Canadian author’s work, shared exclusively with the Observer, is to be shown alongside art by Goya

Margaret Atwood has written a new protest poem about the impact of war that will be unveiled at the Venice Biennale on Monday.

The poem, shared this weekend exclusively with the Observer , was written to be shown alongside more than 200 works, including the art of painters Francisco de Goya and Otto Dix , in an exhibition designed to emphasise the futility of human conflict.

Many have travelled far
to the place of fire and blackout,
the time without words.
Some have survived,
though not intact.
No one comes back.

Damaged people damage people,
and so on.

This year’s ‘Olympics of the art world’ features many artists wrestling with ideas of colonialism and its lingering influence

This year’s Venice Biennale is being billed as an event rooted in the now, in a world of conflict and division – or, as one newspaper put it, the celebration of global art will be full of “ war, refugees, destruction ”.

Another theme that runs through many of the pavilions is colonialism: both its legacy in the form of restitution debates, and Europe’s lingering presence – physically and psychologically – in those countries that were formerly colonised.

The Swedish artist Lap-See Lam is drawing on the Cantonese operas of the 19th century to explore the ‘fiction’ of culture

Amid a polarising debate taking place in Sweden over what constitutes culture, the artist behind this year’s Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennale hopes her multilingual opera staged on a Chinese dragon ship will act as a sort of riposte.

Lap-See Lam, a Swedish artist with Cantonese roots, is leading the Nordic countries’ offering at the international exhibition, which opens on 20 April, with a multidisciplinary artwork.

As he prepares to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale, Akomfrah talks about fleeing Ghana aged nine, the Rwanda fiasco, and creating images that shift the dial

If I’d met him 50-odd years ago, John Akomfrah says, with the infectious giggle that punctuates his conversation, two words would have sprung immediately to my mind: “Black nerd.” He was the kid at school who soaked up every bit of cultural learning going, who always had his head in a book on the bus. There was, of course, he says, “some connection between the hostility of the outside world in the 1960s and 1970s and the refuge kids like me found in books. I was always looking for things that allowed you to imagine this place otherwise. That’s why I loved going to the Tate Gallery as a child; that’s why I loved going to the cinema,” he smiles again. “And don’t forget, television wasn’t exactly a refuge for a Black kid in the 1970s…”

If Akomfrah, now a youthful 66, sponged up that culture in his formative years, the past four decades have seen him reinventing it, in artistic film-making that is constantly curious to re-evaluate imagined pasts. In this way, Sir John – he was knighted in last year’s New Year’s honours – never stops making sense of the political present. With the news agenda full of postcolonial insanity – a Tory government pinning its desperate election hopes on deporting 300 refugees to Rwanda – he feels like the wisest of choices to represent the nation at this month’s Venice Biennale .

Poet who is curating country’s first Venice Biennale pavilion says ‘part of the heart’ of the country was looted and is being held in museums

An Ethiopian cultural surge – including a first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the rise of stars such as Ruth Negga and The Weeknd – is making the country’s calls for restitution of looted colonial-era artefacts harder to ignore, according to Lemn Sissay.

The poet and author, who is curating the country’s inaugural Biennale pavilion, where Tesfaye Urgessa ’s work will be on show, said the event would be part of a significant cultural push from the east African country and its diaspora over the last two decades.

As the Venice film festival turns 80, we pick the titles that capture the city’s allure, from desolate Don’t Look Now to romantic Summertime and Top Hat’s cheery glamour

This time next week I’ll be packing my bags for Venice, where the 80th edition of its annual film festival will unveil new films by Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, David Fincher, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bradley Cooper, the late William Friedkin – an especially glistening lineup for an event never short on gloss. But even without such attractions, Venice would remain my favourite festival: it’s the faintly unreal allure of the city itself, the spray from the Vaporetto as you leave the airport, the sense that you’re arriving into an eternal film location rather than just an industry event.

You can’t arrive on the Lido, the drowsy barrier island where the festival unfolds, and not recall the yearning melancholy and faded finery of Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice – that the Grand Hotel des Bains, where Dirk Bogarde’s wilting composer Gustav von Aschenbach saw out his days, has been unoccupied since 2010 underlines the isle’s ghostly air of glamour. Although Visconti’s film is set in summer, you’d be forgiven for remembering otherwise. It’s Nicolas Roeg’s devasted, desolately wintry Don’t Look Now (ITVX), of course, that best captures Venice in its off-season. Its misty, depopulated maze of alleys and canals laden with threat match the mindset of Donald Sutherland’s grief-stricken parent.