Two-and-a-half centuries after her birth the writer – and sister of the more famous William – still has much to teach usShe has been described as “probably the most remarkable and the most distinguished of English prose writers who never wrote a line f…
Poem of the week: Rest by Christina Rossetti
This serene vision of death reads rather like the dream of a good night’s sleepRest O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;Lie close around her; leave no room for mirthWith its harsh laughter, nor for sound of s…
Nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021
The opening round nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards have been announced. More than a dozen have previously appeared on Fanfare. Within each category, the nominees are sorted here to approximate very roughly how many Goodreads users have read the…
dejaqueveas / waitilyousee
Eleven Poetry Recommendations for Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month. To highlight just three… Raquel Salas Rivera reads “dejaqueveas / waitilyousee.” Valerie Martínez reads from the just published Count, a book-length poem on the heartbreaking reali…
What’s our message to outer space? We are not so brilliant here on Earth | Rowan Moore
The prize-winning poetry of the Azerbaijani president’s daughter and the Dubai Expo both lack inspirationYou might think of poets as poor – starving in their garrets, receiving tiny sums for their occasional slim volumes of verse and all that. Not so L…
On my radar: Edmund de Waal’s cultural highlights
The ceramicist and writer on the poetry of Louise Glück, the music of Max Richter and the best secret meeting spot in LondonBorn in Nottingham in 1964, Edmund de Waal is an artist, master potter and the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, which won the…
Lyrical tearaways: removable verses adorn streets for National Poetry Day
From Bristol to Glasgow, five poems will be displayed in public on the theme of choice. The writers introduce their works“Who can she be but, helplessly, herself?” reads a line from Imtiaz Dharker’s Choice, one of five poems appearing on billboards acr…
“Until a drape of calmness furled around the earth…”
Armando Iannucci wrote an epic poem about COVID-19. “I have written a mock epic. Epics are, by definition, very long but “mock” permits brevity. It’s a poem in the style of those daunting but rather wonderful depictions of love and loss and the battle …
How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X Kendi awarded MacArthur ‘genius grant’
Writers Daniel Alarcón and Reginald Dwayne Betts have also been named on the list of 25 new fellows to receive $625,000 from the foundationThe bestselling historian Ibram X Kendi has been awarded a $625,000 (£460,000) MacArthur “genius grant” for his w…
Armando Iannucci’s epic Covid poem: ‘It’s my emotional response to the past 18 months’
When Covid stalled his film work, the writer took revenge on the virus in the form of a poem about Britain, Brexit and the pandemic – exclusively extracted here Where do you start with the pandemic? It may have been one of the most universally shared m…