The Guardian view on reclaiming the Seine: hope for 21st century rivers
Editorial: Paris 2024 has pointed the way towards a brighter future for urban waterways in post-industrial cities
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Bluff by Danez Smith; Fantasia by Nisha Ramayya; a great shaking by Edwina Attlee; Ruin, Blossom by John Burnside; Tanya by Brenda Shaughnessy
Meshell Ndegeocello: No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin review – a fire reignited
Baldwin’s stinging words on race and America are matched with the kind of musical eloquence that the great writer himself so admired
Poem of the week: Phoenician by Angela Leighton
A chilling double sonnet finds the echo of ancient ritual sacrifice in modern ‘collateral damage’
Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo review – in memory of the missing
Inspired by an unidentified boy found dead in the Thames, the first – and only – collection by the late poet is an imaginative meditation on death and those who disappear
Irish author Edna O’Brien dies aged 93
After early novels that won international acclaim but were banned at home, the Irish author had a prolific career lasting more than half a century
Thom Gunn by Michael Nott review – sex, drugs and San Francisco
A sensitive account of the poet’s wild life on the West Coast
Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life by Michael Nott review – the poet laureate of Haight-Ashbury
The San Francisco poet’s work is richly illuminated by this detailed account of his early traumas, dread of ‘deep emotion’ and addiction to casual sex
Poem of the week: Moor by Kathleen Jamie
Haunted by a softly luminous mistiness, the moor combines, as if by double exposure, the passing of time and the full-lit present moment
Poem of the week: Highland Daunder by Jeda Pearl
A Scottish Jamaican takes defiant ownership of her homeland and ‘th braken brainches wi’in you’
Martha Whittome obituary
Other lives: Teacher and arts administrator who played an important part in the early days of the TS Eliot prize
Poem of the week: Whilst the Ox and Ass by Paul Muldoon
The biblical story of two animals granted the power of speech for their reverence to the holy child becomes an angry reflection on those denied that power
Sandy Brownjohn obituary
Other lives: Poet and educator whose books transformed the teaching of poetry-writing in schools
Goodlord by Ella Frears review – this email to a landlord is dark and dazzling
The poet’s stream-of-consciousness complaint to an estate agent is a witty and compelling reflection on the state of the housing market and young womanhood
Greek poet who inspired Forster, Hockney and Jackie Onassis emerges from the shadows
The writer Constantine Cavafy was largely unpublished in his lifetime, but was revered by artists. His archive and Alexandrian home are now on show for the first time