‘Poetry’ is close to ‘poverty’, and not just because the words sound so similar, sharing all but one letter. Many poets, of course, have known penury and been penniless, although a few, such as Lord Byron and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, made a fortune from their poems. (Tennyson was once offered […]
‘The Night was wide, and furnished scant’: not one of Emily Dickinson’s most memorable opening lines, but it opens a curious poem which is worth closer analysis. The Night was wide, and furnished scant With but a single Star — That often as a Cloud it met — Blew out […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry The Battle of the Blackwater was real and not just something that happened in Game of Thrones. It’s an odd fact that the first great poem written in English about a real […]