The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed

Teilhard de Chardin

1 Sleep

We came so far, then stopped to see ourselves:

this minor gold, that memory of light,

angels and birds in the trees, like an early painting;

and though we were careful,

we knew it would happen again,

the life we forgot in the dying

stuck in [...]

Poetry in Britain is both thriving and struggling: it is flourishing at grass-roots level while poetry publishing is floundering. Bookshops have drastically reduced their ranges of poetry. Publishers have scrapped or shortened their poetry lists and are taking on very few new authors. Small presses have folded. Yet, paradoxically, public interest in poetry has never been higher.

More people write poetry than go to football matches, and poetry is popular [...]

Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus is a strange work. Written in just over two weeks, the 55 poems appear to have been less composed than dictated to the German poet - as if they had been sitting around elsewhere, waiting for someone to channel them into speech. In an earlier time, we would have had no trouble in describing the Sonnets - in their oracularity and their visionary power [...]

Jonathan Dimbleby, broadcasterAn Arundel Tomb by Philip LarkinAmid the gloom which so often encircles that wonderful poet, I find this tentative affirmation of hope reassuring.

Edwina Currie, former politician and novelistTo His Coy Mistress by Andrew MarvellThis was read at our wedding in 2001, when I became Mrs Jones, and helps explain why a couple of middle-aged sex-fiend loonies felt they couldn't wait ("Time's wingèd [...]

Words Without Borders is an online magazine for international literature. Its new anthology, Literature from the "Axis of Evil", brings together writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other "enemy nations", and includes these poems by the Iranian and North Korean poets Ahmad Shamlou and Byungu Chon.

See www.wordswithoutborders.org for further details.

ExistenceAhmad Shamloutranslated by Zara Houshmand

If this is life - how low!and I, how [...]

At Poetry International I will be debating with my fellow live poet Lemn Sissay, who will argue that performance poetry is dead, that maybe it was never even born in the first place. I will argue that it is very much alive and thriving.

Performance poetry was an alien concept to me until, at the age of 17, I went to Colchester Arts Centre to watch punk legend John Cooper [...]

So October's poetry events have worked their magic and you're actually going to buy a new book of verse. The autumn poetry releases give you a rich and varied crop to choose from. Michael Longley's Collected Poems (Jonathan Cape, 368pp, £25) is an obvious highlight. Whether as nature poet or war poet, Longley has a sensitive, resonant lyric voice; and his Collected Poems is a reminder of just how formidable [...]

Poets, and readers, have been grumbling about the decline of poetry ever since Aristophanes told the Athenians that Euripides just wasn't as good as Aeschylus. Centuries later, the crisis seems worse than ever. But, as Neil Astley, editor of the bestselling anthology Staying Alive, argues, at the grass-roots level it has never been more vibrant. Poet-translator Don Paterson describes working with language, the performance poet Luke Wright recalls on-stage thrills, [...]

Into the pit go all Estates,All princes, pimps and potentates,The fiend next door, the BBC -The living and those yet to be,Eminem, Ms Ruby WaxAnd Robert Johnson's vanished tracks,Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle,Madonna and the Duke of Earl,Occam's razor, Charlie Chan,Lord Lucan and the bogey man,Mister Tony, Conrad Black,The orchestra from Crackerjack,The Andrews Sisters, Clausewitz,That wasname who gets [...]

The saved were all ingratitude,The lost would not lie down:Reborn, their sacred rage renewed,They razed the fallen town

And in the graveyard made their standJust east of heaven's gate.We are the same. It is all oneWhom we exterminate.

Sean O'Brien's most recent collection of verse is Cousin Coat: selected poems 1976-2001 (Picador, [...]