Deadline nears for Out-Spoken's £500 poetry prize
A poetry prize has been launched by the organisers of a popular poetry and music night in north London. The £500 Out-Spoken poetry prize has four separate categories, and five judges – Sabrina Mahfouz, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Niall O’Sullivan, Helen Mort, and Ira Lightman. The four categories are: innovation in poetry; political poetry; poetry performance; and poetry film. The last two are video submis...
31st October 2015
From Southbank to a slam up north - the road to Wigan on poetry's big day
So, how was National Poetry Day for you? For the last three years I’ve enjoyed listening to an aray of leading poets at the Royal Festival Hall’s Clore Ballroom on London's Southbank, part of the NPD events organised by the Poetry Society. This year I decided to go the extra mile – or several - an...
31st October 2015
Forward prize winner Liz Berry on Fenton Aldeburgh first collection shortlist
Liz Berry’s Black Country, which won the Forward prize for best first collection last year, has been shortlisted for this year’s Fenton Aldeburgh first collection prize. Two poets who made the shortli...
29th October 2015
Poetry competition questions meanings of 'natural' and 'unnatural'
If something is unnatural, does that make it bad or wrong? What does natural mean anyway? The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is launching a poetry competition in collaboration with spoken word organisa...
28th October 2015
The consolation of art: poet who takes walks on the dark side launches selected edition
She teaches at the Poetry School and at art galleries, exploring the meeting places between poetry and visual art, and occasionally conducts psychogeographical walks around London. But some newcomers ...
28th October 2015
Play that anglo-saxophone! Michael Horovitz celebrates 35 years of Poetry Olympics
It was billed as the Poetry Olympics Enlightenment festival - and I hadn’t really known what to expect. I did know that veteran poet Michael Horovitz , who put together the Children of Albion antholog...
23rd October 2015
Lemn Sissay, university chancellor: 'If you want to know how youngsters in care feel, get them to write poetry'
Lemn Sissay has been installed as Chancellor of Manchester University. The poet beat Labour politician Lord Mandelson and the Hallé Music director, Sir Mark Elder, to win the post. Sissay, who grew up...
23rd October 2015
Risk a Verse at the Red and Green Club in Huddersfield tonight
Risk A Verse, a poetry night that is supported by Write Out Loud, returns to the Red and Green Club at Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, on Thursday 22 October. Compere is Edward Hughes. It’s free, start is ...
22nd October 2015
Estate of Ted Hughes lists 'factual errors' in new biography
The long-running dispute between the estate of Ted Hughes and the poet’s widow, Carol, and his latest biographer, Sir Jonathan Bate, has flared up once more with the publication of the new, unauthoris...
22nd October 2015
The poetry of lost landscapes: Tamar Yoseloff and David Harker merge text and art in Nowheres
A shared obsession with “urban detritus” and “provisional, lost landscapes” has brought poet Tamar Yoseloff and artist David Harker together, to collaborate and explore with paintings, drawings and wo...
22nd October 2015
Shortlist for Popescu translation prize is revealed
The shortlist for this year’s Popescu European Poetry Translation prize, run biennially by the Poetry Society, has been announced. The shortlisted translators, chosen by judges Olivia McCannon and Cla...
21st October 2015
Difference and the death of Sophie Lancaster: Write Out Loud at Marsden tonight
“Difference” is the suggested theme for Wednesday’s Write Out Loud Marsden on 21 October. Host Julian Jordon said: “If you get chance to listen again to the powerful Sophie Lancaster drama … [and] S...
21st October 2015
Rhymes, Rock & Revolution: the story of performance poetry
BBC4’s look at performance poetry and its links with music opened with footage from Wholly Communion, the film of the Albert Hall gathering of 1965, with Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Adrian ...
21st October 2015
Gerry Potter is guest poet at Write Out Loud Sale tonight
Gerry Potter is the guest poet at Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside arts centre, Sale on Tuesday 20 October. The open mic night, hosted by John Darwin, starts at 7.30pm, and entry is £3/£2. More de...
