Inua Ellams wins £1,000 Live Canon poetry competition
Poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams has won the £1,000 Live Canon poetry competition with his poem, ‘Shame is the Cape I Wear’. All the shortlisted poems were performed by the Live Canon ensemble from memory at a special event at Greenwich theatre in south-east London at the weekend to launch the anthology and announce the overall winner. Live Canon are an ensemble performing poetry in the ...
30th November 2014
Tetraplegic poet Owen Lowery talks about performing poetry on a ventilator
Tetraplegic poet Owen Lowery has spoken of the problems of performing poems while on a ventilator, in an interview with the BBC. Lowery, a former judo champion whose injury in the ring during a charity tournament at the age of 18 left him paralysed below the shoulder, said that being on a ventilator...
29th November 2014
Remembering Salford's past - and fighting to save a library
If you wondered where the great and good of Salford and Manchester were on Sunday afternoon, I can tell you. This event in aid of the much-loved Working Class Movement Library over the road sold out w...
29th November 2014
Poetry London launches 25th anniversary publication
Kathryn Maris, Jack Underwood, Maurice Riordan, Ahren Warner, Liz Berry, Daljit Nagra and Colette Bryce, and Marilyn Hacker will be reading at the launch by Poetry London magazine of The Best of Poet...
28th November 2014
Helen Ivory to judge Prole Laureate competition
Helen Ivory will be judging the £200 Prole Laureate poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January 2015. More details
28th November 2014
The Fire in Me Now: Michael Curtis, Cultured Llama
The title of this 12th collection of poems by Michael Curtis is taken from a quote from Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape. At first reading the poet’s fire could be mistaken for pure rage; and t...
28th November 2014
From The Verb to Write Out Loud: Louise Fazackerley at Risk A Verse in Huddersfield tonight
From BBC’s The Verb – to Write Out Loud! Wigan’s Louise Fazackerley, who was featured on the BBC Radio 3 programme presented by Ian McMillan last Friday, will be appearing as guest poet at Write Out ...
27th November 2014
'Laughter and tears: there was nothing sedate or predictable about the Tudor'
The closure of the famous Tudor House hotel in Wigan, home to Write Out Loud’s open mic night for years, has come a great shock to its regulars, and beyond. One of those regulars, Isobel Malinowksi, p...
26th November 2014
Newcastle's rebel poet from the 60s, and still fiery - Tom Pickard at Aldeburgh
Out of Newcastle in the 1960s there came the Animals, “Likely Lads” Bob and Terry … and Tom Pickard, a teenage poet who set up his own bookshop and poetry readings and attracted famous poets to them, ...
26th November 2014
Helen Mort wins first collection prize with 'Division Street'
Helen Mort has won this year’s Fenton Aldeburgh first collection prize, with Division Street, it was announced at the festival on Friday.
Division Street, with its striking and famous cover photogr...
26th November 2014
The strange case of the 'lost' poet: on the trail of Rosemary Tonks
A poetry detective story, about the tracking down of a poet “lost” since the 1970s, and who died earlier this year at the age of 85, was revealed at the Aldeburgh poetry festival on Sunday.
Bloodax...
26th November 2014
The haunting: Dan O'Brien on how he came to write 'docu-poetry' about war
Several years ago American playwright and poet Dan O’Brien heard Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson giving an interview about how he was haunted by a photograph he took of a dead US serviceman in So...
26th November 2014
Mersey mania, Seine bridges, a tattooed granny: the life and times of Brian Patten
When The Mersey Sound anthology of Liverpool poets Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten quickly became hugely popular in the 1960s, it dismayed a number of critics, Patten revealed in a Q&A s...
26th November 2014
'Schlock!' Mesmeric, shocking, and over-ambitious
Having grown up in a household where Yiddish words were bandied around readily, it came as a shock to find this one sidling in among the Best Words, Best Order poetry titles of the other readers, in t...
26th November 2014
Jon Stallworthy, biographer of Wilfred Owen and war poetry editor, dies aged 79
Jon Stallworthy, the biographer of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice, and editor of the Oxford Book of War Poetry, has died aged 79. Stallworthy, who was seen last week on TV talking about the war poets...
25th November 2014
Celebrating the Black Country: Liz Berry heads poetry night in Wolverhampton
Forward prize winner Liz Berry is headlining a night celebrating the dialect poetry of the Black Country. Berry, who won the Felix Dennis prize at the Forwards for best first collection with Black Cou...
24th November 2014
Held to account: poets asked to explain themselves at 'Paxman-style' grilling in Peckham Rye
Jeremy Paxman won’t be there – but early in December a group of poets are taking his advice. Earlier this year the chairman of this year’s Forward prize judges and former Newsnight presenter made some...
24th November 2014
Tutors Mimi Khalvati and Tamar Yoseloff showcase Poetry School pupils
Mimi Khalvati and Tamar Yoseloff are esteemed poets, and highly inspirational poetry tutors as well, judging from the expertise and affection displayed by some of their Poetry School students who read...
23rd November 2014
Eastern flavour as past and present collide at Manchester's Poets & Players
The latest in Manchester’s much-loved series of music and poetry sessions of Poets & Players took place in the glorious historic reading room at the John Rylands Library, beneath false-moustachioed st...
22nd November 2014
Forward winner Kei Miller on Costa poetry prize shortlist
Kei Miller, who won the Forward prize for best collection with The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, has been named on this year’s Costa poetry prize shortlist. Last year’s Forward prize winner...
21st November 2014
Boom!: Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Seren
Thanks no doubt to the overwhelmingly male nature of the literary canon, birth and parenthood are under-represented in the history of British poetry, despite their importance in human experience. Whil...
