May Day by Jackie Kay audiobook review – family, love and activism
The Scottish author and poet is a warm, wry companion in an autobiographical collection of poems, written in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths
Forward poetry prize goes to Victoria Chang for collection inspired by painter Agnes Martin
Chang’s With My Back to the World takes the main £10,000 award while Marjorie Lotfi, Cindy Juyoung Ok and Leyla Josephine top other categories – making it an all-female winners list
Poem of the week: from The War Prayer by Mark Twain
This accidental prose poem is an apparently sacred address to group of young soldiers, which makes blisteringly clear what is being asked of God
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Collected Poems by Wendy Cope; Eat the World by Marina Diamandis; Unwritten Woman by Hannah Lavery; Agimat by Romalyn Ante; Monster by Dzifa Benson
‘I want space for jokes’: how film-maker Iryna Tsilyk captures surreal life in Ukraine
Audiences in flak jackets queued to hear the poet and director on a tour of pounded cities. She talks about depicting life during war, from air raid alerts to hesitating between pinot or zinfandel in the supermarket
TS Eliot prize for poetry shortlist contains ‘a strong strain of elegy’
The authors include Gboyega Odubanjo, whose debut collection was published posthumously, Carl Phillips and Karen McCarthy Woolf
Poem of the week: Four boys, maybe five … by Tal Nitzán
A scene of violence involving a child is shown from two opposing sides. You must respond because from both angles the child is yours
Powsels and Thrums by Alan Garner review – the magus speaks
A rich collection of poems, talks, memoir and enchantments from the life of Alan Garner
Agimat by Romalyn Ante review – spells to ward off trauma
The poet and nurse’s second collection melds medical imagery with Filipino myth to make sense of Covid, love and loss
Poem of the week: Llyfr Geirfa fy Nhad / My Father’s Vocabulary Book by Gwyneth Lewis
A daughter remembers her father through his dogged work to learn the Welsh language, and his leaving of it
Australia will get a poet laureate next year. Here’s what needs to change first
A laureateship will force government, academic and literary institutions to confront their wilful neglect of poetry – and ask poets to begin to look outward, too
Poem of the week: Good-bye by Walter de la Mare
De la Mare’s Georgian romanticism often rings hollow in my ears, but this poem’s originality and hard edge spear through the poets’ mist
Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2024: Andre Dao wins $80,000 for debut novel Anam
Judges praise book as ‘profoundly relevant’, with Daniel Browning, Amy Crutchfield and Will Kostakis also winning in their categories
Poem of the week: The Journalist by Grahame Davies
A reporter on the Aberfan disaster reflects on his uneasy duty to write dispassionately about a devastating tragedy
On my radar: Raymond Antrobus’s cultural highlights
The poet on the power of abstract art, Shakespeare in British Sign Language and the ‘articulated rage’ of James Baldwin