Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning American poet, born in 1953 in New York. Since graduating from Princeton University in 1973, she has lived in California, where she has lectured at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her previously published poetry collections, five of which were awarded prizes, she is an essayist and editor Read More
Willis Barnstone is an American poet, who is also known as a translator. His work draws on multiple languages and references, both to the works of other poets and also to philosophical theories, all undertaken in a rigorously intellectual manner. Barnstone believes that much of our western modern culture is rooted in Greek philosophy. Yet, Read More
The StAnza lecture is one the mainstays of Scotland’s International Poetry Festival with past luminaries such as Glyn Maxwell, Michael Schmidt, Gillian Clarke and Neil Astley holding forth. It is a tricky juggling act to get right because the lecture is heard by aspiring poets, established poets, academics and poetry readers, as well as folk Read More
Before the stiff Monsignor bends To butter me with chrism, do these things for me; air the suit from Gieves & Hawkes, cut to a shape I haven’t been since eighty-three; black and shine my wedding shoes with Cherry Blossom from the tin below the stairs; choose a shirt (collar fifteen and a half), Pringle Read More
Deeply embedded in its time, Lift, Harry Man’s first poetry collection, offers insight into how growing up in the late 20th Century, amidst rapid technological advancement and ground-breaking scientific research (especially in the domain of space exploration), might have oriented and shaped one’s personal experience of the world. His poems, imbued with a communicative and Read More
Thomas Lynch is an American award winning poet and writer. He won the American Book Award for his publication, Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, which was also short-listed for the National Book Award, and his essays and poems have appeared in a host of distinguished magazines and newspapers including Harper’s, The New Yorker, Read More
If your first foray into a multi-award-winning poet’s work is his eleventh published collection, it’s natural that you might approach it with a little bit of trepidation. That, in any case, was my experience. Indeed, a sense of the mysterious and the uncertain never quite left me throughout my reading of Matthew Sweeney’s Inquisition Lane Read More
Valerie Laws, in the title pages of this poetry collection, is described as “Poet, crime novelist, performer, playwright, Writer-in Residence at science institutes, sci-art installation specialist, mathematician.” Phew! Like many other writers and artists, Laws clearly has her fingers in many different creative pies; this is very much in evidence in the varied subject matter Read More
Recipient of the 2014 Scottish Book Trust New Writer Poetry Award, Bridget Khursheed was already known by many on the poetry circuit before the publication of Roads to Yair. Some may argue that her approach to poetry is hardly traditional in that very tradition-aware part of the country, but there is no doubt that her Read More