20th October 2015
John Agard takes fresh look at Columbus in Roll Over Atlantic at Portsmouth's Square Tower
Caribbean-British poet John Agard, winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, will be embarking on a quirky re-visioning of Christopher Columbus in Roll Over Atlantic at the appropriately nautical settin...
18th October 2015
Lemn Sissay, university chancellor: 'If you want to know how youngsters in care feel, get them to write poetry'
Lemn Sissay was this week installed as Chancellor of Manchester University. The poet beat Labour politician Lord Mandelson and the Hallé Music director, Sir Mark Elder, to win the post. Sissay, who gr...
18th October 2015
Two Iranian poets given long jail terms and sentenced to lashes
A court in Tehran has sentenced poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Moosavi to nine years and six months and 99 lashes, and 11 years and 99 lashes, respectively, on charges of “insulting the sacred” for...
18th October 2015
'Both my parents were on my exam syllabus' - Frieda Hughes
The level-headed and even-handed testimony of Frieda Hughes, the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, stood out in a recent BBC4 programme, Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death, part of the BBC’s Poetr...
18th October 2015
Michael Horovitz and friends in triple birthday bash at POE! festival
Poet, performer and impresario Michael Horovitz will be celebrating three anniversaries on Saturday – his 80th birthday earlier this year, the 50th anniversary of the Albert Hall Poetry Incarnation, a...
16th October 2015
Black Country hosts National Dialect Weekend with poetry, stories, and music
Poet Dave Reeves, pictured, will be opening this year’s National Dialect Weekend from 16-18 October at Wednesbury, in the Black Country of the West Midlands.
The three-day celebration of English na...
16th October 2015
New Foyle Young Poets winners named on National Poetry Day
The top 15 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award were announced on Thursday 8 October, National Poetry Day, at a special prizegiving ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall at London’s Southb...
15th October 2015
Search is on for poems to form poetry trail in Huddersfield park
A competition has been launched to find 25 poems for a poetry trail in a Huddersfield park. The 21-acre Beaumont Park, the first public park in Huddersfield, combines formal avenues and boulevards wit...
15th October 2015
Biography of Ted Hughes shortlisted for £20,000 prize
The new, unauthorised biography about Ted Hughes by Jonathan Bate has been shortlisted for the 2015 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. The judges for the £20,000 prize described Bate’s book as “an ...
14th October 2015
Deadline nears for Troubadour prize
Jean Sprackland and John McAuliffe will be judging the £5,000 Troubadour international poetry prize. The deadline is 19 October. More details
14th October 2015
Could you win the big one? Deadline nears for £5,000 National Poetry Competition
The closing date is nearing for the Poetry Society’s 2015 National Poetry Competition – you need to get your entry in by 31 October. Last year’s winner was Roger Philip Dennis, an artist and tutor, w...
13th October 2015
Top poets turn out at Tongue Fu to raise money for refugees
Kate Tempest, pictured, John Hegley, Inua Ellams and Francesca Beard are among a number of poets who will be appearing at Tongue Fu, the show hosted by Chris Redmond that blends spoken word with impro...
13th October 2015
Poetry Review editor Maurice Riordan urges prize judges to declare any interests
A leading poetry magazine editor and poet has called on the top poetry prize competitions to introduce declarations of interest as part of their judging process. Maurice Riordan has revealed, in the l...
12th October 2015
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be sharing their poems at this open-floor poetry night at Stockport art gallery on 12 October at 7pm. Each month members produce a collage poem. You can read S...
12th October 2015
John Cooper Clarke to release retrospective collection
John Cooper Clarke will be releasing a retrospective Anthologia, described as the first anthology of his work, later this month. The three CD/DVD collection includes classics such as ‘Evidently Chicke...
