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Since 1979, London Review of Books has focused on protecting and promoting the tradition of the literary and intellectual essay in English. Each issue contains essays, book reviews, poems, an exhibition review, "short cuts," letters, and a diary. For book reviews, they look at both unsolicited submissions and proposals.

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The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.

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‘Instapoetry’ in the LRB: Towards a Better Criticism of Popular Poetics

Hi all. You may have seen this circulating around social media already, but in their latest issue the LRB (London Review of Books) published an essay on Instapoetry . Many poets and critics, myself included, have observed issues with the way this essay flattens the genre, lacks informed context, and condescends both to the writers and readers of Instapoetry. Against my better instincts (because I spent a week two years ago down a rabbit hole writing a similar reaction essay to the infamous “Cult of the Noble Amateur” article in PN Review ), I’ve written an open letter to the LRB editors detailing my concerns about the piece. I’m so frustrated with essays like this and don’t want to keep making the same points over and over again, but equally I recognise the importance of engaging with this journalism in a detailed, informed manner so that the discourse can evolve through dialogue. Here it is:

To the LRB editors,

I’m writing regarding your Vol. 40 No. 10 (21 May 2020) article ‘Instapoetry’ by Dr. Clare Bucknell. I highly appreciate and respect the work that you do advancing cultural conversations through publishing essays, articles, poetry, and other material. However, I found this essay problematic in several respects and wanted to raise my concerns.

I am a poet and researcher of contemporary U.K. spoken word poetry. Through my work I’ve become familiar with an unfortunate trend in criticism for contemporary accessible poetics: journalism which flattens and demeans entire sub-genres of contemporary poetry, implying stylistic uniformity and poor quality. I consider this article to be emblematic of this trend: it reads as deeply condescending to both those who compose material for publication through digital outlets and those who enjoy engaging with this material.

Frustratingly, and as I’d imagine your editorial team will be aware, a similar essay entitled “The Cult of the Noble Amateur” by Rebecca Watts was published in early 2018 by PN Review criticising Hollie McNish’s poetry collection Plum . While that essay had slightly differently targets (though both discuss Rupi Kaur), these essays are similar in that they pan contemporary accessible poetry written by young women (often women of colour) and fail to provide adequate evidence for their claims or interrogate the assumptions in which their criticism is grounded. Despite there being a massive backlash to the PN Review essay in 2018, sparking a vibrant dialogue about how to appropriately criticise popular poetics, Bucknell’s essay rehashes many of its problematic aspects. It reads as an echo of Watts’: the same condescending tone (even Bucknell described it in in a tweet as ‘unkind’), lack of diligent research into the existing scholarship on the field, and failure to introspectively evaluate the assumptions on which its analysis rests. In an effort to open a dialogue and to prevent more of this frankly frustrating criticism, I want to point out some of the issues I perceived in Bucknell’s piece as a researcher of contemporary popular poetics. I hope you will read this and the other informed critiques of this essay currently circulating online.

To begin: while this essay seems perpetually confused as to why anyone would appreciate Instapoetry, there is no evidence that it sought to solve this confusion by interviewing anyone who writes or appreciates it. That and many of the other issues with this essay are encapsulated in this early statement: ‘People are definitely sick of seeing Kaur circulating online, but they keep buying books of her poetry.’ First, this is logically inconsistent. People are sick of her but want more of her? What quantitative or qualitative data are these assertions based in? Second, who is ‘people’? Clearly the millions who follow these Instapoets online are not sick of their work. Either this is an inaccurate generalisation or the scope of ‘people’ here has been limited only to those who are sick of reading Kaur’s work online. Is this the only population the article is interested in?

Second, and most problematic in my perspective, is how the essay acknowledges the demographics of the writers of this work without analysing why the demographics are as they are. It grants that the best-known Instapoets are young and female and lists several of them. It does not acknowledge that many Instapoets who have large followings are young women of colour . And it fails to go into any analysis or even speculation as to why young women (of colour) apparently feel drawn to/comfortable in this specific creative platform and why they attain such impressive success in it.

This question deserves a full essay, and I won’t go deeply into it here, but there are many feasible reasons for the demographics of Instapoetry. Perhaps these poets feel that they are less able to access and succeed in traditional print-based publishing platforms (the conclusions of the 2005 Free Verse report documenting the severe underrepresentation of BAME poets in U.K. literary publishing would justify their fears). Perhaps they are concerned that the critical reception for their work will not take into account the sociocultural environment in which it was written and the audience for whom it was written ( the sobering demographic statistics of U.K. poetry critics gathered by Dave Coates would validate those concerns. I don’t mean to imply that only marginalised critics can analyse marginalised writers, but the diversification of our critical sector is vital for encouraging the diversification of the published writing sector). Perhaps the fact that Instagram is a low-cost platform for publishing one’s work attracts poets without the means to pay journal submission fees, thus making a more financially accessible publishing option for working class writers. Perhaps Instagram, with its interactive interface allowing followers to like, comment, and share, makes writers and readers of a digital generation feel more engaged and able to form meaningful connections with the poetry than print media. Perhaps the thread of recent journalism in elite publications condescending to contemporary popular poetics has made it clear to these poets and readers that they are not welcome within the ‘traditional’ publishing sector. There are many potential reasons for these demographics, but they are unfortunately not explored in Bucknell’s essay.

