After nearly a decade in the music industry, hip-hop artists Dead Poets are gearing up for the show of their life.  The three MCs, who originally started out in 2001 as a five-member group called Ronin, are performing March 17-21 in Austin, Texas, at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference.  "It's cool we're finally getting recognized for just being us," Chris Davis said. "We've always just done our own thing."

The group's agent booked five shows on several stages during the music festival. More than 1,000 musicians perform at SXSW each year, highlighting the best kept small-town secrets.  Nathan Kitzke smiled as he recalled Kanye West and Metallica played at SXSW last year, hinting they'll likely get to meet some big names.

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Believed to be the first event of its kind, the festival provides the literary traditions of India and Ireland with an opportunity to build on the shared history of excellence.

Wednesday's event, which takes place in Kolkata, has been supported by the British Council and Queen's University Belfast, where many of the participating Irish poets are based.

Those taking part from India include Ashoke Viswanathan, Jayanta Mahapatra and Sunil Gangopadhyaly. The Irish delegation includes:

Michael Longley, Ireland Chair of Poetry and one of the foremost living poets in the English language; Ciaran Carson and Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin, traditional singer in residence at Queen's.

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For animal lover Leony Widjaja, her Dalmatian and two terriers are like her children. She feeds them twice a day, plays with them whenever she has time and changes their clothes once a week. Wait, clothes? On a dog?

"They look cute in a T-shirt, they're my babies. I just love choosing and changing their clothes for the week," Leony said.  Yup, that's how far pet lovers go in taking care of their furry friends. And it doesn't stop there. Just look at the number of pet accessory shops now sprouting all over city malls.

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Practically, one crucifies oneself and entertains drawing rooms and lounges.” This sentence by T S Eliot on the reception of his extraordinary, agonised poem, The Waste Land (1922), is a thrilling moment in the long-awaited second volume of his letters.

It rings like a line from one of his earlier poems, in which suffering figures suddenly see themselves in the absurd light of polite society. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” rued Eliot’s alter ego J Alfred Prufrock in 1917. Eight years later, he might have added: “and headed notepaper”.

The first volume of Eliot’s letters, which covered the period from early youth up to both “Prufrock” and The Waste Land, appeared 21 years ago. It was edited, as he requested, by his second wife, Valerie Eliot, formerly his secretary at Faber & Faber.

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The Prince of Poets, the television contest featuring Arabic poetry, has won an award from the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB). The competition, which concluded its third season in August, was recognised in the creative specialist genre television category.

“The AIBs celebrate the best in broadcasting worldwide,” said Simon Spanswick, the chief executive of AIB. “[They] demonstrate how broadcasters are using new technology both to improve programme making and to reach out and involve their audiences more fully.”

This year, more than 7,500 poems were submitted to the Prince of Poets show, and 1,000 were chosen as official entries. A judging committee interviewed 300 poets and selected 35 to compete. There were six women on the programme, the most in any season.

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On the big screen, the leader of the Dead Poets Society at an all-boys prep school was an inspirational teacher played by Robin Williams. In real life, he's a balding amateur poet who drives around in his "Poemobile," visiting and documenting the graves of dead poets and calling attention to their works.

Walter Skold, founder of the Dead Poets Society of America, just finished a three-month road trip in which he visited the graves of 150 poets in 23 states. Skold boasts that he set a literary land speed record of 1.66 gpd (graves per day) over the course of his 15,000-mile journey.

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When you're talking about titans of new Israeli poetry they don't come much bigger than the late Israel Prize recipients Dahlia Ravikovitch and Yehuda Amichai. So, an event devoted to songs based on some of their works can be expected to offer ample musical and textural rewards.

This Friday at noon the Mediatheque auditorium in Holon will host the Two Hopes Away (Bemerhak Shtei Tikvot) concert, as part of the Let the Words Work on You (Ten Lamillim Laasot Bekha) series, which fuses not only poems by Ravikovitch and Amichai, performed by a whole slew of top pop and rock stars, but also features poetry readings and a presentation by Romanian-born Israeli sculptor Philip Rantzer.

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This is a highly peopled book. Among the multitude, we meet Peggy Guggenheim, Rabindranath Tagore, Nippy Maclachlan, Johann Sebastian Baa (a very talented sheep), the Loch Ness Monster's husband, Miss Fog, Brave Dave and Elvis – a mix of the real, the invented, the folkloric and the skittish. But we don't only meet people: there's a host of insects, birds, dogs, skeletons, foxes, rats, scarecrows. And Elvis.

As a one-session read, this compendium of four collections plus some new poems makes for a busy – let's say frenetic – experience. Of course poetry collections are for reading anywhichway and I reckon this one is for many, many bites.

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Kevin Young is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation, one who find meaning and inspiration in African-American music and the history of Black America. Young is Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English and Curator of Literary Collections and the Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Callaloo and other journals and anthologies.

He has written six books of poems and edited four others. His newest book is "Dear Darkness," published by Knopf in 2008.  Young has received fellowships Stanford University, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He has won the Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, the Quill Award for Poetry, the National Poetry Series and the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize of Ploughshares magazine and the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Young will read on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Smith Recital Hall at the Silver Center for the Arts on Main Street in Plymouth. A reception and book signing follow the reading.

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If you head for the exit nearest the front of the train at Sportivnaya (assuming you are coming from the centre), you can visit the Museum of the Moscow Metro before you leave the station.

Through a little door beside the main exit, the collection of metro memorabilia is free and usually open on weekdays between 10 am and 4 pm.

Turn right out of the station and simply keep going as near as you can in this direction until you see the arched, brick gates of the Novodevichy Cemetery ahead of you across the road.

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