The best recent poetry – review roundup

Midden Witch by Fiona Benson; Dwell by Simon Armitage; Nature Matters edited by Mona Arshi & Karen McCarthy Woolf; Lode by Gillian Allnutt; Silk Work by Imogen Cassels; A History of Western Music by August Kleinzahler

Poem of the week: Gravel by Maurice Riordan

There’s a wry smile underlying Riordan’s examination of the greatness and smallness of a heap of gravel

Wellwater by Karen Solie – landscapes in distress captured with raw candour

In this blazingly honest collection, the Canadian poet catalogues humanity’s destructive impact on the natural world

Poem of the week: The old pond full of flags and fenced around … by John Clare

A closely observed country scene teems with the vitality of early summer

In the Rhododendrons by Heather Christle review – back to the mother land

A poet’s memoir of family, trauma, and Virginia Woolf pulses with feeling and intelligence

‘His delivery cut through class barriers’: Moby, Mala and other musicians on working with Benjamin Zephaniah

On what would have been the late dub poet’s 67th birthday, his musical collaborators remember his warmth, invigorating words and reflections on the state of the world

Poem of the week: Death sets a Thing significant … by Emily Dickinson

The traces of a lost friend are keenly felt in the material things they once touched

Epic win: why the Odyssey is having a moment

With new translations, a film starring Ralph Fiennes and a Christopher Nolan blockbuster on the way, Homer’s saga about a soldier’s return from battle speaks to our times in unexpected ways

Clive Wilmer obituary

Poet and scholar who promoted the work of John Ruskin and edited a selection of Thom Gunn’s essays

Poem of the week: A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth by Ben Jonson

A strategically flattering tribute to a pioneering female writer is lifted by authentic warmth and admiration

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Dante’s Inferno by Lorna Goodison; Wellwater by Karen Solie; Chaotic Good by Isabelle Baafi; Find Me As the Creature I Am by Emily Jungmin Yoon; Ecstasy by Alex Dimitrov

John Seed obituary

Other lives: Author, poet and academic whose books often fused history with verse

The Possibility of Tenderness by Jason Allen-Paisant review – a Jamaican childhood

The poet and writer returns to the May Day mountains in a gentle rumination on family and nature

Poem of the week: Digging the Well by Erica McAlpine

A breezy but ambiguous allegory arranges its symbols with appealing wit

Between the lines: what do White Lotus characters’ book choices tell us?

Season three offers up clues to characters’ psyches – or perhaps their fates – by showing us their holiday reads