Third: consistently throughout the article, Bucknell implies that the material the Instapoets are producing is unfiltered, direct expression, and that any narratives they recount are autobiographical, describing this work as ‘spewed-up realness.’ First of all, and I don’t mean this flippantly: does the LRB consider it acceptable for one of their writers to refer to an artist’s work as vomit? This is deeply insulting.

But more to the point: yes, it does seem that much of the material published through Instagram is hyperrealist and narrates apparently autobiographical subjects and events. Rather than interrogating why so much of this material has this focus or why confessional material is so in demand, the article simply (again) pans it as glorified ‘innocence.’ There is a fascinating discussion to be had concerning why confessional, hyperrealist narratives of trauma, marginality, and abuse are demanded (and, arguably, fetishised) in contemporary popular poetics (including not only Instapoetry but spoken word poetry as well), but this is not picked up here.

This discourse becomes even more urgent when we consider the demographics of the writers and fans: why do young women of colour feel incentivised to divulge confessional, traumatic narratives? Do they feel as though other narratives of their lives are requested or valued within this sphere? What does the hunger Instapoetry readers feel for ‘relatable content’ typified by narratives of oppression, trauma, sexism, body dysmorphia, and abuse say about the challenges present in their lives and whether or not they recognise their lives reflected in the literary sphere more broadly?

Ultimately, whether or not the narratives these Instapoets are telling are true—whether what they are ‘spewing’ is actually ‘realness’—is beside the point. What I am more concerned about here is the readiness with which authenticity is assumed in this criticism: how there is no skepticism regarding the extent to which their performances of self are crafted. In a brief allusion to the performativity inherent in social media, Bucknell writes that Instapoetry can ‘remind us that not all of those who purport to be barefaced actually are.’ Yet her criticism does not analyse her subjects through their skeptical lens. It does not assume distance between the author and speaker of the poems—a basic rule of poetic analysis at least in how I was taught it—and instead assumes the work is not crafted performance but direct, ‘authentic’ expression: ‘Cox loathes her cellulite and her thighs.’

To interpret a piece of art as authentic (honest, personal, directly expressed, raw) means to interpret it as not crafted (it’s original and thus not altered or shaped). Thus when we describe work as ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ without interrogating our usage of these terms, we imply that it is not art (see G. A. Fine’s scholarship for more on this). Bucknell’s essay swings between acknowledging the poetic attributes of much Instapoetry (its creative use of white space is not, after all, unique to digital platforms) and smearing it as not art but pure, authentic utterance devoid of craft.

And, again, this easy assumption of Instapoetry’s ‘authenticity’ is exacerbated by its practitioners’ identities, a fact that this essay fails to observe or interrogate. People with marginalised identities (and here, again, I would include the majority of Instapoets as young women of colour) are more immediately read as authentic, due to racist, sexist, classist, and prejudiced stereotypes. There is plenty of academic literature documenting this effect within the arts (see the work of Gatchet for analysis of how it functions in blues music, for example). In reading the work of these Instapoets, many of whom document their experience of marginality through their writing, as ‘authentic’ without then interrogating this interpretation, this essay falls into a rut riven by bigotry, whether intentionally or not.

Fourth: it’s one thing to criticise the poetry. It’s another to criticise the poets themselves, but arguably they’ve opened themselves up to that by putting work out there. It’s simply bad practice to criticise the people who appreciate the poetry. This essay consistently does that: since ‘people are sick of her [Kaur]’ then something must be wrong with the people buying her books. Since Instapoetry is ‘so barren of interest,’ the people who appreciate it must not be interesting. The article concludes: ‘Lots of people – hundreds of thousands – seem to want this. In Kaur’s words, “there are far too many mouths here.”’ Here Bucknell explicitly states that the fanbase for this work should be smaller: there are too many people who like Instapoetry and she does not understand why (and has not bothered to find out).

As I have heard from audience members countless times at live literature gigs, so many people feel alienated by the literary world, whether they were put off poetry when taught it in school or they find the complicated and expensive world of constant publication submissions and MFAs inaccessible. When people find a form of poetry that resonates with them, such as Instapoetry, that engagement with literature should be celebrated. What articles like this do is tell these people that their tastes are sub-par (how could you actually like work that is ‘barren of interest’?), and that they were right in their initial feeling that poetry wasn’t for them. It slams the already barely open door to the broad church of poetry in their faces. And by condescending to people who are just living their lives, enjoying some poetry on their phones on their way to work, maybe being inspired to pen some of their own, we are not only doing our art form a disservice but simply being rude.

