Berfrois

Poems

That Great Beat

That Great Beat

‘I love the dirty ones more than the minced’

“An instant of utter stillness”

Decoded: Jay-Z in Conversation with Cornel West

Video:

Decoded: Jay-Z in Conversation with Cornel West

‘Nietzsche begins, as many young poets do, with himself, albeit a rather glorified notion of selfhood…’

‘We should stop stirring Walter Benjamin’s intricately brilliant but almost entirely false theories into theoretical blancmange’

In that coffee shop

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

‘Heaney never seems more Heaneyish, or Muldoon more Muldoonish, than when they appear side by side.’

‘At least I had my heart broken by a professional’

Cover to Cover

Land, Women and Gold

Philip Larkin’s literary executor recalls passing on This Be the Verse

Dreaming and Poetry

‘It would be better if you could wash your hair with poetry, or with glowing dead poetry goo made by juicing living dead poets: that would be something!’

How you played the game

“Negative reviews help poetry.”

Drinking, driving and longing

Jazra Khaleed: ‘Greek society has the blood of immigrants on its hands’

“When you are a writer, you are a patriot of your apartment,” Zagajewski said.

Language as a Window into Human Nature
Video: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Tom Rachman reads from ‘The Imperfectionists’
Podcast: Tom Rachman reads from ‘The Imperfectionists’
The Bridge at Hoover Dam
Slideshow: The Bridge at Hoover Dam
The Great Gatsby for NES
Video game: The Great Gatsby for NES
‘Splitting Ice’ by Kay Ryan
Poem: ‘Splitting Ice’ by Kay Ryan
‘The Realisms of Berenice Abbott’ by Terri Weissman
Book excerpt: ‘The Realisms of Berenice Abbott’ by Terri Weissman