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

Re-evaluating Rabbie: the Scottish poets wrestling with Robert Burns’ legacy

While his status in Scotland has barely budged after claims of rape and racism, the country’s contemporary poetry scene has been responding in earnest

Dennis Greig obituary

Other lives: Poet and editor of Lapwing Publications, a poetry press in Belfast, for more than 30 years

Poem of the week: The Two Homes by Felicia Hemans

A hymn to domestic and family content is shadowed by its painful loss

‘It was a real trauma’: the TS Eliot poetry prize winner on his turbulent upbringing

He grew up in Jamaica, thinking his grandmother was his mother, learning how to read from a blackboard on her veranda. What does Jason Allen-Paisant plan to do now? Fly to Ethiopia to meet his father for the first time

Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant’s Self-Portrait as Othello wins TS Eliot prize

Judges praised the ‘imaginative capacity and technical flair’ of a collection that draws connections between Shakespeare’s hero and today’s immigrants

Poem of the week: Hitchhiker by Nicholas Hogg

A tale that combines muscle-tensing narrative anticipation and epiphany is told with hard-edged romanticism

pray to the empty wells by Iryna Shuvalova review – hope’s last stronghold

The Ukrainian poet’s heart-stirring poems cling to dreams in the face of catastrophe in her first collection translated into English

Let’s turn the air blue, girls – we should be free to curse at will

Women’s body parts have long been appropriated for the purpose of cursing, so it’s only right that we reclaim them with profane gusto

Let the Light Pour In by Lemn Sissay audiobook review – salutations to the dawn

Every day for 10 years, Lemn Sissay rose to write a poem to the break of day, a witty and profound collection recited here with his customary verve

‘Art is a form of protest that leaves no blood’: Zambian poet puts African voices on the spoken-word stage

Prompted by the struggles of motherhood, Vanessa Chisakula uses her art to address women’s rights, African identity and mental health – and gives others a platform to do the same

Poem of the week: Blackbird and Beethoven by Lisa Kelly

A one-voiced dialogue with the songbird points up what ‘fake musicians’ fail to hear

‘Pushed towards poetry’: how one victim of Russian airstrike made sense of attack

Poet and photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind was in Ukrainian restaurant when 13 people were killed and 60 wounded

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt; God Complex by Rachael Allen; How Fire Descends by Serhiy Zhadan; The Many Hundreds of the Scent by Shane McCrae; Eleanor Among the Saints by Rachel Mann

Five of the best books about fresh starts

A family escapes from drizzly England to Corfu and later life achievements are celebrated in these refreshing reads on new beginnings