A core mantra in stand-up comedy and elsewhere is ‘Don’t punch down.’ This applies (or I believe should apply) to criticism as well. From a quick Google search, I see that Bucknell has a doctorate and occupies a fellowship position within one of the U.K.’s elite universities. The LRB is a long-established, highly regarded publication. Thus the author and platform have high cultural capital within the contemporary U.K. literary sphere. Rather than using that prestige, knowledge, and experience to shine attention on and provide thorough analysis of a popular (‘low-art’) art form, this essay punches down. It alienates those who create and appreciate Instapoetry and makes it explicit they are not welcome within the ivory tower of U.K. literary discourse.

Fifth and finally: I see so many articles like this which read as though the author thinks they are the first person to have analysed contemporary accessible poetics. These completely ignore and fail to cite the healthy critical discourse on these art forms currently being developed by academics and practitioners. Bucknell could have looked into Kevin Stein’s work on contemporary digital poetics , for instance. While I don’t know the details of how this essay came about (i.e. whether commissioned or pitched), I’m curious as to why an expert in ‘c17th-c19th poetry, art & history’ (from her Twitter bio) is writing with apparent authority about contemporary digital poetics. It’s not that academics can’t or shouldn’t write outside their fields of expertise—cross-subject and cross-disciplinary research is exciting and valuable—but we must be informed when doing so. A comparative study of the area of Bucknell’s expertise and Instapoetry would have been fascinating (are there unexpected parallels between popular poetics in the 1600s and now?), but obviously this essay is not that. My point: please, when commissioning writers for these essays, be cognisant of existing fields of study and first ask the experts, or at least ensure that the author draws upon the existing theory if claiming to write from a position of authority.

When the 2018 PN Review essay received backlash, the editors brushed it off as the poetry community being unable to handle rigorous criticism (as I recall; I can’t now find their response on their website to cite them so apologies if I am mis-remembering). Bucknell also seems to anticipate a backlash and prepares the same defense—’technical analysis can be butted away too easily as gatekeeping’—so I want to forestall that strategy. My reaction (and the reactions of others) to this article is not a knee-jerk ‘Don’t shine a light on this work, it can’t stand up to that.’ Nor is it a ‘This work isn’t made for critical attention, it’s solely for the poet’s catharsis and community-building.’ That is a legitimate perspective for poets to have, but my opinion is that once work is out in the world, it opens itself to critique. A fair, rigorous critical discourse is vital to the development and evolution of art forms and should be welcomed (even when challenging and uncomfortable) by practitioners.

So yes, we should be engaging in critical discourse about Instapoetry. But rigorous criticism is, importantly, informed. It contextualises work within the broader cultural landscape and seeks to understand it from all angles. It does not contain loaded generalisations without proper evidence: ‘People are definitely sick of seeing Kaur circulating online,’ ‘There is little imagery (it gets in the way of deliverable content)’ (I’d love to read an analysis of whether Instapoems without visuals accrue more engagement than those with visuals: did Bucknell actually measure this to back up her statement?). Effective criticism is also respectful, even when observing flaws: to analyse art and find it lacking does not necessitate adopting an insulting tone.

And, perhaps most centrally, it is good critical practice to avoid allowing the author’s tastes to influence the writing and instead seek to examine the work more or less objectively. I’ll be honest: much of the Instapoetry I’ve encountered is not for me. It’s simply not my cup of tea. But if I were to write an analysis of the field, I would work to prevent my personal tastes from permeating the tone of the article and instead focus strictly on the work. The sneering tone adopted here—describing this poetry as ‘shapeless’ and ‘spewed-up’—doesn’t even give the pretence of unbiased attention.

Certain sections and statements from Bucknell’s essay are intriguing and worthy of follow-up. I would love to read, for instance, a thorough analysis expanding upon this theory: ‘To be inspirational to young followers, bodies need to be “real”, or better still to have “been on a journey”, which means having experienced trauma or self-hatred and come out stronger than before.’ This is a fascinating assertion deserving of much more detailed analysis. When conducted in an informed, detailed, and respectful manner, it would provide insight into our constantly evolving literary sphere. It is the responsibility of critics to carry out this rigorous work and the responsibility of platforms to commission it. We can do better.

Thank you for taking the time to read my response. I hope this and other reactions will inform how you curate your platform’s essays on contemporary accessible poetics in the future.

Dr. Katie Ailes

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5 thoughts on “ ‘instapoetry’ in the lrb: towards a better criticism of popular poetics ”.

This was a fascinating post Katie. I hadn’t read the LRB article, but I will do so now – my flat subscribes to it.

