Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Beat scene publisher of Ginsberg's Howl!, dies aged 101
One of the last members of the American Beat poetry scene, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, has died at his home at the age of 101. Ferlinghetti co-founded the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, and was tried on obscenity charges after publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in 1956.
In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin opened the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, to help support th...
24th February 2021
No life without death, no death without life': laureate's tribute to Keats
The poet laureate Simon Armitage has written a new poem, ‘I speak as someone …’, to mark the bicentenary of the death of John Keats in Rome. The poem was published in the Times newspaper as part of an interview with Armitage in which he said of Keats: “He had exactly the sort of biography you would ...
22nd February 2021
The poetry of football (1): Dave Martin, bard of Torquay United
This all started with an irritable comment on Twitter from me, complaining about the bias of the home commentator during the livestream of the FA Trophy football match between Sutton United and Woking...
18th February 2021
Bhanu Khapil wins £25,000 TS Eliot prize with collection about immigrants and hosts
Bhanu Kapil, a British-born writer whose work has been published in the US for two decades, has won the £25,000 TS Eliot Prize for How to Wash a Heart, her first full-length poetry collection to be pu...
2nd February 2021
