Poem of the week: The Meeting by Harriet Monroe
A quiet standoff on a US road in the early years of the automobile age is a vivid picture of a world in transition
Come on You Hatters: John Hegley’s poem for Luton Town
With his club playing in the Premier League for the first time, the poet pens an exclusive ode for the Guardian to mark the occasion
Poem of the week: Interlude by Amy Lowell
Lowell’s quietly sensuous love poem paints her lover’s face to be as luminous as the moon
The BBC’s Fergal Keane: ‘The breakdowns get harder to recover from each time’
The former BBC war reporter, now special correspondent, on the terror of PTSD, his tips for living with it day to day, and the people and poets he admires
Pam Ayres: ‘I inherited a love of English from my mother’
The poet, 76, tells Donna Ferguson about deference, dialect and her dreams of becoming a ballerina, and reveals the secret of a happy marriage
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan; So to Speak by Terrance Hayes; A ‘Working Life’ by Eileen Myles; Devotions by Mary Oliver; We Play Here by Dawn Watson
Gavin Selerie obituary
Other lives: Lecturer and writer whose poetry mixed verse with original academic analysis
From Our Own Fire by William Letford review – in a world of his own
A family learn how to live in dystopia in the Scottish poet’s gripping and imaginative mix of cosmic poetry and earthy prose
Poem of the week: Platonic Love by Abraham Cowley
A witty and engaging dance of ideas about the joining of bodies and the mixing of souls
Poem of the week: Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar
Answers soon become questions of faith as this full-stop-studded poem refuses to mean what the hasty reader might think
Kit by Megan Barker review – roads not taken
This bittersweet debut fuses prose and poetry as a narrator struggles with a troubled friend and her own life of lost freedoms
JO Morgan: ‘I think I do books that may sound strange’
The prize-winning poet and novelist on writing and book binding, his wariness of new technology and why literature is the ultimate immersive experience
Digested week: jingoism in odd places on a visit to post-Brexit Blighty
Supermarket goods festooned with union jacks; ‘made in Britain’ labels everywhere. How my former homeland has changed
John Betjeman dismissed as ‘songster of tennis lawns’ in 1967 search for poet laureate
Records from the National Archive reveal the cut-throat world of British poetry, and the politics behind selecting candidates
Sue Dymoke obituary
Other lives: Teacher, academic and poet