When did performance poetry get so serious?
There has been talk lately in spoken word poetry circles of the direction that the movement has been taking over the last decade and how it has shifted away from the scene that existed in the 2000s and before. Many have cited the influence of slams and American slam culture, others have pointed out that spoken word has become more literary and closer to page poetry, with the emphasis very much on ...
1st June 2023
When Seamus Heaney met the Queen: an appreciation of the Nobel prize-winning poet and his allegiance to people and places
During coverage after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, the focus on her well-received visit to Ireland in 2011 contained one moment that caught me by surprise: film of her speech at Dublin Castle, once the centre of British power in Ireland, showed a figure sitting at the top table. Sandwiched between Da...
26th September 2022
'Incensed' Julian Jordon's video riposte to Dorries and Johnson
Write Out Loud’s founder Julian Jordon has issued a video riposte to culture secretary Nadine Dorries’ recent TikTok foray into rap. Julian’s film, titled ‘Avoiding The Rap (with no apologies to Nadin...
17th June 2022
Poetry Review in the 1980s: the golden years?
I always peruse the poetry sections of secondhand bookshops more in hope than expectation. And even at the renowned Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, housed in a beautiful former railway statio...
12th July 2021
How I learned to love the kyrielle, the kimo, the ovi, and the bop
Heather Moulson is a popular and entertaining open-mic poetry performer. However, she is still a relative newcomer to poetry – and always keen to learn more. Here she attends a course and experiments ...
1st June 2021
My kind of poet: the seriously funny Wendy Cope
I owe an enormous debt to Wendy Cope because she rekindled my interest in poetry without ever realising it. Our paths crossed in 1984 when she handed over to me as reviews editor of Contact, the weekl...
18th May 2021
Wordsworth? Just ‘a stuck-up old poot’, according to those in the know
I never really got on with Wordsworth. From the start of our relationship, I found him preachy and prosy, telling me how I ought to feel and saying what things meant rather than describing them. He sa...
5th March 2021
As anniversary nears, do Daffodils fans wander lonely these days?
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Wordsworth – and a host of events are planned to mark it, including talks, poetry readings, and even a family reunion when descendants of ...
5th February 2020
Magazine pours bucket of 'literary criticism' over award-winning Hollie McNish
Performance poetry/spoken word versus page poetry? Isn’t it a debate that has been put to bed, particularly with performers Kate Tempest and Hollie McNish winning the Ted Hughes award for innovation i...
3rd February 2018
John Ashbery: an appreciation
It’s been a hard couple of years for me. Many of my poetic signposts have died recently and sometimes it’s hard not to feel a little lost now. Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth, Roy Fisher – and now John Ashbe...
22nd October 2017
'My mother found herself as a working single parent in 1960s London'
Jacqueline Saphra launched her new collection of poems, All My Mad Mothers - described as an “unreliable memoir” - on Wednesday night in London. In this blog for Write Out Loud, she talks about her mo...
30th May 2017
A county's poet laureate talks about the challenges and opportunites of the job
Isabel Rogers was this week appointed Hampshire Poet for 2016. But what does it mean to be a local poetry figurehead? Here are the thoughts of Staffordshire’s current poet laureate, Bert Flitcroft:
...15th January 2016
Scotland's 'makars' thrive among differing tongues
Scotland’s poetry scene is thriving, in a country that is justifiably proud of its heritage and well-known for its achievements in the arts. It’s also a country of several historic and contemporary la...
7th September 2015
Poetry in a time of data: protecting acorns, adders, catkins and herons from language loss
We have a sixth layer of consciousness to assimilate all the “data” we receive from the five senses. In order to differentiate a strawberry from the white, china bowl on which it sits, or the table th...
20th May 2015
'Poetry suddenly could be fun ... it was all very Liverpool'
Brian Patten is returning to the north-west next month, with an appearance at Bolton’s Live from Worktown festival. Patten is one of the Liverpool Poets, who with Adrian Henri and Roger McGough made p...
28th April 2015
Shard, daffodil, palimpsest: should some words be banned in poetry?
A list of words which should not be included in poems, or used only with caution, was apparently put together some years ago by a group of UK poets. (Acknowledgement for this list to The Far Near Blog...
12th November 2014
He wrote in the trenches, and died in 1918. But Isaac Rosenberg did not see himself as a war poet
Frances Spurrier writes about Isaac Rosenberg, a poet who was killed in the first world war. Some of his best-known poems deserve their place alongside those of Owen and Sassoon. Rosenberg died on pat...
9th April 2014
Poetry magazines and the creative writing boom: are editors being swamped with poems?
The other day I got a nicely worded rejection of some poems I'd submitted to a magazine. Nothing unusual in that.
The refusal said that “we have had hundreds of submissions and have had to leave ou...
27th November 2013
'Poetry can't exist without rhythm. Don't be academically bullied into dropping rhymes'
Earlier this year Write Out Loud’s founder, Julian Jordon, saw a poetry performance by Cynthia Buell Thomas and was moved to write: “Everything about it was absolutely top quality … a lesson in how...
3rd October 2013
From Chickentown to McCain chips: but does Cooper Clarke's new ad put you off your tea?
So there I was, smiling and giggling though a collection of humorous verse while waiting for a TV programme when I heard the incomparable drawling drone of the Bard of Salford. I was not mistaken. ...
19th September 2013
'This is a time for poets to speak up for the powerless'
In the wake of chancellor George Osborne's latest spending cuts, radical poet and editor Alan Morrison surveys the rising tide of protest poetry, and calls on all “politically-conscious” poets to c...
5th July 2013
