Poetry books of the month: bullets and blooms Ian McMillan’s winningly absurdist Red River Valley goes to war with Wordsworth’s daffodils, while Jason B Crawford tackles violence and injustice in his urgent second collection YEET! ✍️ @JadeCuttle bit.ly/4BjMOMg

Those rumours of the death of programmers? Greatly exaggerated AI agents may be solving the tricky puzzles software engineers used to love, but human understanding of coding is still essential ✍️ @jjn1 bit.ly/3TPjrAM

Jon Fosse welcomes you to the Vaim Hotel The second instalment in the Norwegian author’s Vaim trilogy is a Kafkaesque farce about a hotel guest perplexed by his very presence in a strange fishing village ✍️ @chris_power bit.ly/4dTbeCe

How Robert Ryman became the master of white The Barbican’s exhilarating retrospective explodes the myth that the American artist painted only plain canvases – and reveals the many multitudes contained within ✍️ @LauraCummingArt bit.ly/4za7EfC

Nobody Wants This – over the hot rabbi? Fall in love with the hot sister instead Justine Lupe excels in season three of the LA-set sitcom, which is as watchable as ever despite its sugary excesses. ✍️ Barbara Ellen bit.ly/3VRaHe3

The big picture: making a scene in Abuja Photographer Paul Abbah has his subject ‘exaggerate everything’ in the harmattan dust of Nigeria’s capital ✍️ @killianfox0 bit.ly/3TRK5ZN

We may have passed peak manosphere. But what’s next for men? The decline of the hyper-masculine and misogynistic movement led by Andrew Tate frees the male character to reinvent itself ✍️ Geoff Dyer bit.ly/4BnHNlK

From father to son: what our dads taught us Writers share the life lessons they learned from the men who raised them ✍️ Luke Kennard, @colincraiggrant, @MichaelRosenYes, Raymond Antrobus, Andrew Anthony, Will Harris, Mark Haddon, Frank Cottrell-Boyce bit.ly/4zo495z

Rent – Gaten Matarazzo leads a sparky revival for a new Generation Rent Boasting infectious performances from a superb cast, Jonathan Larson’s cult classic still more than pays its way ✍️ @cowleskatherine bit.ly/4eOsGIr

Fatherland – Sandra Hüller reckons with Germany’s ghosts in Thomas Mann biopic Paweł Pawlikowski’s elegant, austere portrait of the exiled author’s return to Germany is anchored by a quietly commanding turn by the actor playing his daughter ✍️ @wendyide bit.ly/4yxpPuo

Mothers of Kherson – a brave, blistering opera for Ukraine’s stolen children In Warsaw, the world premiere of an urgent new opera about Russia’s unlawful wartime abductions gets a 20-minute standing ovation ✍️ @FionaMaddocks bit.ly/4sjuP4B

The riddle of JRR Tolkien Conservative and radical, civilised and wild – the great fantasy novelist was a living conundrum. In The King Under the Mountain, DJ Taylor seeks to unpick his legend ✍️ @TanyaGold1 bit.ly/4sjuKxP

Tove Jansson, from Moominvalley to Middle-earth Billed as ‘the children’s book of the century’ in 1962, the Moomins creator’s illustrated version of The Hobbit is finally reaching English readers ✍️ Daisy Lynch bit.ly/4zQswZq

The shaming of Britain’s slavery profiteers The historian William A Pettigrew spent five years identifying the merchants, investors and adventurers who grew rich from the barbaric transatlantic slave trade ✍️ Ian Thomson bit.ly/4zJXL8d

Jacqueline Rose: ‘Like Freud, I am a godless Jew’ The philosopher on misunderstood women, the problem with empathy, and the challenge of honouring her late sister ✍️ Lily Isaacs bit.ly/4seEzx3

Pawel Pawlikowski: ‘Britain doesn’t change. It’s a country of slow erosion’ The Oscar-winning director talks about rediscovering his Polish heritage, his parents’ suicides, and the true story behind his Cannes-winning film Fatherland ✍️ Andrew Anthony bit.ly/3U4n4ms

On Fudge, Michael Kiwanuka answers to no one but himself Delayed due to ill health, the artist’s fifth album sees him break free from superstar producers to deliver an album of pure artistic instinct ✍️ @kittyempire666 bit.ly/4BAS5zp

Dua Lipa’s ultimate reading list The London Literature Festival curator and her guest authors, including Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith and Malorie Blackman, on the books they recommend more than any others bit.ly/4s8JbER

How to find a Syrian executioner Posing as a sympathetic academic, Annsar Shahhoud convinced a suspected perpetrator of a massacre of civilians in Damascus to confess to being involved ✍️ @chloehadj bit.ly/4dKncOv

Frank Cottrell-Boyce: The ‘childhood lottery’ is stealing futures. How do we fix it? Quickly ✍️ Frank Cottrell-Boyce bit.ly/4jwZzNc