One of the things I’d personally love to see in criticism of ‘Instapoetry’ is a more in-depth look at its links with VISUAL art. I can’t remember who I was chatting about this with (it may have been yourself!) but a friend of mine was suggesting that there might be links to explore about how people who write poetry for Instagram use white space, drawings etc. to effectively create mini works of visual ‘art’. Perhaps there is lots of analysis of this already that I’ve simply not read – this isn’t my expertise. But arguable we’re even looking at this the wrong way if we’re just thinking about these poems as ‘poems’ but maybe they’re something BETWEEN a poem…and a work of visual art. I don’t know!

Anyways, I am curious to read this other article and appreciate the work you do in demanding rigorous criticism of contemporary poetry (in all its many forms!). x

Like Liked by 1 person

Thanks for reading, Carly! And YES – I think that when analysing Instapoetry we need to take into account the specifics of the publication platform. That means not only analysing the text of the poems, but the visuals, the captions, etc. We need to develop & utilise a different critical methodology than we would for text poetry printed on blank pages in a book. I’m not the expert in this either, so it’s very possible some folks are already doing this – I’d love to read it!

Hi Katie It’s been a while since I commented on one of your posts . I hope you are well. I’d read the LRB article before you posted this and I have to say you have responded to it in a much more detailed, intelligent and, may I say, respectful way than I could have done. My reaction to the LRB article was puzzlement: why are you bothering to write this ? Did an Instagram poet ignore you in the street once ? It was an article where you look for an agenda rather than a rationale, but even then I can’t think of a plausible one. I don’t want to be negative about the author who is clearly a highly intelligent woman, and I found your question as to who initiated this article a good one. For me the lesser of two evils is if it was the LRB. I don’t like this idea of cultural “gatekeepers”, which to be fair the author herself seems ambivalent about. I think all writing needs to find its own audience and a great thing about recent years is that there are multiple ways of doing this. I’m not so precious about poetry or the arts in general to think we need sentinels to keep the barbarians out. ( I am not myself suggesting anyone is a barbarian). Like you I would also prefer if people could distinguish between a poet and a persona, especially in settings like spoken word or Instagram poetry. I like to say all my poems are true, it’s just that very few are factual.

Great to hear from you Derek, and thanks for reading the post! I really appreciate your comments. Yes, I completely agree that writing needs to find its own audience – that’s a great way to put that. And I get what you mean about the poems being true but not factual! Hope you’re well.

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OXFORD REVIEW   of BOOKS

SPRING 2024

Current Issue

This issue includes reviews of the latest releases from Yanis Varoufakis, Naomi Klein, Sheila Heti and Jonathan Lethem and in conversations with. Jeremy Bowen, Lauren Elkin, Bernard Foccroulle and Samantha Ellis.  

Our writers explore the regulation of Big Tech in the age of artificial intelligence, the comeback of short fiction, and the global phenomenon of fanatical football (among countless other amazing pieces!).

We are also excited to announce this issue as our first in association with Stanford University, featuring art and work by Stanford students!

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Free Them All

• Jan 15, 2023

Murakami, Incorporated

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"Splinters": The Opposite of a Cocktail-Party

WE ARE READING

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Your Dad Insists On Doing The Barbecue Even Though It’s Not His Housewarming Party

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Mrs. Peacock's Root Canal

Minor Details, Major Insights

Adventure in Solitude

Which Way, Western Man?

Grief Sequence

Tongue-Tied

Hyper-Mechanical Reproduction

IN CONVERSATION

Wolfgang Puck's Secret Ingredient

One Afternoon with Laufey

CURATOR'S PICK

Kathleen quaintance.

Small Hours

Public Property

04:17 a.m, February 6

The Ruins of Nostalgia 49

Wild Typography and Bootleg Books: An Interview with Leah Whitman-Salkin

Bake Your Feelings with Becca Rea-Tucker

The Endless Tale of Life & Music: An Interview with Gena Rose Bruce

Harry Baker on Poetry, Chocolate, and Being 100% Himself (all the time)

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• Michael Hofmann: Halldór Laxness does both
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• Akshi Singh: Good for Tata
• William Davies: Capitalism Decarbonised
• Frances Webber: Short Cuts
• Hazel V. Carby: Remembering the Future
• Stephen Holmes: Cold War Liberalism
• Philip Knox: At the Bodleian
• Emily Witt: On Justin Torres
• Robert Crawford: ‘After the British Library Cyberattack’
• Pooja Bhatia: Diary

Think Differently

Subscribe to the LRB – perfect for anyone with an interest in history, politics, literature and the arts.

Good for Tata

Akshi singh.

A crumpled ​ hundred-rupee banknote falls from a man’s pocket. The camera shows Gandhi’s face on the note. A young girl picks the money up, and asks her mother what she should do with it. Her mother says she can get herself chocolate, buy a doll or give it back. The girl hands the note back to the man who dropped it. Against a background of sentimental music, a voice announces:...

