Poetry for children: where do we start?
Annie Fisher gathers together the best children's poetry, and the best children's poetry anthologies
Features
A curlew flings its loop of sound
Rowan Bell travels to Amble to talk to poet, historian and broadcaster Katrina Porteous
A simple tree rooted in a quiet dream
Helena Nelson considers the pros and cons of Tree Poetry
The Lies of Owls
Rebecca Ferrier explores truth, doubt, and lies in poetry, and looks at how poems can act as windows into our past selves
New, hopeful arrangements
Christopher Arksey chooses poems by Philip Larkin, Christopher Reid and U.A. Fanthorpe to take to his desert island
Ah, bostid is the golden bowel!
Steven Lovatt on dialect poetry
This barter of enthusiasm 8
Roy Marshall, Kathryn Gray and Mark Anthony Owen choose poems by Suzannah Evans, James Fenton and Connie Bensley
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life
Sarah Mnatzaganian gives us a tour of her poetry bookshelf
Learning to read with Mallarmé, the most obscure of all poets
Bertrand Marchal discusses why Mallarmé wanted to make poetry so difficult for readers to understand
What are poets really after?
Helena Nelson considers the pros and cons of the ‘after’ epigraph, poetry’s exclusive codes, and the necessary art of bluffing
There’s space for all of us
We talk to Di Slaney of Candlestick Press about about publishing poetry that appeals to non-poets, whether poetry should be able to pay for itself, and the joy of wonky animals
A lesson for all
Rowan Bell on Ukrainian-American graphic artist Paul Peter Piech and his bold illustrations of poetry