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Partridge Boswell's poem, 'The Gathering', has been crowned the winner of this year's National Poetry Competition, a prestigious award that attracted over 21,000 entries from poets across 113 countries. The poem delves into themes of language, love, and the struggle to make sense of global suffering, state violence, and war.Boswell's work is a reflection of his attempt to process the emotional burden of following distressing global events. He describes how he wrote elegies, parodies, and rants to cope with his discomfort and disbelief. The poem specifically addresses the challenge of maintaining language's potency in the face of the relentlessness of the news cycle and the difficulty of resisting false narratives.The judges praised 'The Gathering' for its ambition, emotional stakes, and philosophical perspicacity. They noted that the poem reflects on the tensions between personal grief and state violence, particularly in Gaza. The poem questions how to preserve the potency of language amid the overwhelming nature of global events.Boswell, who is also the author of the Fool for Poetry prize-winning chapbook Levis Corner House and the Grolier prize-winning collection Some Far Country, will receive £5,000 for his winning poem. His work, along with the runner-up and third-place poems, will be published in the spring 2026 issue of The Poetry Review.The National Poetry Competition, founded in 1978, has a history of recognizing talented poets. Past winners include Carol Ann Duffy, Sinéad Morrissey, James Berry, and Tony Harrison. This year's competition saw seven commended poets receive £500 each, while Damen O'Brien's poem Axe secured the runner-up position with a £3,000 prize.

Richie Garcia, a former major league umpire, has voiced his concerns about the impact of robot officials on human umpires in Major League Baseball. The Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, set to debut in 2026, allows teams to challenge strike zone decisions using a system based on 12 Hawk-Eye cameras.Garcia believes that this technology will lead to the humiliation of umpires, stating, "Nobody likes to be humiliated in front of 30,000, 40,000 people." He argues that Major League Baseball is essentially saying it doesn't trust the umpire's strike zone and will instead rely on a system operated by "some computer geek" with a PhD in physics.Despite criticism, umpires have shown increased accuracy in recent years, with an accuracy rate of 92.83% last season, down from an average of 10.88 missed calls per game. The introduction of ABS aims to further reduce errors, with each team getting two challenges per game.Umpires have mixed views on the technology, with some seeing it as a way to correct egregious pitches and others concerned about the mental impact of constant evaluation. Spring training test results showed varying success rates among teams, with Philadelphia and Chicago Cubs performing well in challenge success rates.

Classical music has long struggled to find relevance and impact in modern times, but a surprising solution may have been found in the form of a blue heeler puppy. Bluey, the Australian cartoon for children of all ages, has become a global phenomenon with over 45 billion minutes watched in the US alone and over 1 billion streams of its albums and soundtracks. The show's music, composed by Joff Bush, is a key factor in its success. Bush's soundtrack is remarkably diverse, incorporating a wide range of genres, including classical music. He seamlessly weaves in classical pieces from renowned composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Holst, making them an integral part of the show's narrative. One notable example is the use of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca in the show's first episode, Magic Xylophone. This introduction to classical music is not done in a forced or condescending way; instead, Bush uses these pieces to enhance the emotional impact of each scene. For instance, Holst's Jupiter from The Planets is used in the Sleepytime episode to create a cosmic journey for Bingo. The new Bluey album, Up Here, continues this trend, featuring a three-and-a-half-minute orchestral tone-poem on the Bluey theme tune. This piece serves as a Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra for 2026, introducing listeners to various musical sections and instruments. The album also includes quotes and transformations of famous classical pieces, such as Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Vivaldi's Spring from The Four Seasons. Bush's approach to incorporating classical music into Bluey is refreshing and effective. Unlike previous cartoons that used classical music to parody or mock its elitist pretensions, Bluey presents these pieces in a joyful and organic way. This approach has the potential to introduce classical music to billions of listeners worldwide, making it a significant development in the classical music landscape.

A garden log pile is a surprisingly vibrant ecosystem, teeming with life. The pile, composed of various tree species like apple, walnut, and oak, attracts a diverse range of insects and fungi. The diversity of logs supports a greater variety of life, with different species inhabiting different parts of the pile.The log pile is home to frogs, wrens, and other animals, and even supports the growth of fungi like jelly ear. The arrangement of the wood also plays a crucial role in attracting different species, with buried wood attracting stag beetles and wood at height attracting wasp beetles.The author of the article, Kate Bradbury, carefully dismantles the log pile to make room for a hedgehog box, uncovering a variety of creatures like beetles, springtails, and centipedes in the process. The log pile is then rebuilt, with softer logs on the soil and drier ones around the box, creating a new home for a female hedgehog and other animals.

Tiger Woods is poised to make a highly anticipated return to competitive golf at the Tomorrow's Golf League (TGL) finals in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The golf legend will tee off at Jupiter Links Golf Club on Tuesday, marking a significant milestone in his recovery from recent injuries.Woods has been serving as an adviser and cheerleader for his TGL team while working his way back from lumbar disc replacement surgery in October and a left Achilles tendon rupture that occurred last spring. This comeback is particularly noteworthy given that Woods, 50, has undergone seven surgeries throughout his career.The TGL finals conclude with the second match and, if necessary, a decisive third match on Tuesday night. Woods' participation in this event comes ahead of the Masters next month, where he expressed uncertainty about his ability to compete due to ongoing recovery challenges.“I said I’ve been working on it. Sometimes I have good days, sometimes I have bad days. Disc replacement is not a lot of fun,” Woods said last week. “The body doesn’t quite heal like it was when I was 24. Doesn't quite bounce back.”In related golf news, Sahith Theegala birdied the final hole to secure a 6-5 comeback win for Los Angeles Golf Club over Jupiter Links Golf Club in the first match of the TGL title series on Monday.

Choreographer Alexander Whitley's latest works, Mirror and The Rite of Spring, are a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between technology and human performance. In Mirror, dancers Gabriel Ciulli and Daisy Dancer move in tandem, their bodies studded with motion-capture markers, as they interact with digital doppelgangers that appear on stage.The use of technology in Mirror creates a sense of tension, as the dancers' movements are echoed and eventually upstaged by their digital counterparts. This tension raises questions about the role of technology in dance and whether it enhances or detracts from the human performance.In The Rite of Spring, Whitley reimagines Stravinsky's classic score with a glitched and layered version, accompanied by rudimentary choreography. The piece features five dancers and a makeshift maypole, but ultimately feels disjointed and lacking in energy.Whitley's use of technology in both pieces is a deliberate attempt to explore the boundaries between human and digital performance. While Mirror is a more successful exploration of this theme, The Rite of Spring feels like a missed opportunity to fully integrate technology and tradition.