The slippage between Tata and India speaks not just to Tata’s central place in the development of Indian capitalism but also to the way in which the corporation has variously come to represent progress, the evils of capitalism, and even the state itself.

Last Gasp Apparitions

Michael ledger-lomas.

A ndrew Lang ​ was in Oxford when he first encountered the living dead. One autumn night in 1869, he passed John Conington, professor of Latin, staring silently at Corpus Christi College. Nothing odd about a distracted don, except that Lang soon learned that Conington had, at that moment, been breathing his last in Boston, Lincolnshire. Years later, he discussed this ‘real or sham...

It wasn’t a belief in the supernatural that marked someone out as insane, but the judgment of the authorities that this belief was held with harmful vehemence. One inmate who proclaimed himself to be Jesus was actually committed for striking a cab horse with an axe. Doctors wouldn’t call you mad if you saw the ghost of a loved one, but they might if, over time, the ghost kept saying the wrong thing or refused to disappear.

Why do we sleep?

W hy ​ do we sleep ? The habit is pretty much universal among animals, though it takes a wide variety of forms. Many hibernate; a dolphin sleeps with half its brain at a time, so it can keep surfacing for air; Arctic reindeer continue ruminating while in non-REM sleep; and the Antarctic chinstrap penguin, we learned last year, fits thousands of four-second ‘microsleeps’ into the...

Across the life sciences in the 19th century, sleep was generally considered to be a vestige of our deep evolutionary past with no present value. Given its obvious disadvantages so far as economic productivity is concerned, there was much speculation that modern medicine would discover a way to reduce the need for it, or even eliminate it altogether. 

Remembering the Future

Hazel v. carby.

A band ​ of light, reflected across the waters of Morgan Lake, New Mexico, leads our eyes from the centre foreground to a power plant on the Navajo Reservation: the Four Corners Power Plant, one of the largest coal-fired generating stations in the United States. In this photograph by the Diné artist Will Wilson, the plant is entirely in shadow, as dark as the bituminous coal that fuels...

I am reminded of the first maps I saw as a child, hanging on the walls of British classrooms. Of course, the colour that occurred most often on those maps was red, not white, a difference in surface but not in substance: that red and the white on this map signal the same thing – a celebration of power and domination.

No Safe Routes

Frances webber.

I n February 2015 Shamima Begum and two friends left East London for Syria, where they joined Islamic State. Soon after they arrived, they were married to IS fighters. At the time, senior police, the courts and even the Home Office saw them as victims of grooming and trafficking. As late as January 2019, the Home Office claimed to ‘consider minors, assessed to have been...

The higher courts have always acquiesced to government ministers’ views of national security, but in Shamima Begum’s case the court appears to have given Sajid Javid carte blanche to conclude that deprivation of her citizenship is conducive to the public good, whatever the cost to a British-born woman who at nineteen had lost three children, her liberty, her citizenship, and with it, her right to live anywhere.

On Justin Torres

J an Gay ​ was born Helen Reitman in Leipzig in 1902. She came out as a lesbian in young adulthood, studied under the German sexologist Magnus Hirshfield, started a nudist colony with her partner, Zhenya, and eventually collected interviews with hundreds of queer women in European cities, in the hope that writing up their sexual histories would help make lesbianism more accepted. When she...

Justin Torres’s Blackouts isn’t biography, or historical fiction, but a kind of compilation of miscellanea that provides some primary texts, adds fictional embellishments, and then shrugs.

Halldór Laxness does both

Michael hofmann.

I f geography ​ isn’t destiny, it comes close. Consider Iceland, at the apex of the North Atlantic. From there, one leg of a pair of dividers drops south to the Scandinavian ports and Scotland, and then to the rest of what one thinks of as Europe. The other leg gives prime access, through a little-used window in the Hudson Bay, to Canada and the United States. That’s it,...

Like the inhabitants of other small and remote countries, the Icelander has the choice to go or stay. Halldór Laxness did both. He was a cosmopolitan and a homebody. He yo-yoed. He stayed in Iceland and he left.

Trying to stay awake

Jenny diski.

If you set aside the incomparable cruelty and stupidity of human beings, surely our most persistent and irrational activity is to sleep. Why would we ever allow ourselves to drop off if sleeping was entirely optional? Sleep is such a dangerous place to go to from consciousness: who in their right mind would give up awareness, deprive themselves of control of their senses, volunteer for paralysis, and risk all the terrible things (and worse) that could happen to a person when they’re not looking? As chief scientist in charge of making the world a better place, once I’d found a way of making men give birth, or at least lactate, I’d devote myself to abolishing the need for sleep. Apart from the dangers of letting your guard down, there’s the matter of time.

If you set aside the incomparable cruelty and stupidity of human beings, surely our most persistent and irrational activity is to sleep. Why would we ever allow ourselves to drop off if sleeping was entirely optional?

For ever Falkland?

