Bloodaxe … what an arresting name for a poetry publisher. I may have first come across Neil Astley’s name when my wife gave me the second anthology in the Bloodaxe Staying Alive series, Being Alive, as a Valentine’s Day present. In such an enormous volume, you could not help but find poetry that you...

Read and leave comments (1)

The Write Out Loud team has perhaps been more focused on our 20th anniversary and fundraising poetry competition than the recent World Poetry Day. Mea culpa! 

And yet we consider ourselves internat...

Read and leave comments (0)

As part of our 20-year anniversary celebrations, Write Out Loud will be looking back at significant moments for us and the wider poetry world over the last two decades. They don’t come much more signi...

Read and leave comments (3)

Fiona Larkin has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with ‘Absence has a Grammar’, which was described by judges Romalyn Ante, John McAuliffe and Stephen Sexton as “very impressive, ing...

Read and leave comments (2)

This collection of one hundred short poems is inspired by the life of Carmelite nun Thérèse of Lisieux, who died in 1897 aged just 24. In her elegant introduction to the poems, Sarah Law explains how ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Following Anthony Anaxagorou's mind-stretching masterclass, re-released last week, we've now re-launched Caroline Bird's workshop, giving you a whole new set of challenges to stretch and stimulate you...

Read and leave comments (0)

Third and final in our masterclass series, is Matt Abbott's workshop in which he provides a number of triggers for writing about personal history, ones that get attendees re inspired to  jot down a fe...

Read and leave comments (0)

Maggie Harris was born in Guyana and now lives in Broadstairs, Kent. She has won the Guyana Prize for Literature, was regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014, and won the Wales Poet...

Read and leave comments (0)

A north-east poet who was first published as a teenager by Bloodaxe Books is celebrating 40 years of writing poetry by launching a new pamphlet next month. Elaine Cusack’s launch event also marks a re...

Read and leave comments (0)

Want to give your poetry a boost with new ideas, new skills, and new challenges?  Here's how: watch the videos of our series of masterclasses from professional poets at the top of their game.

Write...

Read and leave comments (0)

Faber is to publish The Poems of Seamus Heaney later this year, edited by Rosie Lavan and Bernard O’Donoghue with Matthew Hollis. It’s described as the definitive edition of  Heaney’s poetry, featurin...

Read and leave comments (0)

What will you be doing on World Poetry Day, Friday 21 March? North Tyneside council’s Northumberland Park has come up with a topical and possibly controversial idea – an AI poetry trail around the par...

Read and leave comments (1)

This first full-length collection by Cardiff-based poet Emily Cotterill follows on from her debut poetry pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants published by Smith / Doorstop in 2019 which was selected by...

Read and leave comments (0)

In October last year a unique creative venture involving Marsden-born poet laureate Simon Armitage, his LYR band and Marsden Mechanics was launched. The project invited the people of Marsden to engage...

Read and leave comments (1)

It was a foggy night on Teesside and a warm if slightly melancholy evening for the final farewell of Smokestack Books, which publisher Andy Croft closed for new titles last Christmas after 20 years. P...

Read and leave comments (0)

All good things must come to an end – or at least, a pause, in the case of Hexham’s very popular poetry event Words on the Wall. There was an impressive turnout for what masterly compere Joe Williams ...

Read and leave comments (0)

This year’s Spring Poems on the Underground posters include Foyle Young Poet Lewis Corry. The poster set was launched with readings outside the tube station at Covent Garden by Lewis, plus poets Niall...

Read and leave comments (0)

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, is lining up the next leg of his 10-year tour of the UK’s libraries. Each spring this decade, Armitage is giving readings in libraries across the UK  and his journey...

Read and leave comments (0)

Most readers coming to this site will be interested in the future of poetry in changing times. The Bookseller announced in December 2023 that poetry was “on course for a record year”, partly due to an...

Read and leave comments (1)

Sometimes slim volumes open up much bigger worlds and pack a punch beyond 30 pages of text. The title and the cover of Janus suggest a gaze, both forward and backward. The structure of the book, thoug...

Read and leave comments (0)

Write Out Loud took to the road on Saturday at the Moonraking festival in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, with our first ever pedal-powered poetry event – the Pedal-Powered Pop-Up Poetry tent. The succes...

Read and leave comments (0)

The Poetry Hour is staging a reading by actors of the works of Emily Dickinson, pictured, and Sylvia Plath at the British Library, in the week of International Women’s Day. The reading will take place...

Read and leave comments (0)

A poetry magazine that is published once a year has reached its £2,000 target after just seven days of a cash appeal to keep it going. Poet and novelist Richard Skinner said 14 Magazine, which publish...

Read and leave comments (0)

The confirmation of £5 million of government investment in the National Poetry Centre in Leeds has been welcomed by the poet laureate Simon Armitage as evidence that his brainchild “will become a real...

Read and leave comments (0)

Manchester is celebrating International Mother Language Day 2025 with two newly appointed Multilingual City Poets, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight and Nóra Blascsók.

Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a po...

Read and leave comments (0)

An important part of Write Out Loud’s 20th anniversary year is expanding our work with children and young people. And what better way to start than by linking up again with poet and performer Louise F...

Read and leave comments (0)

Growing concerns over the development of artificial intelligence has compelled the ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Authority) - which recovers money for authors that they are due – to issue ad...

Read and leave comments (2)

Helen Mort will be judging the 2025 Rialto Nature and Place poetry competition. First prize is £1,000, and the deadline is 1 April 2025. More details

Read and leave comments (0)

Rory Waterman will be judging the £600 Ver Poets competition. The deadline is 30 April. More details

Read and leave comments (0)

Clevedon LitFest is now open for submissions for its Motorcitysixty poetry competition, which marks the 60th anniversary of the first Motown Revue tour outside the US in 1965.

Entrants worldwide, a...

Read and leave comments (0)

Award-winning poet Dominic Berry is the guest at Write Out Loud Bolton open-mic night at Bolton Socialist Club on Sunday 2 February. Dominic, who has twice won the Saboteur award for performance poets...

Read and leave comments (0)

In a few days’ time Write Out Loud will be launching a big poetry competition to mark our 20th anniversary year. We’re very excited about it! The theme of the competition will be ‘Echoes’ – and it wil...

Read and leave comments (0)

Friends of Jackie Hagan are re-staging Magic Animals, a poetry session she used to host, in a one-off tribute show on 1 February at Manchester’s Contact theatre.

Jackie, a multi-award-winning poet,...

Read and leave comments (0)

Kit Fan will be judging the £1,000 Kent & Sussex Poetry Society open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January 2025. More details  

Read and leave comments (0)

Monday 27 January was Holocaust Memorial Day, and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz in Poland.

The main commemoration began at 4pm...

Read and leave comments (0)

The American poet Jane Hirshfield has re-posted a poem she first publicised at the start of the first administration of President Trump in 2017, in protest at the new US government’s silencing of stat...

Read and leave comments (1)

The multi-award-winning poet Michael Longley has died at the age of 85. Longley was born in Belfast in 1939 and lived in the city until his death, which was announced on Thursday. In the late 1950s he...

Read and leave comments (2)