‘I write all my poems with a quill by candlelight’: John Cooper Clarke on the joy of life without tech

The punk poet has no smartphone, no email, not even a computer. Everyone should try it, he says

Tim Key: ‘I like writing in the pub, but then the poems tend to be about the pub’

The comedian on his strangest fan encounter, preshow rituals and his new film with Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan

Poem of the week: In the Prison Pen by Herman Melville

The desolation of a prisoner-of-war camp in the American civil war is drawn with tragic power

Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt review – a hide and seek of the self

Nature reveals and conceals Hewitt’s identity in his stunning second book of poems, a set shot through with yearning and sacred imagery

Pity by Andrew McMillan review – men and memories in a Yorkshire pit town

The poet’s deft first novel conveys the personal and political pain felt by three generations in his home town

I will defend the Royal Society of Literature against all attacks. It is more alive than ever

I cherish this august institution. Moving with the times doesn’t mean sidelining fellows – or devaluing the society’s principles, says Bernardine Evaristo

Five of the best recent books from Ukraine

Recently translated works by Ukrainian poets and novelists contemplate domestic life, language, economics, culture and violence in the country

The Lodgers by Holly Pester review – sharp end of the housing crisis

This darkly comic novel brings wit and invention to a story of rented rooms

Poem of the week: Daybreak by Lilian Bowes Lyon

Revealing distinct aspects of warring England and counting the cost to cities, countryside and individual souls

‘Gloom is good’: after my wife died I found solace in poetry and music

You can’t fight death, sickness, ageing and life’s various indignities, but you can play very loud rock’n’roll

The best recent poetry – review roundup

WHAT by John Cooper Clarke; Girls That Never Die by Safia Elhillo; Skin by David Harsent; Absence by Ali Lewis

Debut poet Grace Yee wins $125,000 for ‘feminist vision’ at Victorian premier’s literary awards

Yee won the Victorian prize for literature and the poetry category for her collection Chinese Fish, while Melissa Lukashenko won the fiction prize

Poem of the week: Blood by Holly Pester

A sharply surreal comic riff on the heavy social load of the mother-daughter relationship

‘I am not there and I am not here’: a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity

For months, I’ve watched devastation from five thousand miles away. But what is the task of the diasporic witness?

Beyond cliche and condescension: we need new stories about ‘The North’

Barnsley-born poet and novelist Andrew Macmillan on the assumptions and misconceptions that shape our national narratives of the north of England – and the new authors covering fresh ground