In the days before Amazon algorithms served up your next read, one of the joys of reading was serendipity. As writers assemble in Britain’s town of books, speakers at Hay tell us about a chance encounter in a library, a…

As a young, angry black man in the 1980s, it was a revelation to find a dead white poet that made sense to me

"I hadn’t realised you could write a novel as if it were an imaginary diary. I’ve used this device many times in my own books"

From the healing power of the poem to fantasies of Paris in 1929—the poet answers 11 questions

An affecting new book on women and the sea is beautifully written

The legendary critic on what’s been keeping him entertained—from French lovers to warring dons...

The author and poet Clive James speaks to Prospect about the greatest lyric poet since Andrew Marvell

Larkin’s correspondence with his mother put him in touch with the precious texture of the everyday, which he transformed into some of the most sublime poetry since Donne and Marvell

His work is wild and infused with melancholy—a new biography tells his story

Ashbery had a gift for generosity, comedy and simplicity.

This is just to say / that the internet / is the perfect place / for one imagist poem