By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ is the best-known poem by Stevie Smith (1902-71). In 1995, it was voted Britain’s fourth favourite poem in a poll. First published in 1957, the poem fuses comedy and tragedy, moving between childlike simplicity and darker, more cynical touches. The poem is about a man […]
Whenever I get a chance to talk to young readers about books, I come away marveling: Kids are interested in so many things , and they’re interested in those things all at once ! Do they want to read an illustrated book about bugs? Yes! Do they want to read a novel about monsters from […]
In Lieu of Solutions by Violet Spurlock READING AT the Poetry Project in Manhattan this past October, Violet Spurlock spoke on the relative urgency of caring about a poem: it’s poetry, so the stakes are low; but it’s poetry, so the stakes are everything. For Spurlock’s first full-length collection, In Lieu of Solutions (2023), the […]
“The Afterword” is born from scribbles buried between cracked book spines, from the creased corner of a well-thumbed novel. Through this coming-of-age column, I hope to use the literary bildungsroman to make sense of my real-life experience of growing up — and to write the afterword on the texts I most treasure. My first memories […]