Tam dalyell.

‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ I suggest that this is an appropriate motto, not of course for the unfortunate men of the Task Force, but for those who sent them to the South Atlantic. It characterises the whole operation – an operation, as I have tried to show in this journal, which was conceived in an emotional spasm, by the injured pride of the House of Commons, on that hysterical Saturday morning, 3 April 1982. A task force had to be assembled, because it had to be assembled, to do something about the dreadful Argentine Junta, who had taken advantage of our negligence in withdrawing the survey vessel, HMS Endurance , with her peashooter of a gun. No blow-mouth, that Saturday morning, had the remotest idea of what he, or more particularly she – and there was not only Mrs Thatcher, by a long chalk, in this latter category – wanted to do, once the task force had arrived, and, by appearing on the horizon, had automatically shunted the dago intruders out of our island. No one had the haziest notion of what their rational, long-term objective should be. When I interrupted Mrs Thatcher’s opening speech to inquire who our friends were in South America on this issue, she could not name one, even then. But MPs collectively were in no mood to care.

‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ I suggest that this is an appropriate motto, not of course for the unfortunate men of the Task Force, but for those who sent them to the South Atlantic. It characterises the whole operation – an operation, as I have tried to show in this journal, which was conceived in an emotional spasm, by the injured pride of the House of Commons, on that hysterical Saturday morning, 3 April 1982.

From the blog

Front page news, des freedman.

The Israeli army’s targeted hit on an aid convoy in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers featured on the front page of every  . . .

We are a small part of a shrinking thing, tail to a dwindling dog, or that thing that, in Yeats, is fastened to the dying animal. The heart;  . . .

At the Teatro Amazonas

Harriet rix.

Between 1880 and 1900, the opera house in Manaus sprouted like a magical pink mushroom out of the rainforest  . . .

Tamar Pelleg-Sryck 1926-2024

I first met the Israeli lawyer Tamar Pelleg-Sryck in Megiddo Military Prison, where I was sent after receiving an administrative detention order  . . .

On the Crocus City Hall Attack

Mass murder at a Moscow light entertainment venue, where 140 people were gunned down at point blank range as they gathered to watch the nostalgic  . . .

Who read it?

Paul taylor.

Altmetric is a website that tracks mentions of academic research on social media. Last week, a paper published in Radiology Case Reports leaped  . . .

Devil Terms

Arianne shahvisi.

Even the most effective tools get blunt through overwork, and parliamentary transcripts document the rise in recent years of terrorism’s slyer  . . .

Samuel Hanafin

The Russian Embassy in Tallinn is an art nouveau building on Pikk Street in the old city. There are Ukrainian flags and placards with anti-Putin  . . .

The Shoah after Gaza

Pankaj mishra.

A powerful Western narrative holds the Shoah to be the incomparable crime of the modern era. But we find our moral and political consciousness profoundly altered when Israel, a country founded as a haven for the victims of genocidal racism, is itself charged with genocide. What is the fate of universal values after Israel’s collapse into violent nationalism?

Pankaj Mishra delivered his...

In his LRB Winter Lecture, Pankaj Mishra considers the ways in which our moral and political consciousness is profoundly altered when Israel, a country founded as a haven for the victims of genocidal racism, is itself charged with genocide.

The Shoah After Gaza

Pankaj mishra and adam shatz.

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss his recent LRB Winter Lecture, in which he explores Israel’s instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. He expands on his readings of Jean Améry and Primo Levi, the crisis as understood by the Global South and Zionism’s appeal for Hindu nationalists.You can read The Shoah After Gaza in the LRB  archive, or watch the lecture via the...

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss his recent LRB Winter Lecture, in which he explores Israel’s instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. He expands on his readings of Jean Améry...

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London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers steps down after 30 years

Influential editor and co-founder of the literary magazine to be succeeded by senior staff

Mary-Kay Wilmers is stepping down from her role as editor of the London Review of Books , a position she has held for almost 30 years.

Wilmers was one of the founders of the literary magazine in 1979, along with Karl Miller and Susannah Clapp, became co-editor in 1988, and has been its sole editor since 1992. In 2019, when the LRB celebrated its 40th anniversary, she was dubbed “ Britain’s most influential editor ” by the New York Times.

Wilmers will continue at the paper as consulting editor, with the LRB’s deputy editor Jean McNicol and senior editor Alice Spawls succeeding her. McNicol has been at the magazine since 1987, when she joined as an editorial assistant, while Spawls joined the LRB as an editorial intern in 2011.

“The succession has been long in the planning and I’m very proud to be handing over the editorship to two such talented women,” said Wilmers, who is 82. “I’ll be continuing to do my bit as consulting editor.”

Wilmers’ home life was documented in Love, Nina , the bestselling memoir by her former nanny, the author Nina Stibbe. In the 2016 BBC adaptation , Wilmers was portrayed by actor Helena Bonham Carter.

