Khaled Furani’s Silencing the Sea (2012) and Michael Dowdy’s  Broken Souths (2013) bring a global perspective to post-1945 and contemporary traditions of Palestinian and Latina/o poetry.

Hagiography is a lot easier when the saint has had the sense to shut up. William of Malmesbury’s book on the life and miracles of St Aldhelm was held back by two things: not enough written about the saint, and too much written by him. William’s problem wasn’t the quantity of Aldhelm’s writings so much as their style, although he made a valiant attempt to defend it.