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Poet
George Elliott Clarke
B. 1960
George Elliott Clarke is a skillful, candid writer whose output incorporates poetry, screenplays, opera libretti and verse drama. His poems are highly politically engaged, addressing issues, including those pertaining to race and identity, in ways that are both collective and…
Poet
Catherine Byron
B. 1947
Catherine Byron is an Irish poet who often collaborates with visual and sound artists. Her first book of poetry, Settlements, appeared in 1985, and she has since published five collections, the most recent being The Getting of Vellum (which was…
Poet
Christopher Reid
B. 1949
Often associated with the short-lived Martian school of the 1980s, Christopher Reid’s poetry has come a long way since the extra-terrestrial metaphors and puzzling imagery that were the hallmark of his early writing. His gift for unusual, typically comic description…
Poem
of the Damned is a film from the 1970s starring Faye Dunaway with her cat’s eyes and cheekbones. Irpinia is the name of the ship the producers chartered to use as the set Many Rivers to Cross was…
Poet
Michael Laskey
B. 1944
Michael Laskey (b. 1944) is a poet, editor and a tireless champion of contemporary poetry, particularly through the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival which he co-founded in 1989 and which continues to be an important showcase for poets from around the…
Poet
Harold Pinter
B. 1930 D. 2008
Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008) is best known for theatrical work, but was a poet before a playwright, and in early 2005, told the BBC that he was leaving plays to focus on poetry and political speeches. His poetry publications…
Poem
On 6 February 1870, the waka Pono sailed down the Thames in the belly of the steamer Troy. The crew slipped their canoe out of the tin hull under the cover of a yellow fog. They killed on the…
Poem
Nothings’s certain. Crossing, on this longest day, the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up the scree-slope of what at high-tide will be again an island, to where, a decade since well-being staked the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us back, year after…
Poet
Howard Nemerov
B. 1920 D. 1991
Howard Nemerov was born into a wealthy and sophisticated New York family in 1920. His sister was the photographer Diane Arbus, and as children their father who was a painter, art connoisseur and philanthropist greatly influenced their interest in the…
Poem
I’m talking to you old man. Listen to me as you step inside this garden to fill a breakfast bowl with blueberries ripened on the bushes I’m planting now, twenty years back from where you’re standing. It’s strictly a long-term…
Poem
We were working out our redundancy notices. We talked on the phone all morning, looted the stationery, sat around in the canteen thinking of ways to get rich quick: maybe write a bestseller, maybe window, cleaning – all you needed…
The Classics
My cat, Jeoffry
Read by Daljit Nagra
My cat, Jeoffry - Christopher Smart - Read by Daljit Nagra
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him. For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way. For…
Poem
I am Tane Mahuta – and not offended to be introduced at this late stage. This is Tangaroa’s story. I merely supply the vessels. They are a small chink in the arsenal of Tane. I command mountains, influence the…
Poem
On the Recommendation of Ovid We Tried a Weasel - Jane Weir
It was the first mammal he ever gave me. He must have trapped it late last night when the moon disappeared inside a nightclub of clouds and stars giggling staggered behind. I found it in the morning, slung like an…
Poet
Billy Collins
B. 1941
Billy Collins (b. 1941) is a genuinely popular poet whose books have sold over 200,000 copies since the appearance of his first collection, Pokerface, in 1977. Born in New York City he attended the College of the Holy Cross and…
Poet
Robert Graves
B. 1895 D. 1985
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a writer of extraordinary breadth whose output ranges from a classic account of his First World War experiences, Goodbye to All That, through the “potboiler” (his own term) success of I, Claudius, to the poems inspired…
Poet
Ogden Nash
B. 1902 D. 1971
Ogden Nash ( 1902-1971) was a master, perhaps the 20th Century master, of light verse whose continuing popularity shows that the term ‘light’ is not incompatible with long-lasting. He was born in Rye, New York, but as a child moved…
Poet
Annie Freud
B. 1948
Annie Freud was born in London in 1948. She is the daughter of painter Lucian Freud, maternal grand-daughter of sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, and the great grand daughter of Sigmund Freud. Her parents separated when she was four, and she…