Poetry

Cubist painting of fragmented books and a glass on a table with geometric shapes in blue, brown and grey tones.
STORIES AND LITERATURE

How to gain more from your reading

There’s more to words than meets the eye. Deepen your appreciation of literature through the art of slow, attentive reading

by Robert DiYanni

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

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

Close-up of an older man in a flat cap and scarf, looking out over a misty rural landscape with blurred farmland in the background.
POETRY

Irish hills, folk music and David Whyte’s poetry form a fleeting, meditative moment

Directed by Andrew Hinton

Ancient Roman mosaic of four people gathered around a reclined figure on a bed with draped fabric overhead.
POETRY

Love’s contradictions: Catullus on the agony of infatuation

Behold a man tortured on the rack, pulled apart by love and hate: how to understand Catullus’s best-known poem

by Armand D’Angour

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

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

Watercolour illustration of an Aztec person walking, holding a flowered staff, speech glyphs surrounding their head.
POETRY

Learning Nahuatl, the flower song, and the poetics of life

Learning to think and feel in Nahuatl, the poetic language of my ancestors, broke me down and remade me

by David Bowles

Painting of a woman in 18th-century attire holding flowers by a window with a small dog on a bench.
POETRY

How to write a love poem

Flirtatious texts are soon forgotten. Learn to express your feelings in a beautiful way that will make a lasting impression

by Dan Simpson

Black and white photo of seagulls flying over a calm sea with distant hills in the background.
RITUALS AND CELEBRATIONS

Mourning is a leap to freedom, inviting new dreams of living

Mourning is a leap in the dark, but not into darkness. It’s a leap to freedom that invites us to dream of living once more

by Alexander Hirsch

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

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

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

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

Painting of an elderly couple in 16th century attire, man in fur-lined coat and woman in white headdress on green background.
LOVE

There’s no good reason to love each other – and that’s a relief

Loving is an unreasonable decision (we are all extremely unpleasant little beasts) and that’s what allows it to survive

by John Kaag

Open book with sketches of a handgun on the left page and a peach with geometric lines on the right page, on a dark surface.
POETRY

An English teacher asks his class: ‘What’s the opposite of a gun?’

Directed by Anna Samo and Lisa LaBracio

Abstract painting of various musical instruments, including drums, a trombone, a banjo, and a guitar, with a silhouetted figure in foreground.
POETRY

Childhood collides with the adult world in this haunting Bukowski adaptation

A film by Jonathan Hodgson

Abstract illustration of a person with eyes closed, wearing glasses, surrounded by cosmic elements on a blue and black background.
POETRY

Enter a dreamy French surrealist poem, where love and reality never quite touch

Directed by Emma Vakarelova

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

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

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

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