Poem of the week: The Day of Judgement by Jonathan Swift
The stinging wit of the great satirist is at its scalding best in this nightmarish fantasy of the end of days
Nobody could help me with my psychosis. Then I was sent to jail for holding up a shop with a toy gun
I didn’t remember committing my crime but I knew I had fallen through the cracks of the system. Could prison really be my salvation?
Shankari Chandran, Robert Dessaix, Diana Reid and others: Australian books to look forward to in 2025
From enthralling debuts to playful premises and national reckonings, here is a whirlwind tour of what’s to come
‘There’s a majesty to grief’: TS Eliot poetry prize winner Peter Gizzi
The American writer won the prestigious prize for Fierce Elegy, a collection informed by the deaths of his family members. He explains why poetry is like friendship – and why he loves small words
‘Transcendental beauty’ of Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy wins him TS Eliot poetry prize
Judges for the £25,00 award say the collection, informed by grief for his two brothers, ‘braves large questions’ with its lyric sequence
‘Listen my soul to the glad refrain’: poetry prescriptions to beat the January blues
If the dark nights and bleak days are getting you down, Poetry Pharmacy founder Deborah Alma has treatments available from Philip Larkin, Imtiaz Dharker, Edward Thomas and more
Poem of the week: The Reader by Howard Altmann
Words ‘assemble’ into sense in a private, mysterious act of comprehension
‘It will be jolly nice’: illustrator Helen Oxenbury, 86, on preparing for her first solo show – and a new book with Michael Rosen
Acclaimed for her work on children’s books, the artist is teaming up again with her collaborator on Bear Hunt
Morag Styles obituary
First professor of children’s poetry at Cambridge, who also worked to promote the teaching, dissemination and understanding of Caribbean poetry
Poem of the week: Reciprocity by John Drinkwater
Formally adventurous for its time, this poem arrives at its Romantic epiphany by a down to earth route
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Swell by Maria Ferguson; There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die by Tove Ditlevsen; Mind’s Eye by Carol Rumens; Strange Beach by Oluwaseun Olayiwola; Foxglovewise by Ange Mlinko
Poem of the week: Hurry by Marie Howe
An anecdote about a mother and daughter running everyday errands turns into a parable about time passing
Sunday with John Cooper Clarke: ‘My wife does a chicken with 60 cloves of garlic’
The poet talks about newspapers and television, coffee and strawberries, and how Monday’s gloomy presence hangs over every Sunday
On my radar: Jasleen Kaur’s cultural highlights
The Turner prizewinner on the art of the Gaza Biennale, the joys of a queer community choir, and a poet who speaks to today’s injustices
What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade review – the afterlife of Paradise Lost
The writers, philosophers and politicians who have raided Milton’s epic poem for inspiration