Sonnets are a form of poem that was much loved by William Shakespeare. This one might be his most famous: Sonnet 18. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?' asks Shakespeare. A sonnet is usually ...

The rhythms and imagery of childhood verses have inspired poets from Robert Louis Stevenson to Elizabeth Bishop. Now it’s your turn For most of us, our first exposure to the joys of verse was when we ...

William Shakespeare is the bestselling poet of all time. The word 'poetry' is from the Greek term poiesis, which means 'making'. The oldest written poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh originating from ...

An art less martial ... Members of the "Last Post to the Pals" march across the Somme battlefields, France, June 2006. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA "Arms, and the man I sing" wrote Virgil, or ...

Beyoncé’s tweets as sacred text, error messages that tell a tragic tale and the looping program of a failing relationship: we parse a new literary phenomenon ...

"I only like poems that rhyme." Or, more drastically: "If it doesn't rhyme, it's not a poem." These declarations of allegiance to end-rhyme sound traditional or even daringly reactionary—fearlessly ...