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
You Burn Me review – Sappho and suffering in a macabre meditation on desire and death
This hour-long reverie from Argentinian film-maker Matías Piñeiro offers chilling insight into the agonies of unrequited love
Simon Armitage: Poets can fight climate crisis by making us spellbound by nature
Writer tells Hay festival about his new book, Blossomise, and his hopes to inspire people to preserve the natural world
‘How could my mother leave her baby and then kill herself?’: author Maria Grazia Calandrone’s quest for answers
At eight months old she was left on a blanket in the Villa Borghese, Rome. More than 50 years later, prize-winning poet Maria Grazia Calandrone set out to discover the truth behind her abandonment
John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone, dies aged 69
The Scottish writer, whose career spanned more than 35 years, was one of only four people to have won both of the UK’s most prestigious poetry prizes for the same book
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Them! by Harry Josephine Giles; Still City by Oksana Maksymchuk; Conflicted Copy by Sam Riviere; The Collected Poems by Roger McGough; Sleepers Awake by Oli Hazzard
Poem of the Week: Rejection by Rudyard Kipling
A 21st-century reader might find a parable in this disturbing Kipling poem, in which a drowned man is dehumanised and has become a displaced ‘thing’
Poet Ali Cobby Eckermann wins book of the year at the NSW premier’s literary awards
Her first novel in eight years, She is the Earth, also claims the Indigenous writers category, netting writer a combined $40,000
Poem of the week: An Epitaph on the Death of Nicholas Grimald by Barnabe Googe
A formal tribute to the death of a fellow poet cannot, in the end, restrain its passion