Award-winning poet Alice Oswald has pulled out of prestigious poetry award the TS Eliot prize in protest over its sponsorship by an investment company. Oswald’s words: “I think poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions.”
Alice Oswald Protests Prize
Buy Me A Drink
In what reads like someone’s answer to the “who would you invite to a literary dinner party" question, novelists Jeanette Winterson and Marlon James sat down for a fantastic conversation at a Miami hotel bar. James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker prize earlier this year.
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Khodorkovsky’s Unscreened Documentary
A German film about imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is set for release in Russia next week, but it is unlikely that many in the country will actually have an opportunity to see it.
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The Downside to Living with William Carlos Williams
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, a disgruntled Laura Jayne Martin rants about why she is tired of sharing an apartment with poet William Carlos Williams.
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Lend Us Your Ears (And Win $100)
Have you ever heard of a dog-ear poem? Finding one could net you $100 and a one-year subscription to Found Poetry Review.
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Hyper-Local
The rise and fall of Patch.com.
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I’m sorry Shakespeare I am for real
Who has a bigger vocabulary: Shakespeare or André 3000? It's actually Outkast. Data scientist Matt Daniels created an infographic that charts 85 rappers' unique vocabulary in their first 35,000 lyrics. Outkast uses 5,212 unique words; whereas, Shakespeare only uses 5,170. But Aesop Rock beats the Bard by more than 2,000 words with a count of 7,392 unique words.