20th November 2014
Write Out Loud Marsden at the library tonight
Marsden Write Out Loud will be meeting on Wednesday 19 November at 7.30pm at Marsden Library, Marsden Mechanics Hall, Peel Street, Marsden. This open mic event, hosted by Write Out Loud’s founder, Jul...
19th November 2014
Dominic Berry and Asa J Maddison at Write Out Loud Sale tonight
Dominic Berry and Asa J Maddison are the guest performers at Write Out Loud Sale on Tuesday 18 November at 7.30pm at the Waterside arts centre, Sale – the final Write Out Loud Sale of 2014. Sign up fo...
18th November 2014
John McCullough to judge £750 Four Counties competition
John McCullough will be judging the Four Counties Poets Competition, run by Rottingdean Writers’ Group, open to poets connected to Greater London, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. The first prize is £750, an...
17th November 2014
New Voices winner Louise Fazackerley's 'Love is a Battlefield' is featured on BBC's The Verb
Radio 3 New Voices winner Louise Fazackerley was featured on BBC radio’s The Verb on Friday 14 November, with an extract from her show ‘Love is a Battlefield’ that was recorded live at the BBC’s Free ...
15th November 2014
Ian McMillan leads poets and young footballers in paying tribute to 1914 Christmas truce soldiers
Poet and BBC presenter Ian McMillan has been commissioned by the Poetry Society and Barclays Premier League to write a poem, centring on an international tournament to commemorate the famous Christmas...
15th November 2014
End of an era for Write Out Loud Wigan as the Tudor closes its doors
It's the end of an era for Write Out Loud Wigan with the news that its legendary venue, the Tudor House hotel, has closed its doors following the retirement of owners Russell and Frances Miller. Organ...
14th November 2014
'Keeping hope alive' is theme of Leeds Peace Poetry competition
The Leeds-based charity, Together for Peace, has launched its 2014 open poetry competition, and this year’s theme is Peace not War: Keeping Hope Alive 1914-18. Entries should be no longer than 24 line...
14th November 2014
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
Number of visits to Write Out Loud in October nears 54,000 and marks new record
Write Out Loud notched up a record number of visits to the site last month. In a hectic poetry month, which included the Forward, Manchester and Bridport prizes, as well as Write Out Loud’s own, ever-...
11th November 2014
'When you're very young it's not hard to change the direction of your life': Write Out Loud interviews Brian Patten
He tried to join the circus, then shot to fame as a poet in his teens after packing in his job as a local reporter. Brian Patten, whose name is synonymous with the Mersey poets, and who will be appear...
11th November 2014
Inspired by Wilfred Owen: Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 10 November at 7pm to read and discuss their own poetry. Entry is a £1 donation. Linda Cosgriff explains November...
10th November 2014
Poet and publisher Adele Ward enters general election fray with the Greens
Poet and publisher Adele Ward has been selected as a Green Party candidate for next year’s general election. Ward, co-founder of Ward Wood Publishing, will be contesting Finchley & Golders Green, form...
9th November 2014
Get happy with Jo Bell and Tony Walsh on tour of Yorkshire
Canal laureate Jo Bell and Tony Walsh (aka Longfella), author of Sex & Love & Rock&Roll, are teaming up to present poetry reflecting the feelgood factor, in Lifted, a show that will be touring a numbe...
9th November 2014
Clutching at history: Hannah Lowe's voyage of discovery
History books tell us that the first postwar migrants from the Caribbean came to Britain aboard the SS Empire Windrush. But the history books are sometimes mistaken. Some years after her father’s deat...
7th November 2014
Larkin's biographer at Humber Mouth festival
James Booth, the author of a new biography of Philip Larkin, which attempts to put a better gloss on the public image of a poet previously revealed as misogynist and racist in his letters, will be ap...
6th November 2014
Man charged with murder of poet found dead at farm
A 48-year-old man has been remanded in custody after being charged with the murder of poet Anne Cluysenaar, aged 78, who was found dead at her farm near Usk in Gwent on Saturday.Timothy Jackson, of Sh...
6th November 2014
John Cooper Clarke heads to US for 'punky reggae party'
John Cooper Clarke, Manchester’s legendary punk poet – as it says on the poster, and who would disagree – is appearing in Los Angeles on Friday 7 November in what is said to be his first US appearance...
6th November 2014
Mario Petrucci to judge £1,000 Kent & Sussex competition
Mario Petrucci will be judging and reading all the submissions to the £1,000 Kent and Sussex poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January 2015. More details
5th November 2014
Billy Collins to judge Poetry Business book and pamphlet competition
Popular American poet Bill Collins is to judge the Poetry Business book and pamphlet competition, which has an end of November deadline. The other judges are Ann and Peter Sansom, directors of The Poe...
5th November 2014
Local writers and emerging poets in lineup at Reading festival
There’s a strong emphasis on local writers and presses and on young and emerging poets at Reading poetry festival, from 7-9 November. The weekend's readings, lectures and conversations include events...
4th November 2014
David Morley to judge £1,000 Cafe Writers poetry competition
David Morley is the sole judge of the £1,000 Cafe Writers poetry competition. Categories include the funniest poem, and a Norfolk prize. The deadline is 30 November. More details
4th November 2014
Fishing in the Aftermath: Salena Godden, Burning Eye
This collection marks 20 years of poetry and performance by Salena Godden, though the majority of the work included has never been previously published, which is surprising, given the quality.
Hai...
4th November 2014
Roger McGough to talk about poetry and pop at the Troubadour
Renowned poet Roger McGough, presenter of BBC’s Poetry Please, member of the 60s pop group Scaffold, and one of the Liverpool poets, alongside Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, whose The Mersey Sound ant...
3rd November 2014
