Most Read...
The Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239) Bill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259) Val Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259) A Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121) On Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237) An Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
(PN Review 239) Bill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259) Val Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259) A Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121) On Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237) An Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Next Issue
Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world
John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations
Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance'
David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld
Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book
Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
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...probably the most informative and entertaining poetry journal in the English-speaking world.
John Ashbery
Since we started as Poetry Nation, a twice-yearly hardback, in 1973, we've been publishing new poetry, rediscoveries, commentary, literary essays, interviews and reviews from around the globe. In 2023 PN Review celebrated its jubilee. Our vast archive now includes approaching 280 issues, with contributions from some of the most exciting and radical writers of our times. Key contributors include Octavio Paz, Laura Riding, Christopher Middleton, John Ashbery, Les Murray, Patricia Beer, W.S. Graham, Eavan Boland, Jorie Graham, Donald Davie, C.H. Sisson, Sinead Morrissey, Sasha Dugdale, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, and many others. You can sign up to our free newsletter to get choice morsels of archive straight to your inbox every week. Subscribe to the magazine to receive six issues per year and full access to the archive. Buy the current issue without a subscription here. Please can subscribers fill out our anonymised questionnaire so we can develop a clearer sense of our readership. |
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Featured Poem
The Banquet
… per lo naturale amore de la propria loquela
— Dante, Convivio It was a difficult autumn, I reached for Dante because I needed to walk out, needed to be taken by the dark, unreliable highway that links ethics to knowledge. All winter I found myself running in the spiralling evenings and streets of Florence – a city haunted by longing – a road leading inwards and outwards – shaken ... read more |
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In conversation with Neilson MacKay
You told me a few minutes ago that you experience life in paragraphs. When I asked you what you meant by that, you said you would have to write a poem to find out. What gives?
I often say something without knowing why I said it. For example, I woke up from a dream saying, ‘Abandon ship!’ When I was in the Navy we were taught if necessary to abandon ship, but of course I never did and I never would. It bothers me to think that I would have somewhere to go, wishes that I would abandon, because I was afraid of some fucking torpedo. There are many poets who think – not only do they think but their readers think – they have something to say. I don’t write poems because I think I have something to say; I write poems to understand why I said something, try to find the way I said things. ... read more |
Elegies
You’re enough to sift into an oblong alabaster box.
Flesh and bone charred and ground into griege gravel fallout from torched cobalt blue winding sheet; sheer dust of light blue shirt; the fabric grit of serge trousers and wool socks; blue and white smoke ropes of striped school tie; big voicebox – site of forensic eloquence – burned down to silence. Your long limbs set straight by undertaker’s hands. St George’s boy, you forward and face flame dragon. For an Athlete ... read more |
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Selected from the Archive...
Diary of a Satyr
When I was a child, I moved my pillow to a different part of the bed each night because I liked the feeling of not knowing where I was when I woke up. From the beginning I yearned for the nomadic life. I wandered, grazed like a goat on a hill - the move from grazing to exploring was just a leap over a fence. In my seventh year, I had a revelation. A teacher asked me a question. I knew the answer. Miss Green, a horse-faced redhead, asked the 3A class of P.S. 99, Kew Gardens, Queens, a long way from Byzantium: ‘What are you going to do in life?’ Most of the answers remain a blur, but someone said she was going to be a novelist and someone said he’d write a play, or for the movies. ... read more |
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