Features

Drawing of a cow with wings on a pink background. It is saying 'Bong' and it's by Spike Milligan.

Poetry for children: where do we start?

Annie Fisher gathers together the best children's poetry, and the best children's poetry anthologies

Photo of Katrina standing on the shore. Crab pots are behind her. Photo by Joe Grabham.

A curlew flings its loop of sound

Rowan Bell travels to Amble to talk to poet, historian and broadcaster Katrina Porteous

Photograph of a muddy track leading into a woodland. The trees leaves are a vivid green and it looks like it has been raining.

A simple tree rooted in a quiet dream

Helena Nelson considers the pros and cons of Tree Poetry

An owl (Google say's it's a barn owl) sitting on a leather gauntlet.

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

Christopher Arksey looking at the camera. He's wearing glasses and a striped top.

New, hopeful arrangements

Christopher Arksey chooses poems by Philip Larkin, Christopher Reid and U.A. Fanthorpe to take to his desert island

Image from a book illustrating the dialect poem 'The Lion and Albert' showing four people in Edwardian dress discussing something. The picture is titled 'The manager had to be sent for.'

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

Photograph showing poetry books on a bookshelf.

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

An oil painting (done by some geezer called Manet) of Mallarmé. He has curly hair and a fine moustache of the handlebar persuasion. He is reading and smoking a big old cigar.

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

Image showing the painting 'The Goldfish' by Paul Klee. It shows, unsurprisingly, a goldfish on a textured blue background; there are other small fish artfully arranged (well it is your actual Paul Klee innit) in the corners.

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

Photo of Di Slaney looking straight at the camera. The background is dark blue. She has glasses and shoulder length dark hair.

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

Watercolour showing green grass, white flowers and two leafy trees with a light blue sky.

A lesson for all

Rowan Bell on Ukrainian-American graphic artist Paul Peter Piech and his bold illustrations of poetry