Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The first big literary award ceremony of the year takes place on Monday, with the announcement of the winner of the pounds 5,000 TS Eliot Prize for poetry. For several years now, Islington's Almeida Theatre has hosted an eve- of-award poetry reading, which is every bit as snazzy an occasion as the prize-giving itself. Sunday's event showcases the 10 short-listed contenders, and offers as good an opportunity as you'll get to survey the full range of contemporary British and Irish poetry.
Paul Muldoon (above), the much-imitated grand wizard of playful punning narratives, makes the trip over from the States to read from his latest collection, Hay. A skittering whirligig of words, Hay offers curious illuminations on emu-catching, takes a spin round his record collection (Nirvana to Leonard Cohen) and dips into the double-scoop vanilla cleavage of the girl in the ice-cream shop.
Alongside Ken Smith and David Harsent, Fred D'Aguiar delivers his sequence Bill of Rights, about the 1978 Guyanese mass-suicide at Jonestown; while clever-boy formalist Glyn Maxwell reads from The Breakage, with its jaunty catalogue of sorrinesses such as "Robert Falcon Scott who lost the race to a Norwegian, / And anyone who's ever spilt the pint of a Glaswegian."
Late Review polymath Tom Paulin reads from Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, Susan Wicks reads for Welsh newcomer Sarah Corbett who'll be busy having her baby; and last year's prizewinner Don Paterson reads on behalf of Jo Shapcott: "Lean forward and put a finger / on the spot you think the dream is", Shapcott invites in her sultry collection, My Life Asleep. Enjoy her fantastical leaps into the minds of mad cows, metamorphising nymphs, and the lovelorn dove left behind on Noah's ark while his mate went looking for olive twigs.
Jackie Kay slips wittily between the themes of disease and racial prejudice in her spirited collection Off Colour, diving from dentist's chair to sick bed, to dissect the "scary bits cowering inside the flesh" fortified by a bottle of "orange nostalgia" Lucozade. In Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Ruth Padel conducts the "fugue of held-in hurt" of a passionate affair, trilling with joyous late-night sing-songs, and broken liaisons: "Whatever self is, I'd like mine to wake up with yours."
TS Eliot Prize Reading, Almeida Theatre, London N1, tomorrow, 7.30pm (0171-359 4404) pounds 8/pounds 6 concs
Judith Palmer
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments