Category Archives: Poetry

Shuntaro Tanikawa, giant of Japanese poetry, dies aged 92

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The poet also wrote the lyrics for the Astro Boy theme song and translated Peanuts into Japanese

Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died aged 92.

Tanikawa, who translated the Peanuts comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series Astro Boy, died on 13 November, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said on Tuesday. The cause of death, at a Tokyo hospital, was old age.

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British Academy to pay tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah at live event

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Poetry in protest event on 30 October will showcase how political change can be brought about through verse

The British Academy is to pay tribute to the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah next week as part of a night of discussion and performance.

The award-winning poet Jackie Kay is among guest speakers at the first Poetry in protest event on 30 October, which explores how political change can be brought about through verse.

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K-pop, K-movies, a Nobel prize … and now K-poetry: book of wise words adds to Korea’s cultural glory

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After Han Kang’s Nobel award and South Korean cinema hits, Penguin publishes new English edition of maxims by Lee Seong-bok in wake of US success

A collection of wise maxims written by a 72-year old poet, calmly setting out illuminating advice to other poets, is the latest and perhaps most unlikely book to benefit from a surge in demand for South Korean literature.

“Kick against words like you would kick back on a swing. You’ve got to feel as if the soles of your feet are touching the sky,” suggests Lee Seong-bok in his hit title Indeterminate Inflorescence.

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Greek poet who inspired Forster, Hockney and Jackie Onassis emerges from the shadows

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The writer Constantine Cavafy was largely unpublished in his lifetime, but was revered by artists. His archive and Alexandrian home are now on show for the first time

It was the backdrop to a literary world of the lost Levant. Away from the sea, on a narrow street in the old Greek quarter of Alexandria, 10 Rue Lepsius was the home and creative sanctuary of Constantine Cavafy.

For 26 years, it was here that the poet, a bureaucrat in British-run colonial Egypt, held court, treating writers such as EM Forster to long candle-lit nights of talk over liquors and what the English novelist later recalled as “small bits of bread and cheese”.

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Surge of interest in Ethiopian culture boosts case for return of treasures, says Sissay

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Poet who is curating country’s first Venice Biennale pavilion says ‘part of the heart’ of the country was looted and is being held in museums

An Ethiopian cultural surge – including a first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the rise of stars such as Ruth Negga and The Weeknd – is making the country’s calls for restitution of looted colonial-era artefacts harder to ignore, according to Lemn Sissay.

The poet and author, who is curating the country’s inaugural Biennale pavilion, where Tesfaye Urgessa’s work will be on show, said the event would be part of a significant cultural push from the east African country and its diaspora over the last two decades.

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Poem inspired by New York mugging wins top prize in National Poetry Competition

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Imogen Wade’s The Time I Was Mugged in New York City impresses judges for ‘lyricism in the account of an abduction’

• Scroll down to read the winning poem

A poem inspired by the author’s experience of being mugged has won the first prize of £5,000 in the National Poetry Competition.

The Time I Was Mugged in New York City by Imogen Wade tells the story of being locked in a van at JFK airport by a man dressed in black, driven to Grand Central station and made to give the man money.

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‘It’s a golden age’: poetry flourishes in Ukraine – but at a terrible price

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Conflict has changed Ukrainian poetry and boosted interest at home and abroad, but several poets have died or disappeared

A year ago, the poet Borys Humenyuk sent a final message. For 24 hours, he and two fellow Ukrainian soldiers had been under relentless Russian fire. Shells rained down on their trench outside the eastern city of Bakhmut. “We’re running out of ammo. Down to the last bullet,” Humenyuk said over a crackling radio. Those were his last words.

Humenyuk had volunteered to relieve a group of exhausted service personnel at “zero”, the hottest part of the frontline. Now, he explained, he was wounded in the shoulder and unable to drag his injured comrade to safety. “We are stuck,” he reported. By the time an evacuation team reached the trench in the village of Klishchiivka, Humenyuk had disappeared.

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Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer killed in Gaza

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Tributes pour in for one of the leaders of a young generation of writers in Gaza who chose to tell their stories in English

Tributes poured in for the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer on Friday after friends said he was killed in a strike on Gaza.

Alareer was one of the leaders of a young generation of writers in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, with friends describing his defiance in the face of the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

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Sarah Holland-Batt wins $25,000 top prize at Queensland literary awards

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The poet’s premier’s award for The Jaguar, a collection about the death of her father, follows Stella prize win earlier this year

Sarah Holland-Batt’s “technically brilliant and experimental” poetry collection about the death of her father, The Jaguar, has won the $25,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards, fresh after her Stella prize win earlier this year.

The 40-year-old’s third collection, covering her father’s diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, his time in aged care and his death two decades later, won the premier’s award for a work of state significance on Wednesday night.

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Gboyega Odubanjo: police appeal for help over missing poet

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Award-winning poet last seen in early hours of Saturday morning in Kelmarsh, Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire police are appealing for information to help find the award-winning poet Gboyega Odubanjo, who has been missing since the early hours of Saturday morning.

Odubanjo, 27, was last seen at about 4am on 26 August. He was attending Shambala festival in the Kelmarsh area of Northamptonshire, where he was due to perform later that day.

