In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a poem that represents the meeting-point of ancient riddle and modern nonsense ‘I Saw a Peacock’ is an anonymous nonsense poem that is included in Quentin Blake’s The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse (Puffin Poetry), a wonderful anthology […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the origins of an oft-misused phrase ‘Good in parts.’ ‘A mixed bag.’ This is what people generally mean when they use the phrase ‘curate’s egg’ to describe something. For instance, in book reviews: ‘A real curate’s egg, this. […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle ponders the significance of the humble toothbrush in modern poetry ‘As a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can’t put toothbrushes in a poem, I really can’t!’ Sylvia Plath’s statement […]