For the Financial Times, an essay about the real gardens that inspired Paradise Lost, and the gardens inspired by its visions of infinite abundance and eventual catastrophe.
‘Why is the Right Obsessed with Epic Poetry?’ (2025)
An essay for The Nation on Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, and Peter Thiel, and what their interest in epic literature can tell us about their dreams of a post-democratic future.
‘The Rewarding Mystery of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’ (2025)
An article for Apollo magazine on the mysterious paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and my changing understanding of them over the past twelve years.
‘Princeton Goes to Prison: Teaching Paradise Lost to Incarcerated Students’ (2024)
An excerpt from my book in Literary Hub, describing a period of five years spent teaching in prisons in New Jersey, and what I learned from my students about literature.
‘Paradise Lost Mourned a Revolution Betrayed’ (2024)
An essay for Jacobin about the significance of poetry in dark times.
An article for the Literary Review on the 350th anniversary of the final publication of Paradise Lost.
‘Greta Gerwig’s Paradise Lost’ (2023)
An article exploring the possible influence of Milton’s epic on the Barbie movie, published by Literary Hub.
‘“Fortune is a Mistresse”: Figures of Fortune in English Renaissance Poetry’ (2021)
An essay on the figure of Fortune in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry, in Fate and Fortune in European Thought, a volume of scholarly essays edited by Ovanes Akopyan.
A pamphlet on the dusk as an object of collective enjoyment, and its prohibition during the lockdown, beautifully printed and published by Earthbound Press.
Interview: Hiroshi Sugimoto (2017)
An interview with the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto for CNN Style. We spoke about his astonishing images of Italian theatres, his seascapes, climate change, and the Manhattan Westside development.
Interview: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2015)
An interview with the painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for The White Review. It was republished in the White Review Art Anthology.
An essay for Tank magazine on the novelist Teju Cole, and his novels’ meditations on New York and Lagos.
Interview: Hassan Hajjaj (2012)
An interview with the photographer Hassan Hajjaj, published in The Guardian.