Category Poetry

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Books, Culture, Fiction, LGBTQ+ rights, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức, Stage, Theatre

‘True trailblazer’: British author and activist Maureen Duffy dies aged 92

Duffy wrote novels, plays and poetry, campaigned for gay rights, and was a ‘tireless advocate’ for authors’ rights

Maureen Duffy, author of more than 60 works and a pioneering activist for gay rights and writers’ rights, has died at the age of 92.

Duffy was awarded the inaugural £10,000 Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Pioneer prize last year by Bernardine Evaristo, who described her as a “true trailblazer in every sense of the word”.

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May 29, 2026

Books, Culture, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81

The British poet, who also wrote plays, fiction and published poetry in translation, analysed almost 1,000 poems for her much-loved series

British poet Carol Rumens, whose Guardian poem of the week column ran for nearly 20 years and was beloved among its loyal readership, has died aged 81.

Her family said that she died peacefully on 25 April, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Explore the archive of Carol’s poem of the week columns here

thanhtoong0
May 5, 2026

Books, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

‘Extraordinary and original poet’ JH Prynne dies aged 89

The maverick writer and scholar was a pioneer in 60s avant garde circles, and emerged as a cult figure despite an aversion to publicity, and poetry that was hard to parse

Jeremy Halvard Prynne, known as JH Prynne, a maverick figure in British poetry, died on 22 April at the age of 89.

“Jeremy was an extraordinary and original human, which is no surprise because he was an extraordinary and original poet,” said Peter Gizzi, the American poet who introduced a reissue of Prynne’s 1969 collection The White Stones. “The word ‘genius’ gets tossed around, but if anyone was, he certainly was.”

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April 24, 2026

Bernardine Evaristo, Books, Culture, Fiction, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

From Manifesto to Mr Loverman: Bernardine Evaristo’s best books – ranked!

From the secret gay life of a British-Caribbean man to that controversial shared Booker win, the author has blazed a trail across the literary landscape. Here are seven of her top titles

Even by Evaristo’s experimental standards, this book is a highly ambitious mash-up of forms and stories. It takes a mismatched couple, strait-laced Stanley and ebullient Jessie, on a road trip across Europe where they meet the ghosts of black historical figures, from Alexander Pushkin to Mary Seacole. We learn a lot along the way, but the real engine of the story is Stanley and Jessie’s combative relationship. Told in a blend of prose, poetry, scripts, memos, legal documents, budget spreadsheets … and road signs, Soul Tourists ultimately wobbles under the weight of both its own good intentions and its skittish variety, but it has charm and energy to burn.

thanhtoong0
April 20, 2026

Books, Culture, Fiction, Kae Tempest, LGBTQ+ rights, Music, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức, Stage, Theatre

Kae Tempest on creativity and his gender transition: ‘I’m just glad to be alive’

Ten years after his debut novel, the poet and musician has written a follow-up exploring self-discovery and a life lived on the edge. He talks about sexuality, pronouns and drawing strength from the literature he loves

Kae Tempest sidles into a pub near his house on a weekday afternoon and orders a pint of mineral water. At his side is Murphy, an enormous, 14-year-old alaskan malamute dog with startling blue eyes who settles down on the floor next to his master and goes to sleep. “He’s all right,” Tempest says. “He’s very friendly. He won’t even put his nose up.” The rapper, performance poet, playwright and novelist has a ginger beard and is wearing Timberland boots, baggy jeans and a black hoodie over a blue-and-white striped collared shirt. His hair is hidden by a cap. Years ago, his dramatic russet hair was long, but he cropped it when he dropped the “T” from his first name and came out as nonbinary, a watershed moment in his gender transition. Now testosterone has deepened his voice and his journey has reached its final stage – from they/them to he/him.

As Tempest has been famous since his late 20s, showered with accolades ranging from Mercury nominations for two of his albums (including his debut, Let Them Eat Chaos) to becoming the youngest poet ever to receive the Ted Hughes award for the epic performance poem Brand New Ancients, this odyssey has taken place in public. On his song I Stand on the Line, from his last album Self Titled, Tempest vividly describes the anxiety of having to deal with the hostility of some people’s reactions to his “second puberty” (“Out in the limelight like, please, nobody look at me / I’m looking for myself, all I’m seeing is the bitterness / Coming my way when I’m using the facilities”). So is it a heavy burden to be such a visible trans person? “It’s just my life,” Tempest replies, his voice a soft south London growl, much quieter than the thrilling, declamatory style of his performances. “I’m just glad to be alive. How beautiful,” he adds. “Because you felt like you might not be at some point.”

thanhtoong0
April 18, 2026

Awards and prizes, Books, Culture, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức, The Poetry Society

Poem about ‘relentlessness of the news cycle’ wins National Poetry Competition

Judges praised the ‘emotional stakes’ of Partridge Boswell’s poem The Gathering, which took the £5,000 top prize

A poem about language, love, and processing distressing world events has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition. The Gathering by Partridge Boswell was picked from more than 21,000 entries by poets in 113 countries.