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‘Translation is an art’: why translators are battling for recognition

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Like any author, translators want to receive credit for their work instead of being treated as an afterthought

They have often been overlooked in the artistic and literary process, but translators have long claimed they have the power to change everything.

There are tales of myths being born, societies being forged and cities destroyed with just a slip of the pen, such as the supposed translation error that allegedly led to the US deciding to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or the speculation about life on Mars after the mistranslation of an Italian astronomer.

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Translator alleges work on Chinese radical ‘plagiarised’ in British Museum show

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Exclusive: Yilin Wang claims she did not receive any credit for translations of Qiu Jin’s work in the China’s Hidden Century exhibition

The British Museum is removing a segment of its landmark exhibition on China after a writer alleged that her translations of a Chinese revolutionary’s poetry had been “plagiarised”.

Yilin Wang, an award-winning translator, poet and editor who lives in Vancouver, said she did not receive any credit or reimbursement for translations of Qiu Jin’s work that she claims are hers. They appeared in the exhibition and catalogue of the museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition.

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Pete Brown, countercultural poet, singer and Cream lyricist, dies aged 82

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British poet who wrote lyrics for Sunshine of Your Love, White Room and many more also had acclaimed solo career

Pete Brown, a cult figure in British poetry, rock, psychedelia and rhythm and blues who wrote lyrics for many of Cream’s classic songs, has died aged 82. He had been living with what he recently described as “various forms of cancer” for a number of years.

The family of his long-term late collaborator Jack Bruce wrote on social media: “We are extremely saddened to learn of the death of Jack’s long term friend and writing partner Pete Brown who passed away last night. We extend our sincere condolences to Pete’s wife Sheridan and Pete’s children as well as all his family and friends. Love from the Bruce family.”

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Simon Armitage savours spring ‘ecstasy and melancholy’ on World Poetry Day

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Poet laureate celebrates a plum tree in poem commissioned by the National Trust for its blossom campaign

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a new poem which pays homage to spring, in celebration of World Poetry Day.

Plum Tree Among the Skyscrapers is the first in a collection of poems inspired by blossom and commissioned by the National Trust. Its publication marks the beginning of the Trust’s annual blossom campaign, in which the charity will vow to bring blossom back to landscapes across the UK by planting 20m trees by 2030 to help tackle both the climate and nature crises.

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Export ban on Coleridge anti-slavery manuscript as British buyer sought

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Handwritten poem in Greek from his undergraduate years has recommended sale price of £20,400

A handwritten manuscript containing a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge railing against the slave trade has been temporarily barred from leaving the UK in the hope that a British buyer can be found.

The poem, written in Greek by Coleridge across six mottled pages, attacks the horrors of slavery and condemns those who overlooked the conditions of enslaved people on the Middle Passage transportation route in the late 18th century.

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Forensic study finds Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned

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The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in 1973, days after Chile’s military coup

One of the most enduring mysteries in modern Chilean history may finally have been solved after forensic experts determined that the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin, apparently confirming decades of suspicions that he was murdered.

According to the official version, Neruda – who made his name as a young poet with the collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair – died from prostate cancer and malnutrition on 23 September 1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of his friend, President Salvador Allende.

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Folio from ‘world masterpiece’ illuminated manuscript goes up for auction

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Section of the Shah Tahmasp Shahnameh is expected to fetch between £4m and £6m at auction next month

A folio from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnameh, one of the “finest illustrated manuscripts in existence” according to Sotheby’s, is expected to fetch between £4m and £6m at auction next month.

The Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings, is an epic poem containing 50,000 rhyming couplets, telling the history of Persia’s rulers. It was written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010.

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Works by Mexican writer Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz recovered from auction

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Two books containing 17th-century works by pioneering feminist poet and nun saved from US auction and returned to Spain

Two precious and well-travelled books containing works by the Mexican nun, writer, composer, poet and proto-feminist Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz have been saved from auction in New York and returned to Spain, where they were printed almost three-and-a-half centuries ago.

Sister Juana, who was born in mid-17th century Mexico to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother of Spanish descent, possessed a thirst for knowledge and a mind that would eventually mark her out as one of the greatest figures of the Golden Age of Spanish literature.

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Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, one of Somalia’s greatest poets, dies aged 79

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Somali social media has been flooded with tributes to the man better known as ‘Hadraawi’

Messages of condolences continue to pour in from around the world following the death of Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, regarded as one of Somalia’s greatest poets.

Warsame, better known as “Hadraawi”, died in Hargeisa, in Somaliland, on Thursday at the age of 79.

The snake sneaks in the castle:

although it’s carpeted with thorns

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The small town with a big potato that inspired a global poetry win

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Robertson might be tiny but for poet and schoolteacher Peter Ramm, it is the secret weapon that helped him win the UK’s biggest prize for unpublished poetry

Robertson is a small, pretty town perched on the edge of the New South Wales southern highlands, almost teetering on the escarpment that falls away to the Illawarra and Shoalhaven coasts.

It is most famous as the home of The Big Potato – an appropriately tuber-shaped concrete monolith on the main street – and a triumphant rugby league team called the Spuddies.

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