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Featured Poem: Amy Lowell, ‘Carrefour’
This week's poem is selected by poet Rebecca Goss. The word 'carrefour' means crossroads, a heady, allegorical title, but we have…
Recommended Reads: The Russian Jerusalem by Elaine Feinstein
Known as one of our greatest living poets, Elaine Feinstein is also a novelist, translator, screenwriter, playwright and biographer. It…
Featured Poem: George Herbert, ‘The Flower’
Issue 30 of The Reader magazine has rejuvenation as its theme and takes its title "I live and write" from…
Featured Poem: Emily Dickinson, ‘With a flower’
Emily Dickinson is one of the most popular and well known American poets, but also among the most difficult to…
Unreasonable Employment Practices
Do you have a problem with your employer? Does your boss expect you to work for your pay? Do your…
Imagine… Doris Lessing
Last night, BBC 1 broadcast a tribute programme about Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Presented…
More Howard Jacobson in a Soho Restaurant
The first of these clips is here, along with some truly terrible poetry in the comments. Many thanks to Howard…
Featured Poem: Ephemera, by W.B Yeats
This week's poem is recommended by Kirsty McHugh of the OUP Blog and Otherstories. Thanks Kirsty. I only read this…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle–Happy Birthday
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22nd, 1859 and it's been a big week for him. A copy…
Featured Poem: Howard Jacobson surprised by joy in Soho restaurant
Over dinner in a Soho restaurant recently, Jane Davis asked Howard Jacobson to recite a poem. Here's the result. Jane…
Jemima Puddle-Duck
Beatrix Potter was always frank about the violence and amorality of the natural world. In the year that Jemima Puddle-Duck…
The Death of Criticism
Jonathan Gottschall has an article in the Boston Globe which supports my view that academic literary criticism has reached a…
