Wasps quick-bending
One of the many stretch metaphors used by Homer. When you see a comma followed by 'as ...' it can...
Poetry as recall
Slowly I’m building a collection of quotations defining poetry. With a few more in the bag, we can lay them...
As free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat
First, the unusual simile, I never thought of a lamb's bleat as free or lawless. Then the idea that a...
Bat-haunted cave
In general, I would run a mile from anything bat-haunted - apparently random, erratic flight patterns bring out some primeval...
Fate goes as ever fate must
This translation by Seamus Heaney rings like a proverb on the immutability of fate. Elsewhere, he brings it up close and...
Translation as hammering
Heaney conveys in a simple image the difficulty of translating poetry. Elsewhere, he refers to his progress as being ‘scriptorium...
These Italian hills…
Though I’d jig a hornpipe if I saw one, I love this vivid viper of glass-green, and can imagine cooling...
Poems for my family 004 – Durrell
Listening time: under 5 minutes.
Durrell has long been a favourite writer and poet. When I first read his Alexandria...
The illuminated space of the poem
Reading can extend life, as Umberto Eco put it: a reader can live 5000 years as opposed to the three...
A man with no plan
We went to a charity bazarre the other morning, and came staggering out with a sack load of books. Before...
Beginnings
According to Adam Nicolson, some of the earliest poems were found in Sumer in cuneiform, dating from nearly two thousand...
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