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Poetry

Black and white photo of a boy walking across a littered street, with signs saying ‘No Hang Out Here’ and ‘Keep Away!’. Behind him, a man lies on the ground under a fire escape.

Transcendent experience

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Our days are both rough and slippery. Hope brings traction

I want to defend and buoy hope – it’s a fragile, quirky thing, but it has the power to help us act in the face of finitude

by John Lysaker

Poetry

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Why spoken word poetry is so much more than a poetry reading

As poetry returns to its roots as a performance art, it’s providing many with a powerful source of healing and community

by Erica Fletcher

Photo of a bookshop exterior with green columns and a window displaying books. A person reads inside.

Stories and literature

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Reading books is not just a pleasure: it helps our minds to heal

Through my own struggles and in teaching bibliotherapy to students, I know that books can help to heal minds and hearts

by Peter Leyland

Photo of a large spider sculpture silhouetted against a city skyline with cranes and a historic building in the background.

Poetry

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A conversation with my spider Maman and Louise Bourgeois

Woman made of braided steel, monster I call Maman: why am I so scared of you? An imagined conversation with Louise Bourgeois

by Pascale Petit

Photo of an open book with scattered text, held by hands. The text appears as a poetic or artistic composition.

Poetry

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The long poem is just right for our confounding, fractured age

The long poem is the right literary form for the unmanageable scale, the messy confusion and the epic ambivalence of our age

by Tess Somervell

Black and white photo of two men sitting on a kerb in conversation with a brick storefront behind them.

Civic life

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The power of Langston Hughes’s ‘melancholy citizenship’

Langston Hughes’s poetry offers a guide to the sort of melancholy citizenship that can help us weather democratic heartbreak

by Robert L Tsai

Daguerreotype of a woman in a dark dress seated with hands on her lap in a gold frame next to a red velvet case with a leaf design.

Poetry

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Emily Dickinson and the creative ‘solitude of space’

For the poet Emily Dickinson, sequester was a feminist act of independence: it gave her mental and literal space to write

by Magdalena Ostas

Photo of a person singing passionately into a microphone with a historic sculpture in the background.

Poetry

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How poetry casts a spell through the rhythmic magic of metre

Poetry meets the raw needs of our most vulnerable selves in a primal way, with a simple tool: predictable, rhythmic metre

by Annie Finch

Photo of Sufi whirling dervishes in white robes spinning in a dimly lit room during a traditional dance performance.

Poetry

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Sufi love poetry is in vogue, but few grasp its radical meaning

The Sufi path to love in the poetry of Rumi and ‘Iraqi styles the body as a bridge to the divine in deeply erotic ways

by Matthew Thomas Miller

Illustration of a mythical scene with a person, snakes, and a turtle in a stylised landscape. Traditional Persian art style.

Poetry

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The meaning of cowardly dogs and other puzzles of Arabic poetry

In classical Arabic poetry, beauty and wonder lie in the logical unravelling of a metaphor, rather than plot or character

by Lara Harb

Ancient Greek vase with red figure painting depicting a ship and mythological scene against a black background.

Music

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Bach’s piano music is intimate precision and Homeric epic in one

A hero on a journey; a circular movement; a melancholy of homecoming: why Bach is an epic poet in the Homeric tradition

by Dan Moller

Black and white photo of a person in 19th-century attire with a hat and cape, hand on chest.

Stories and literature

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There is nothing so deep as the gleaming surface of the aphorism

The aphorism has been a way to express strong feelings without placing emotional demands on the listener

by Noreen Masud