By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
French poetry is among the most romantic, the most innovative, and the most influential of all poetry. French poets – possibly influenced by the example of the American trailblazer, Walt Whitman – pioneered vers libre or ‘free verse’ in the late nineteenth century, while some of the most avant-garde poetry written at the beginning of the twentieth century was written in French.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘We Rise’ is an inspiring piece celebrating female empowerment and solidarity which calls upon women to support each other to bring about social change. The poem also cleverly summons the work of earlier poets who had written on the same topic.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in the Pall Mall Budget on 2 August 1894. In some ways a forerunner to later narratives like Little Shop of Horrors, the story is an unsettling tale about a parasitical species of plant which feeds upon the blood of a man who collects orchids.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The short stories of John Cheever (1912-82) are among the greatest American short stories of the twentieth century. His Collected Stories runs to 900 pages and contains tales which are by turns realist, borderline magic-realist, and downright strange.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’ – or, more accurately, ‘Do not stand by my grave and weep’ – are the opening words of a much-loved poem whose official title is ‘Immortality’. The poem was written by the American poet Clare Harner (1909-77) and published in The Gypsy magazine in December 1934. (We’ll return to the matter of the poem’s authorship towards the end of this article.)