England's Arts Council apparently thinks sheep are good for more than just wool and...well...counting. They awarded a 2000£ grant (about $3,200) to a writer who is using the animals to create poems and demonstrate scientific principles.

The recipient, Valerie Laws, explained her project to the BBC:

"Quantum mechanics is...

In considering how to help with the relief effort in Haiti, Carol Ann Duffy understood that her position as Britain's Poet Laureate would allow her to do more than just write a check. An all-star poetry reading/fundraising event could raise significant funds, so Duffy made a wish list of 23...

The premiere of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's movie Howl led off the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night. Their much anticipated adaptation of Allen Ginsberg's poem, and the obscenity trail it sparked, has generated some buzz thanks to its impressive cast--including James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker,...

The nation remembers Martin Luther King on Monday, so let's take a look at three poems that highlight different aspects of the civil rights movement.

"I, Too, Sing America" by Langston Hughes--simple, direct, but emotionally powerful--is one of my favorite poems. It confronts the extreme race-based inequality that used...

Former British poet laureate Andrew Motion ruffled some feathers last week when he complained to the press about how educators teach poetry. He took issue, specifically, with official guidance from the UK's National Literacy Trust, which recommended that schools celebrate the lyrics of Snoop Dogg alongside Shakespeare, and put together...

We could certainly use a fresh start. It's hard to fathom how much optimism was in the air a year ago at the inauguration. This January, as I watch Obama's health care plan limp forward and get weaker by the day, and feel the recession lingering like the slush on...

I hope you had a happy holiday season, and that your family gathering was greeting card perfect. But perhaps after a few too many baby-induced wake ups and boozy political arguments, you got a little anxious to leave? As Ogden Nash once sagely wrote,

One would be in less danger

Monday marks the first day of winter (though it's an absurd 57 degrees here in Washington as I write this column) and I've put together some poems for the occasion. I've overlooked classics like Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" hoping for a few that...

The Huffington Post's William Petrocelli recently recounted meeting Al Gore at a signing for Gore's new book on climate change, Our Choice. The two men discussed why Gore had written and included a poem in the book. Apparently, when Gore's editor said no to a chapter of doom and...

For a time, if you were lucky enough to be on Robert Frost's Christmas list, you could count on a card in the mail each year. Each married a Frost poem with a simple but beautiful rendering of the natural world or the New England landscape (you can view a...

On November 19th, Herman Van Rompuy was elected the first permanent president of the European Council, the powerful body that provides direction to the European Union. The (soon to be former) Prime Minister of Belgium was reportedly the only candidate no one objected to, no doubt succeeding, in part, because...

If you read a review of Keith Waldrop's "Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy," this year's winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, there's a good chance it will include the word "postmodern" or "avant-garde." These are terms that put a lot of readers on guard, signaling experimental verse. And it...

Lou Dobbs resigned from CNN on Wednesday night, and rumor has it that the immigration-obsessed nightly news anchor will be following the Glenn Beck plan: if your shtick appeals to the fringe, why not head for a network with no qualms about stoking some far right-wing rage and cashing...

The new website PoetrySpeaks is aiming to serve as a social networking hub and online marketplace for poets. Visitors are greeted with a sleek, jukebox-style display of poet portraiture and an unpretentious atmosphere. And it's immediately clear that PoetrySpeaks casts a wide net: among the home page's...

The newly released Michael Jackson album This It It, a twenty track, two-CD set accompanying the release of the movie of the same name, features one of Jackson's poems, called "Planet Earth." The poem is rich with deep (if cliched) metaphysical questions, and, as you could probably guess, is a...

Fred D'Aguiar's latest book, Continental Shelf, has been nominated for the T.S. Eliot Award, a prize given annually to the best collection of new verse first published in the UK. The chair of this year's judges panel stressed a focus on poets "who have dreamed and who have dared." D'Aguiar...

I've been trying to track down English translations of poems by Herta Muller, the newest Nobel Laureate in Literature, but they are awfully hard to come by (if they even exist). Here in the U.S., Muller is primarily known--when she is known at all--for her fiction, though poetry lovers can...

In honor of National Poetry Day this past Thursday, the BBC commissioned a poll to name "the nation's favourite poet." The Brits, interestingly, chose an American...sort of. T.S. Eliot was born in Saint Louis but moved to England at the age of 25, where he eventually became a British subject....

A series of letters penned by the great English Romantic poet Lord Byron to his friend the Reverend Francis Hodgson will go up for auction at Sotheby's in London (no date has yet been set). The letters have been in the family of a former Prime Minister, the Earl of...

This week is Banned Books Week here in the U.S., an event sponsored primarily by the American Library Association (ALA) to draw attention to recent acts (and attempted acts) of book banning. You might be familiar with the well-publicized challenges to classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The...