Sorrow and sadness are common themes for poetry, so choosing just eleven of the very best poems about sadness is going to be tricky. In the selection that follows, we’ve tried to include a range of poems from a variety of poets, moving from the heartfelt and moving to the […]
The myth of Ariadne is inextricably bound up, like her delicate thread she gives to him, with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. But what’s the full story with Ariadne in Greek mythology? Let’s take a closer look, beginning with a summary of Ariadne’s story, followed by an analysis […]
The stories of the US short-story writer O. Henry, real name William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), are characterised by their irony and by their surprise endings, which became something of a signature of a good O. Henry short story. However, another word that is often used to describe O. Henry’s short […]
Teaching poetry can be a hugely rewarding experience, and it’s heartening to find that some of the biggest names in poetry have paid tribute to teachers, whether in heartfelt eulogies to the impact those teachers had on their students’ lives, or in comic tours de force that bring the memories […]
The Wife of Bath is one of the most famous characters in all of Chaucer’s poetry, and ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ remains a popular tale from The Canterbury Tales. But what can this tale tell us about medieval attitudes to women and marriage?