Track Record by George the Poet review – Black artistry and home truths
The spoken word artist and podcaster’s hybrid of social history and rallying cry is heartfelt, if occasionally hectoring
On my radar: Andrew O’Hagan’s cultural highlights
The novelist on a comedic TikTok sensation, the importance of a good suit and his favourite educational app
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Come Here to This Gate by Rory Waterman; Are You There by Samantha Fain; Silver by Rowan Ricardo Phillips; All the Good Things You Deserve by Elaine Feeney; Poems 2016-2024 by JH Prynne
What by John Cooper Clarke review – sharp social commentary from the Bard of Salford
With subjects ranging from Elvis to bubble and squeak, the poet’s unmistakable delivery elevates his satirical verse to the realms of high art
Poem of the week: In the Springtime by Geoff Hattersley
A weary supermarket queue at the height of the pandemic is wryly observed by a speaker who is just as driven by scrappy appetites
Poem of the week: Ars Poetica, XI by Mary Jean Chan
A fresh spin on the sonnet, this subtle contemplation of art, love and language makes the poem into a home
Play aims to unravel mystery of poet Nan Shepherd’s masterwork
Production examines why Scottish poet’s The Living Mountain lay unpublished in a drawer for 30 years
Poem of the week: Sea Rose by HD
An austere song of praise to a flower that withstands the battering of nature is also an intense response to classical Greek literature
‘The anti-pet of bourgeois life’: why the world needs big cat energy
Whether by striking workers, poets or Pussy Riot, our feline friends have long been used as a symbol of resistance – radical by nature, they refuse to be tamed
Poet Jackie Kay: ‘I could have been brought up by Tories!’
The writer on being adopted as a baby by Scottish communists, facing racism in suburban Glasgow, and why her late parents are at the heart of her new collection
Kim Taplin obituary
Other lives: Writer and poet whose work celebrated the natural world and raised environmental issues
Crystal by Ellen Cranitch review – a devastating insight into drug dependency
The poet’s uncompromising second collection, about her husband’s addiction to crystal meth, is fascinating and troubling
Poem of the week: Diesel or steam by George Szirtes
A Hungarian schoolboy recently arrived in 1950s England has to switch his allegiances in a hurry
Apology after Benjamin Zephaniah mural painted over in Birmingham
Council contractor says sorry amid anger at removal of artwork of poet from an underpass in Hockley area
The best recent poetry – review roundup
A Year of Last Things by Michael Ondaatje; The Silence by Gillian Clarke; Joy in Service on Rue Tagore by Paul Muldoon; May Day by Jackie Kay; I Cannot Be Good Until You Say It by Sanah Ahsan; Grief’s Alphabet by Carrie Etter