The best recent poetry – review roundup
Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi; Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo; Bark, Archive, Splinter by Jay Gao; Polkadot Wounds by Anthony Vahni Capildeo; Goodlord by Ella Frears; Skeletons by Deborah Landau
Why Are You Shouting? by James Womack review – tales of the metropolis
This rich fourth collection by James Womack ponders the fraught relationship between place and dweller – and our craving for connection
Ismail Kadare obituary
One of Albania’s greatest writers who explored the ugliness and dignity of this ancient and long-oppressed nation
Poem of the week: Marbled Orb Weaver by Matt Howard
A spider’s hard web-building work is destroyed by the poet’s scythe
Maggie Nelson: ‘I was overwhelmed with grief when Prince died’
The American author of The Argonauts on her latest collection of essays, how the Purple Rain star shaped her sexual development and the risks she takes in her writing
Gerald Dawe obituary
Belfast-born poet, academic and essayist whose work explored the everyday with wit and straightforward syntax
Poem of the week: Strip Light by Caroline Bird
Social rules and self-consciousness intrude on a couple’s romantic privacy
Miriam Scott obituary
Other lives: Feminist poet and editor best known for the anthology Bread and Roses: Women’s Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Poem of the week: Prodigal Son by Gabriele Tinti
Inspired by de Chirico’s painting, this errant child is more thoughtful and recognisably contemporary than the figure in the biblical parable
‘He queered the hell out of it’: the man behind Shakespeare’s same-sex love sonnets
Shakespeare was inspired by the homoerotic poetry of Richard Barnfield – so why has it taken so long to acknowledge the connection between them?
Poem of the week: Flâneur by Hugo Williams
What if God were these days a down-at-heel wanderer whose eternal presence flickered through city streets?
Cairn by Kathleen Jamie review – a wry SOS for the world
The Scottish poet’s latest collection is a small marvel that shows an acute awareness of planetary and personal impermanence
John Burnside obituary
Poet, winner of the TS Eliot and Forward prizes and the Whitbread poetry award, memoirist, novelist and academic
‘His greatness was matched by his kindness’: remembering John Burnside
Writers Andrew O’Hagan, Sarah Perry and more pay tribute to the celebrated Scottish poet, novelist and memoirist, who died last week aged 69
Poem of the week: Duty Surviving Self-Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This austere reflection on lost friendships was written in the poet’s later years as he fought opium addiction