The Poem Itself (1960) would be an excellent title for a hard-nosed, uncompromising volume of practical criticism. As a title for a volume of translations of poetry in modern European languages, it is rather bolder. When we meet with translations, [...]

In her sixth instalment of her exclusive column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs revisits one of the most influential English-language anthologies ever published, namely Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, and considers the rise and fall in the fortunes of various poets included in its pages, ranging from William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) to Roy Campbell (1901–1957).

As the Forward Prizes celebrate their first thirty years of existence, Camille Ralphs takes us back to 1992 and the first edition of these awards, employing the occasion to revisit poems by Tony Harrison, Jo Shapcott and Elizabeth Garrett featured in the inaugural Forward Book of Poetry.

Instead of bemoaning or espousing what the internet has done to poetry (though it’s a real subject), let’s reapproach literary history, keeping in mind what has been foregrounded – made unignorable – by the internet. Why, on revisiting ‘The Waste Land’ in 2022, the hundredth anniversary of its publication, do I hear Batman’s Joker, or one of those terminally online males obsessed with him: a would-be-spectacular, self-promotingly ominous provocateur?

In this exclusive textual-visual presentation on three poems originally composed in Griko—the language of Greek origins spoken in the Southern Italian province of Lecce, in Grecìa Salentina (Puglia)—the writer and academic Manuela Pellegrino introduces us to the beauties and complexities of this seriously endangered language.

In her fourth instalment of her exclusive column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs revisits The YOLO Pages (2014), an influential anthology of internet-influenced poetry, poems, image macros, tweets, and flarf. On the night of February 12, 2016, the post-internet poet [...]

The year 1922 was ushered in with a megaphone. On 24 January, Edith Sitwell held the private debut of Façade, her modernist poem, with avant-garde musical accompaniments by the little-known teenager composer William Walton. At the first public performance the [...]

In her third instalment of her exclusive column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs takes a riotously funny look at a ninety-year-old compendium of bad poetry and considers what separates ‘bad verse’ from ‘good bad verse’. Is it possible for us [...]

by Jon Stone An odd thing: whenever I see or hear the words ‘my father’ in a poem, I almost immediately tune out. It’s like a deactivation switch. Sometimes I have to fight the urge to visibly sigh, groan, or [...]

Literary canons are fickle beasts and in this exciting new column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs asks whether some of these ejections have been just, and what the poets themselves might have done to warrant them. You may read Part [...]

Rory Waterman offers a stirring op-ed on the negative effects of superficial do-goodery and inadvertent self-flattery on contemporary poetry and how such tendencies often simplify moral and intellectual complexities to the detriment of the art being produced. The host lets [...]

Camille Ralphs Literary canons are fickle beasts and in this exciting new column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs asks whether some ejections from the English-speaking canon have been just, and what the poets themselves might have done to warrant them. [...]