challis Then, midway down that channel of the dead, A figure thick with mud rose up and called: ‘Who are you? You …
CategoryEssays
Breaking the Unthinkable Silence: on Michael Hofmann’s ‘One Lark, One Horse’
(photograph by Jemimah Kuhfeld: www.jemimahkuhfeld.co.uk) André Naffis-Sahely Poetry critics, just like the rest of us, are largely ungenerous to the middle-aged. More often …
The World of the Half-Seen: on Ruth Padel’s ‘Emerald’ and writing loss
Nadia Saward Emerald, Ruth Padel’s new collection (Chatto & Windus, 2018), is primarily an elegy for her mother who passed away in 2017 …
‘Abducted’: on a poem by Stanley Kunitz
(photograph by Lynn Saville: www.lynnsaville.com) Martina Evans Although I know the month and the day, I don’t know the year I discovered Stanley …
Hart Crane in Greenwich Village
(photograph by Walker Evans) Francesca Bratton In his 1921 flâneur’s guide to New York City, Hints to Pilgrims, the dramatist and essayist Charles …
‘Translation is the Opposite of War’: On Sarah Maguire
Photos above & below: © Crispin Hughes André Naffis-Sahely True translators take to their craft so intensely that they tend to hurtle towards …
‘Back into the socket’: William Fuller’s Playtime
Photo credit: Anna Fuller They are tempted to note patterns in the scene below, but its aspects are so various and the names to …
Meeting Point: on being a Chinese poet writing in English
Mary Jean Chan ‘I realize that the Other doesn’t really look for diversity – he is only looking for himself’ – Kei Miller …
‘Very gently struck / the quay night bell’: W.S. Graham & The Nightfishing
2018 will mark the centenary of the poet W.S. Graham (1918-1986). Graham – a Scot who for most of his adult life lived in west …
Judith or Salomé? Ambiguity & inequality in the poetry of Frederick Seidel
Matthew Halliday It is not always easy to distinguish between Judith and Salomé in the Western art tradition. Are we viewing Judith’s faithfulness to …