The Guardian - Poetry · Scour

What to read this summer by Mark Haddon, Samantha Harvey, Zadie Smith and more

Last week, thousands of readers gathered [for a literary festival](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/07/kyiv-hosts-literary-festival-amid-ukraine-war-book-arsenal) in...

Here in Georgia our festivals are full, but our poets are in prison – and now we feel abandoned by Europe | Archil Kikodze

‘Pleasure and invigoration’: Diana Evans wins UK’s Jhalak prose prize

Remembering Maureen Duffy and an all-night reading of Gor Saga | Letters

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Maureen Duffy obituary

Letter: Carol Rumens obituary

Fuck the Polis review – cryptic docu-essay is a sphinxlike studty of Greek myth and modernity

‘True trailblazer’: British author and activist Maureen Duffy dies aged 92

Written under collapsing ceilings, typed on phones: the poetry bringing Palestine to the world

John Kearns: Tilting at Windmills review – a handful of dust (and prawn cocktail crisps) in riff on TS Eliot

American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney wins Dylan Thomas prize for ‘blistering’ debut poetry collection

JH Prynne obituary

Lloyd Jones obituary

Carol Rumens obituary

‘She made Mondays something to look forward to’: readers pay tribute to Carol Rumens, Guardian’s Poem of the week columnist

Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81

Feminism play Liberation and first world war novel Angel Down among Pulitzer winners

Launched by King George VI on 3 May 1951, the Festival of Britain was conceived as a “tonic” for a nation battered by war, debt and rationing\. At a time of ongoing global...

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