The poem came from Boswell’s attempt to make sense of global suffering, state violence and war. He describes how he “followed the media for a long while, writing elegies, parodies and rants” to make sense of his “discomfort and disbelief”, and the emotional burden this entails.

thanhtoong0
March 26, 2026

Books, Culture, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes

‘I want my career, my children and a free supple life’: Sylvia Plath’s radical reinvention

Too often framed as a tragic icon or a victim of domesticity, the poet remade herself and her work at the start of the 60s, as a new collection will show

In February 1962, Sylvia Plath dropped in on her neighbour in Devon, Rose Key, with “a plate of absolutely indigestible Black Walnut-flavored cupcakes”. She had made them from a Betty Crocker mix palmed off on her by the bank manager’s wife. Not wanting to waste it nor feed it to her own family (she was scornful of both processed food and the British appetite for starch), Plath baked it and efficiently dispatched it next door.

There was a lot of cake-baking involved in the social life of North Tawton. Plath excelled at it – like everything else. In the early months of that year, shortly after giving birth to her second child, she was not only making her own “six-egg” sponges, she was taking Italian, German and French lessons, writing an experimental poem for the BBC Third programme (Three Women), obsessively sourcing rugs for her new house (“I have looked & looked at carpets, in Exeter, London & Plymouth, & feel now that our choice is right & sensible”), having the downstairs floors cemented (she hated dirty floors) and expressing a desire to begin woodwork classes.

thanhtoong0
March 22, 2026

Audiobooks, Books, Culture, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

Strange Beach by Oluwaseun Olayiwola audiobook review – a debut that dances with passion

The dancer and author gives this collection clarity and warmth as he narrates poems about family, queer identity, hedonism and race

The first poetry collection from the Nigerian American dancer and poet Oluwaseun Olayiwola explores themes of race, family, queer identity, hedonism and the body. Strange Beach takes its title from Claudia Rankine’s poem Citizen: An American Lyric which describes “each body is a strange beach, and if you let in the excess emotion, you will recall the Atlantic Ocean breaking on our heads”. The shoreline is a recurring image in Strange Beach’s poems, a threshold where forces collide and the landscape is forever changing shape.

Olayiwola’s verse dances between the abstract and the philosophical, and there are instances when the narrative thread is discarded and meaning is hard to glean. Clarity comes with hearing it read out loud, however. Olayiwola’s narration brims with warmth and passion, allowing us to bask in imagery, atmosphere and the speaker’s rich interior world.

thanhtoong0
March 12, 2026

Books, Culture, Fiction, Fiction in translation, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

Georgi Gospodinov: ‘Jorge Luis Borges gave me an exhilarating sense of freedom’

The Bulgarian Booker winner on the letter he wrote to JD Salinger, the allure of Homer’s Odyssey and the magic of Thomas Mann

My earliest reading memory
I was taught to read quite early, at five or six, probably so that I would sit quietly and not be a nuisance to the adults. And it worked. Once I’d entered a book, I didn’t want to come out. I remember how Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl turned my heart upside down. I was living with my grandmother at the time, and I cried under the blanket, terrified that one day she, too, would die.

My favourite book growing up
I read greedily and indiscriminately, picking books at random from my parents’ library. Thomas Mayne Reid’s adventure novels were favourites, especially The Headless Horseman. Jack London’s Martin Eden, too. Clearly, the idea of being both a hero and a writer appealed to me. Writers were not usually heroes. I also loved a textbook on criminology, which explained how to make invisible ink, what traces criminals leave behind, and so on – matters of extraordinary importance to any 10-year-old boy.

thanhtoong0
February 20, 2026

Books, Culture, Poetry, Sách & Tri thức

Poem of the week – from plastic: A Poem by Matthew Rice

Two time-stamped poems are taken from a book-length sequence tracking the human moments of a factory night shift

01.29

When we look up at stars on break
we see only stars behind
the exhaled Milky Way
of Bobby’s Golden Virginia,
ways to navigate shift patterns,
nothing seismic or anything approaching
truth; for us stars mean only night shift,
insanity of depth,
the slow individual seconds
during which the dotted starlight
doesn’t burn fast enough.

thanhtoong0
February 16, 2026