Queen’s Gold Medal 2020

In mid-December The Queen approved the award of Her Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry to David Constantine. He is the 51st recipient of the award instituted by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then Laureate John Masefield. The Medal Committee commended Constantine this year on the basis of his eleven books of poetry, notably Collected Poems (2004), which spans three decades of his work. The Committee is chaired by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, who himself received the Medal for 2018.

David Constantine made his debut in 1980 with A Brightness to Cast Shadows. His publisher, Bloodaxe, was in its second year. Forty years later, they published his eleventh collection. ‘Above all,’ said Simon Armitage, ‘David Constantine is a “humane” poet – a word often used in connection with his work, as if in noticing and detailing the ways of the world he is doing so on behalf of all that is best in us. For over forty years he has shaped a body of work that stands in comparison with that of any of his contemporaries, not just at home but internationally, navigating and negotiating that space between everyday events and their metaphysical or spiritual “otherness”.’


Rimbaud’s Remains

In recent months controversy has surrounded the final resting place of Arthur Rimbaud’s bones. Up until now they have been safely lodged in a family plot in the provincial cemetery at Charleville-Mézières, surrounded by his blood relations. Why are his remains ...