“A) Oh, no, it’s the end of an era. B) I hope people aren’t going to annoy her by saying ‘end of an era’ and going on about it,” Stibbe said. “People have said the LRB is her life. It isn’t. It’s her job, and she’s very thorough.”

Stibbe, who has remained friends with Wilmers since first meeting her in 1982, said she tried to provide ideas for the LRB while nannying: “I might begin on Virginia Woolf and she might say, ‘Sorry, I’m about to watch Match of the Day’. One time I raved about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by new writer, Sue Townsend. And she said, ‘If you like it that much, review it for the paper?’ I declined, thinking, ‘Do your own homework!’”

In 2014, the Observer said that under Wilmers, the LRB, which had a circulation of more than 78,000 in 2019, had become “a highly regarded publication with an influence that extends far beyond the rarefied world of small-circulation literary magazines”.

Published twice a month, the LRB has included among its contributors names including Christopher Hitchens, Seamus Heaney, Angela Carter and Hilary Mantel. Wilmers has said in the past that she sees “the paper”, as she calls it – a mix of book reviews, arts criticism and long-form essays – as an antidote to the sameness seen elsewhere in the media.

“Newspapers say the same thing over and over again and we’re all horrified and collectively up in arms and there’s normally more than one side to something,” she told the Observer in 2014. “So if you hear somebody saying something coherent and intelligent that’s not totally out of order, it’s interesting to read it.”

Last year, she explained that the LRB had endured “because we have a sense of humour that you can see without it necessarily being declared. We’re not po-faced, as it were.”

Andrew O’Hagan, a longtime contributor to the magazine and a close friend of Wilmers, called it “a huge moment”.

“Mary-Kay has been the best literary editor of her generation,” he said. “She’s an international treasure, not only because she has kept the British essay alive and growing, but because she has driven reportage and memoir-writing into the digital age. Very quietly, for decades, she has been a guiding light in the literary life of this country, and one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known … she’s always been great to write for – more of a dance than a solo flight, less of a task than an education.”

In a statement, Spawls and McNicol said: “The LRB is the best paper in the world, thanks to Mary-Kay, and we intend to keep it that way. We’ve never wanted to work anywhere else, and, indeed, neither of us ever has.”

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William Wootten

William Wootten grew up in Somerset, lives in London, and teaches at the University of Bristol.  He has written widely on modern poetry, his essays and book reviews appearing in publications such as the Guardian , the Times Literary Supplement , and the London Review of Books . He is also the author of the critical study, The Alvarez Generation: Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Peter Porter (Liverpool University Press, 2015).  His poems have appeared in magazines including PN Review , Poetry Review , the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement .

79 episodes

Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe Apple Podcast users can sign up directly here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq For other podcast apps, sign up here: lrb.me/closereadings Close Readings Plus If you'd like to receive all the books under discussion in our 2024 series, and get access to online seminars throughout the year with special guests and other supporting material, sign up to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus Running in 2024: On Satire with Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow Human Conditions with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards Among the Ancients II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones There'll be a new episode from each series every month. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Close Readings London Review of Books

• 4.7 • 25 Ratings
• APR 4, 2024

On Satire: The Earl of Rochester

According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obscure. As a courtier to Charles II, his poetic subject was most often the licentiousness and intricate political manoeuvring of the court’s various factions, and he was far from a passive observer. In this episode Clare and Colin consider why Restoration England was such a satirical hotbed, and describe the ways in which Rochester, with a poetry rich in bravado but shot through with anxiety, transformed the persona of the satirist. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• MAR 28, 2024

Political Poems: 'Easter 1916' by W.B. Yeats

Yeats’s great poem about the uprising of Irish republicans against British rule on 24 April 1916 marked a turning point in Ireland’s history and in Yeats's career. Through four stanzas Yeats enacts the transfiguration of the movement’s leaders – executed by the British shortly after the event – from ‘motley’ acquaintances to heroic martyrs, and interrogates his own attitude to nationalist violence. Mark and Seamus discuss Yeats’s reflections on the value of political commitment, his embrace of the role of national bard and the origin of the poem’s most famous line. Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen ad free and to all our series in full: Directly in Apple Podcasts In other podcast apps Read more in the LRB: Terry Eagleton:  www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n13/terry-eagleton/spooky Colm Tóibín: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n07/colm-toibin/after-i-am-hanged-my-portrait-will-be-interesting Frank Kermode: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v19/n06/frank-kermode/what-he-did Tom Paulin: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n06/tom-paulin/dreadful-sentiments Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• MAR 24, 2024

