close circle of literary friends which also included Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, James Fenton and Martin Amis, spoke movingly on the Today programme this morning of how the author kept writing until the last."Right at the very end, when he was at his most feeble as this cancer began to overwhelm him, he insisted on a desk by the window--away from his bed in the ICU," he said. "Took myself and his son to get him into that chair--with a pole and eight lines going into his body--and there he was, a man with only a few days to live, turning out three thousand words to meet a deadline."
from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Christopher Hitchens: tributes and reactions
then Alison Flood: The Guardian: Christopher Hitchens memoir to be published early next year
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"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," wrote Shelley in 1821. Now poet John Kinsella, who withdrew from the TS Eliot prize last week over its sponsorship by an investment firm, has laid out his own poetic manifesto, explaining why he believes that a poem "is an active, not a contemplative, entity" which "should channel disobedience".
Describing himself as an anarchist and a pacifist (and a vegan), Kinsella describes in the New Statesman how he practises "'linguistic disobedience' in the hope of bringing about positive social, ethical and political change".
from Alison Flood: The Guardian: John Kinsella writes of poetry's 'responsibility to bring change'
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[Roger McGough] is a folk hero in his native Liverpool, where many of his poems and a work of art he created from donated old doors are part of the new Pier Head museum.
Roots by Roger McGough
from Alison Flood and Maev Kennedy: The Guardian: Roger McGough becomes new Poetry Society president
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