This section contains micro-essays on individual poems and items in the Bloodaxe Books Archive. The essays were written by Mark Byers, Research Associate on the project in 2016-18.
Anna Akhmatova (trans. by Richard McKane), ‘Third and Last’
René Char (trans. by Michael Worton), ‘Youth at Les Névons’
David Constantine, ‘The Hymn to Aphrodite’
Ian Duhig, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’
Tony Harrison, from ‘Square Rounds’
Linton Kwesi Johnson, ‘All Wi Doin Is Defendin’
Tom Pickard, ‘A History Lesson from My Son on Hadrian’s Wall’
Jo Shapcott, ‘Electroplating the Baby’
Edith Södergran (trans. by David McDuff), ‘Nothing’
Anne Stevenson, ‘A Ballad for Apothecaries’