His first collection was a poignant tribute to the London community in which he grew up; his second is about partying. What’s behind the Nigerian-British writer’s change of tune?
Bite-sized verse has its place, but two new anthologies offer a chance for deeper engagement with poetic traditions
The influential but often overlooked writer celebrated nature from his Californian coastal outpost — and warned of the climate crisis decades before others
Maria Crawford selects her best mid-year reads
The Florentine home of the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning is a memorial to their lives and love story
The artist and vocalist’s Cafe Oto residency featured spoken-word performance and improvised music
LionHeart uses verse to explore architecture
Art and science align in Lavinia Greenlaw’s thought-provoking essay collection about the power and limitations of our senses
A self-described ‘writer, lyricist, musician and naughty boy’, he was concerned with action as much as aesthetics
Maria Crawford selects her must-read titles
From the London-born poet’s new collection ‘Mothersong’
The Sierra Leonean filmmaker’s new installation at London’s Barbican features videos with choirs performing his poems
The author’s adaptation of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ tackles darkness while his book of dawn poems looks to the light
Ralph Dutli’s rounded biography of the Soviet-era writer murdered by Stalin deftly examines his literary legacy
From ‘Latch’, the Suffolk poet’s latest collection
The former poet laureate’s second memoir charts a brilliant career underpinned by his ability to network
The writer on mentors, his Tubby Custard obsession and free will
The foundation is celebrating the poet’s work with events in Greece and beyond, including one in New York featuring Laurie Anderson
The poet, playwright and author on the origins of his new book ‘Budgie’, and learning to face his fears
A new translation brings to life the astonishing voice of the Sumerian princess who was a poet, a priestess — and the world’s first named author
A new translation does justice to the joyous treatment of love and desire in the ‘Tirukkural’