12th October 2015
Billy Collins to judge Poetry Business book and pamphlet competition
Billy Collins will be judging the 30th annual international Poetry Business book and pamphlet competition. Entrants are invited to submit a collection of 20-24 pages of poems for the chance to win pub...
11th October 2015
Claudia Rankine wins £10,000 Forward prize for collection focusing on racism
Jamaican-born Claudia Rankine is this year’s winner of the £10,000 Forward prize for the best poetry collection for Citizen: An American Lyric, a collage of prose, poetry, prose poetry, graphic art, p...
10th October 2015
Write Out Loud's famous poetry jam at jazz festival on Sunday
The famous Marsden poetry jam at the fabulous Marsden jazz festival is on Sunday, during a weekend when this Pennine town comes alive with jazz everywhere, in special venues, in pubs, clubs and cafes,...
10th October 2015
A Murmuration: David Cooke, Two Rivers Press
David Cooke is well known to and appreciated by regulars on Write Out Loud. He started out as a winner of a Gregory award, given to young poets, and has become a much-published poet who nevertheless c...
9th October 2015
'Poetry books will sell if people can relate to what you are writing': Attila the Stockbroker
Performance poet and musician Attila the Stockbroker has been on the road for 35 years, and in that time has appeared at around 3,400 gigs, “shouting poems and thrashing songs” on his mandola – and n...
8th October 2015
It's a new dawn: lighting up the UK with a host of events on National Poetry Day
Poetry throughout the day on the BBC, poetry displayed on Blackpool’s illuminations, poets in the spotlight at night on the Southbank, and firefighters and fire-eaters enlisted to help in Bristol will...
6th October 2015
Black Country's Purshouse, Rhodes and Cockin at the Works' Canteen in Dudley
Three poets from the Black Country who have recently launched a joint book of their work, The Nailmakers’ Daughters, will be appearing at the Works’ Canteen poetry, spoken word and music night at the...
5th October 2015
Edinburgh poet Russell Jones to launch first collection
An Edinburgh-based poet who experiments in form, from sonnet sequences to one-word poems, concrete poetry to haiku, is launching his first full collection.
5th October 2015
Revealed - the poetic ardour of TS Eliot, and Wayne Rooney
The hitherto unsuspected poetic ardour of TS Eliot – and of Manchester United and England footballer Wayne Rooney as well – has been revealed in separate stories this week.
The Guardian reports tha...
4th October 2015
Messages from inside: poetry and prose, art and animation from Koestler award winners
This artwork by Daniel, ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’, is on display at the Southbank Centre in London from today as part of Re:Form, the annual showcase of Koestler Trust awards winners - prisoners, o...
3rd October 2015
Multimedia and the message: Zones of Avoidance brings home unavoidable truths
An award-winning , multimedia poetry production is being performed in a short run at London’s Cockpit theatre – and I recommend that you see it, if you possibly can. Zones of Avoidance by Maggie Sawk...
3rd October 2015
Zygote Poems: Richard Thomas, Cultured Llama
In the title poem Richard Thomas opens this collection by introducing the “poppy seed” that will become his daughter, Emmeline, “making itself at home”. The size comparison of a six- or seven-week foe...
2nd October 2015
This is your chance: step right up for the Huddersfield heat of the Commonword Superheroes slam
There’s still time to sign up to compete in the Huddersfield heat of the Commonword Superheroes of Slam contest. The Huddersfield heat, run by Write Out Loud with Huddersfield University creative writ...
2nd October 2015
On the trail of Ted Hughes - the new, unauthorised biography
A new, unauthorised biography of Ted Hughes retraces what happened in the days leading up to Sylvia Plath’s suicide in 1963.
According to a biography of Hughes by Sir Jonathan Bate, provost of Worc...
1st October 2015
Contains Strong Language: BBC's poetry bonanza centred on National Poetry Day
The BBC has unveiled a new poetry season, Contains Strong Language, that will celebrate “the disruptive power of poetry”, and will be centred around National Poetry Day on 8 October. On that day We Br...
1st October 2015
