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Translated poetry seldom finds its way into this column. It is too high risk: there is the probability the original voice will seem muffled or will not travel. But an exception has to be made for Maria Stepanova, born in Moscow and a leading voice in post-Soviet culture: poet, journalist, publisher and force for pre...

Italian political and cultural leaders have sprung to the defence of their much-revered poet Dante Alighieri after a German newspaper downplayed his importance to the Italian language and said he was “light years” away from William Shakespeare.In a comment piece in Frankfurter Rundschau, Arno Widmann wrote that even...

When two hitherto unknown poems by Sappho were brought to light in early 2014, it was a literary sensation. The sixth-century BC poet is one of the most celebrated writers of Greco-Roman antiquity, a tender chronicler of the agonies of female desire, and a gay icon. But frustratingly few works by her survive, and th...

The poet, broadcaster and children’s author contracted Covid-19 a year ago and spent 48 days in intensive care. His new collection of prose poems attempts to make sense of that timeExtract from Many Different Kinds of Love: ‘I am not who I was’When people stop Michael Rosen in his local neighbourhood of Muswell Hill in north London to ask him how he’s doing, which...

Victor Obiols told he had wrong ‘profile’, the second case after Dutch writer resigned from same role The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at US president Joe Biden’s inauguration has said he has been removed from the job because he had the wrong “profile”.It was the second such case in Europe after Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld resigned...

Exclusive: in Everything inhabitable, published in the Guardian, the Dutch writer responds to controversy over the decision to appoint a white translator to the black poet’s bookThe International Booker winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has written a poem responding to the controversy that broke out after they withdrew from the job of translating Amanda Gorman’s poetry into Dutch, writing that they took the decision because...

International Booker winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld will not translate inaugural poet’s work into Dutch after anger that a Black writer was not hiredThe acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has pulled out of translating Amanda Gorman’s poetry into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black. Related: 'My family are too frightened to read my...

Poet whose outlook spanned anarchism, ecology and small business, as founder of the City Lights Bookstore in San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, artist, activist and founder of San Francisco’s famous City Lights Bookstore, who has died aged 101 of interstitial lung disease, was the least “beat” of the Beat Generation. In addition to a political commitment that blended anarchism and ecology – he loathed the...

Lockdown has triggered a boom in the exchange of intimate shots – and now a new book called Sending Nudes is celebrating the pleasures and perils of baring all to the cameraHave you ever sent a nude selfie? The question draws a thick red line between generations, throwing one side into a panic while the other just laughs. And yet, as far back as...

Like everyone else, the comic spent 2020 walking around his flat. Unlike everyone else, he also wrote a book of poetry. He introduces two excerptsThey’re curious old things, lockdowns. The first one, in particular, was high-impact. Very disorienting. Nothing made sense at first. All energy was diverted into vaguely getting used to the word and then the concept. Lockdown. Related: The Guide: Staying In...

The Muscovite’s work is arriving in English this year in three books of remarkable memoir, poems and essays that, she explains, reach for ‘the truth of the past’Years ago, Maria Stepanova visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC to do research for a book she would end up working on for 30 years. After telling him of her plan, the museum...

Already a fashion sensation, the 22-year-old joins IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella HadidAmanda Gorman, whose performance of her poem The Hill We Climb during Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration drew widespread praise, has signed to IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella Hadid.The 22-year-old US national youth poet laureate, has already become a fashion sensation. The red satin Prada...

Her recital at Joe Biden’s inauguration electrified viewers and sent the hitherto little known poet’s work to the top of the chartsOn Wednesday in Washington DC, a striking young woman stood at a podium on the steps of the US Capitol, surrounded by the country’s leaders, who were masked against the pandemic. She was unmasked, at a safe distance, so she could speak with...

President decides against relocating remains of French poet to Parisian memorialThe remains of the famed French poet Arthur Rimbaud will not be moved to the Panthéon mausoleum despite a campaign to honour him as an artist and symbol of gay rights, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has decided.A petition last year backed by a number of celebrities as well as the culture minister, Roselyne...

Stella Nyanzi is Uganda's most outspoken, self-described radical queer feminist. She has been imprisoned for her activism and is known for her attention-grabbing naked protests and poetry. In an election campaign that has become increasingly violent, Nyanzi is standing to be the elected MP for Kampala, as part of the growing nationwide opposition to the 35-year presidency of Yoweri Museveni. With most attention focused on...

As she prepares to ring in 2021 with a performance on screens at Piccadilly Circus, the punk poet explains why she’s optimistic amid the ‘debris’ of Trump’s years in officePatti Smith talks about her first poetry performance – in 1971 at St Mark’s Church in New York’s Bowery – as if it were yesterday. “I remember everything,” she says over the phone from her...

Looking for a more positive new year resolution? From a Shirley Jackson short story to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 30-minute Ted talk, nourish your mind with our one-a-day selection of literary treats Our revels now are ended and January looms, with its exhortations to get fit, lose weight, dry out. So here’s a radical alternative diet: instead of depriving yourself, how about making it a...

Research suggests elegy on arrest of Protestant reformer was the work not of the German artist but of a monkIt has been described as “one of the greatest spontaneous prayers in world literature”, but Albrecht Dürer’s elegy on the arrest of Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, may not have been written by the German painter, printmaker and writer after all, research suggests.Considered one of...