Andrew McMillan wins £2,000 Polari prize
Poet Andrew McMillan has won the inaugural £2,000 Polari prize recognising work that explores the LGBT experience with his second collection Playtime. McMillan won the Guardian First Book award with his debut collection Physical.
Judge and Booker-winning novelist Bernadine Evaristo said McMillan was “exploring coming of age, masculinity and sexuality in ways that move and surprise. His poetic v...
28th October 2019
Fathima Zahra wins £5,000 Bridport poetry prize
Indian poet Fathima Zahra has won the £5,000 Bridport poetry prize with her poem ‘Things I wish I could trade my headscarf for’. Fathima, who has also just won the Wells Festival of Literature young poets prize, is based in Essex, and her work has been featured across BBC World News, the New Indian ...
23rd October 2019
Poet laureate receives his sherry - and remembers the Marsden cuckoo
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has travelled to Jerez in southern Spain to choose and sign a sherry barrel, bequeathed to him by the Consejo Regulador de los Vinos de Jerez y Manzanilla – and in d...
22nd October 2019
Fiona Benson wins £10,000 Forward poetry prize for best collection
Fiona Benson has won the £10,000 Forward prize for her collection Vertigo & Ghost, it was announced on Sunday night at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank. After receiving the prize, she sai...
20th October 2019
Performance poet Louise Fazackerley joins Write Out Loud
We are delighted to announce that leading performance poet Louise Fazackerley has become a director of Write Out Loud. The Wigan-based professional poet and artist-in-education cut her poetry teeth at...
17th October 2019
Anthony Anaxagorou and Jay Bernard on £25,000 TS Eliot prize shortlist
British-born Cypriot poet Anthony Anaxagorou, pictured, and Ted Hughes award winner Jay Bernard are included on the shortlist for the £25,000 TS Eliot prize, it was announced today.
Anaxagorou is a...
17th October 2019
Jay Bernard wins Ted Hughes award
Jay Bernard has won this year's £5,000 Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry for Surge: Side A, which was performed last year at the Roundhouse as part of the Last Word festival, investigating the N...
17th October 2019
Award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards to edit Poetry Wales magazine
Award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards is taking over as editor of Poetry Wales magazine. His debut collection My Family and Other Superheroes won the 2015 Costa prize for poetry, and was recently chosen...
10th October 2019
Wolverhampton poet laureate Emma Purshouse promises 52 poems about city
Emma Purshouse has been named as Wolverhampton’s first poet laureate – and has already promised to write 52 poems about her sometimes “unfairly maligned” home city.
Emma, a performance poet, writer...
8th October 2019
Necklace of haiku puts Exeter on map as popular project enters its final month
A renga is a term for a series of haiku linked to a theme – “a necklace of poems”, poet Sara-Jane Arbury called them. What a lovely idea. People in Exeter were invited to write haiku while visiting a ...
8th October 2019
Leading poets back protests over management of Scottish Poetry Library
A number of leading poets have severed their links with the Scottish Poetry Library in protest at the way it is being run, and former staff members issued a statement of support calling for action to ...
8th October 2019
Foyle Young Poets 2019 - the top 15 winners and 85 commended poets
The Poetry Society has announced the top 15 poets and 85 commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award 2019. The winning entries were selected from over 6,000 poets and over 11,000 poems ...
7th October 2019
Just the right medicine: the Poetry Pharmacy is opening its doors
The Emergency Poet Deborah Alma opened her permanent Poetry Pharmacy in the town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire on Friday 4 October. Its website says that the “beautiful Victorian shop with its orig...
5th October 2019