Among the Ancients II: Herodotus

Some of the most compelling stories of the Classical world come from Herodotus‘ Histories, an account of the Persian Wars and a thousand things besides. Emily and Tom chart a course through Herodotus‘ history-as-epic, discussing how best to understand his approach to history, ethnography and myth. Exploring a work full of surprising, dramatic and frequently funny digressions, this episode illustrates the artfulness and deep structure underpinning the Histories, and, despite his obvious Greek bias, Herodotus‘ genuine interest in and respect for cultural difference. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• MAR 18, 2024

Medieval LOLs: Old English Riddles

Riddles are an ancient and universal form, but few people seem to have enjoyed them more than English Benedictine monks. The Exeter Book, a tenth century monastic collection of Old English verse, builds on the riddle tradition in two striking ways: first, the riddles don’t come with answers; second, they are sexually suggestive. Were they intended to test the moral purity of the reader? Are they simply mischievous rhetorical exercises? Mary and Irina read some of them and consider why Anglo-Saxon culture was so obsessed with the enigmatic. Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup Read more in the LRB: Marina Warner: Doubly Damned Mary Wellesley: Marking Parchment Barbara Everett: Poetry and Soda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• MAR 10, 2024

Human Conditions: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ by Frantz Fanon

Begun as a psychiatric dissertation, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) became a genre-shattering study of antiblack racism and its effect on the psyche. At turns expressionistic, confessional, clinical, sharply satirical and politically charged, the book is dazzlingly multivocal, sometimes self-contradictory but always compelling. Judith Butler and Adam Shatz, whose biography of Fanon was released in January, chart a course through some of the most explosive and elusive chapters of the book, and show why Fanon is still essential reading. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam Shatz is the the LRB's US editor and author of, most recently, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• MAR 4, 2024

On Satire: Ben Jonson's 'Volpone'

What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as the refined, classical alternative to Shakespeare, with his diligent observance of the rules extracted from Roman comedy. In this episode, Colin and Clare argue that this reputation is almost entirely false, that Jonson was as embroiled in the volatile and unruly energies of late Elizabethan London as any other dramatist, and nowhere is this more on display than in his finest play, Volpone. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• © London Review of Books

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John’s Books of the Year 2023

Selected by john clegg.

There were so many incredible books this year. I’ve stuck to poetry: my favourite collection of 2023 was Andrew Wynn Owen’s Infinite in Finite for its combination of technical adeptness and emotional heft. It is a joy.

I also loved Declan Ryan’s debut collection and Maggie Wang’s debut pamphlet, both distinguished by economy of words and eye for compelling detail. Hannah Sullivan’s Was it for this somehow managed to be an advance on her T.S. Eliot-prizewinning Three Poems (and its long poem about the Grenfell tragedy, ‘Tenants’, was my single favourite poem I read in 2023). Abigail Perry continues to write about anything she turns her eye on with cheerily nonchalant sprezzatura; Judy Brown’s third collection is intricate and tautly-woven. And Rebecca Goss and Emily Hasler are writing some of the best poetry of place going at the moment, about Suffolk and Essex respectively – all of these collections (and many others) come strongly recommended.

Infinite in Finite

Andrew wynn owen, £12.99.

From the publisher: Infinite in Finite develops the inimitable style of The Multiverse, the author's first collection (2018), praised as showing 'some of the best technical skills of any living poet', the work of 'one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose…

Was It for This

Hannah sullivan.

From the publisher: Hannah Sullivan’s first collection, Three Poems, won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the inaugural John Pollard International Poetry Prize. Was It for This continues that book’s project, offering a trenchant exploration…

Rebecca Goss

From the publisher: Rebecca Goss' fourth and most ambitious collection, Latch, is a study in the act of returning. It is about reconnecting to a place, Suffolk, and understanding what it once held, and what it now holds for a woman and her family. These poems…

Local Interest

Emily hasler, £10.99.

From the publisher: Situated where salt and freshwater meet, where floods and fields 'mingle parts', Emily Hasler's second collection exposes the dailiness of disaster to chart the constantly shifting courses of rivers and lives.Taking its name from the…

The Sun on the Tip of a Snail’s Shell

Maggie wang, £10.00.

From the publisher: Maggie Wang’s debut poetry pamphlet, The Sun on the Tip of a Snail’s Shell takes its inspiration from the sixth mass extinction—an event encompassing destruction of colossal proportions and thoroughly entangled with what…

£9.99

From the publisher: Lairs brings together something primal and secret – the lair as haven for a wild or feral animal – with the poem framed as a mathematical equation. In these terms, the ‘lair’ is a kind of nest, a beautiful…

Crisis Actor

Declan ryan.

From the publisher: ‘Elegant and heartaching, these poems illuminate the sorrows of life with a bright flame, returning us to that miraculous human capacity for love and faith even in our darkest days.’ Liz Berry‘Declan Ryan reveals…

I Think We're Alone Now

Abigail parry, £12.00.

From the publisher: Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023I Think We’re Alone Now was supposed to be a book about intimacy: what it might look like in solitude, in partnership, and in terms of collective responsibility. Instead, the poems…

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