Carol Ann Duffy joins calls for release of Palestinian poet facing execution in Saudi Arabia
The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has added her voice to those of other leading international cultural figures who have joined human rights campaigners in calling for the release of Ashraf Fayadh, pictured, the Palestinian poet and artist facing execution in Saudi Arabia.
Referring to the Hadith, the sacred text that reports what the prophet Muhammad said or approved, Duffy said: “The world c...
30th November 2015
Gill McEvoy wins £5,000 Michael Marks pamphlet award
A poetry collection about the trauma of rape has won the £5,000 Michael Marks poetry pamphlet award. Gill McEvoy’s The First Telling, published by Happenstance, was described by judges Debbie Cox, Helen Mort and Rory Waterman as “a sequence of carefully crafted poems where the silences speak volumes...
30th November 2015
Louise Fazackerley releases CD of award-winning Love is a Battlefield
Louise Fazackerley, one of the most notable graduates of Write Out Loud Wigan, has two spoken word CDs out, including Love is a Battlefield, which was commissioned by BBC Radio 3’s The Verb after she ...
29th November 2015
David Andrew to launch collection at Write Out Loud reading
David Andrew, Write Out Loud’s gig guide and poetry directory editor, will be launching his new collection, Ventriloquist’s Dummy, at a reading at Torriano Poets in London on 29 November.
David, wh...
28th November 2015
Fran Lock wins Out-Spoken's £500 poetry prize
Fran Lock has won the inaugural £500 Out-Spoken poetry prize, it was announced on Tuesday night. Judges Niall O'Sullivan, Ira Lightman, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jacob Sam-La Rose and Helen Mort picked Lock as...
28th November 2015
Saudi Arabia sentences Palestinian poet to death after appeal against 800 lashes
A Palestinian poet has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for renouncing Islam. Ashraf Fayadh, who said he did not have legal representation, was given 30 days to appeal against the ruling. Faya...
26th November 2015
Iain Galbraith wins Popescu poetry translation prize
Iain Galbraith has won the Poetry Society’s Popescu European poetry translation prize for his translation of Jan Wagner’s collection Self- Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, published by Arc Publications....
26th November 2015
Out of Everywhere 2: ed. Emily Critchley, Reality Street
One of the seminal anthologies of non-mainstream poetries of the late 1990s has to be the first Out of Everywhere anthology, edited by Maggie O’Sullivan. It’s a brilliant collection of various poetrie...
25th November 2015
Christmas cracker: Carol Ann Duffy teams up with Little Machine on festive album
Could poetry provide a Christmas hit this year? The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has teamed up with Little Machine, a trio of musicians that sets famous and contemporary poems to music, to create D...
25th November 2015
Jonathan Edwards to judge Fair Acre Press pamphlet competition
Costa poetry prize winner Jonathan Edwards will be judging the Fair Acre Press poetry pamphlet competition. There will be two winners, with one category open to all and the other open only to those wh...
25th November 2015
Deadline nears for £1,000 Plough poetry competition
The deadline is looming for the £1,000 Plough poetry prize, to be judged this year by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The closing date is 30 November. More details
23rd November 2015
McMillan, Miller, Paterson and Rollinson on Costa poetry prize shortlist
Andrew McMillan’s debut collection physical (Jonathan Cape), which recently won the Fenton Aldeburgh first collection award, has been shortlisted for the Costa poetry award. The three other shortliste...
23rd November 2015
Write Out Loud Middleton at the Ring O' Bells tonight
Joe Kozarzewski, aka the 'Rochdale Ranter', is the guest poet at Write Out Loud Middleton at the Ring O’Bells, St Leonards Square, Middleton, on Sunday 22 November. Shirley-Anne Kennedy and Eileen Ear...
22nd November 2015
Laura Taylor joins forces with Attila again at Wigan gig
Performance poet and Write Out Loud reviewer Laura Taylor will be supporting Attila the Stockbroker when he appears at Hartley’s Bar, Wigan, on Sunday 22 November at 8pm. Laura said: “It's an honour a...
22nd November 2015
Is rhyme a dirty word? Hollie McNish talks about her poetry style
A discussion at Aldeburgh poetry festival that was billed as examining “the confines of form” and the “shortfalls of free verse” developed into a focus on the use of rhyme after Hollie McNish – “I res...
18th November 2015
Write Out Loud at Marsden library tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Marsden will be meeting on Wednesday 18 November at Marsden library, at the Mechanics Hall, Marsden, at 7.30pm. This open-floor evening is open to all to read a poem, your ow...
18th November 2015
Double helpings of humour from poetry presenters at York's Grand Opera House
A double bill featuring two northern poetry wits and poetry presenters – Roger McGough, host of BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, and Ian McMillan, of Radio 3’s The Verb – is promised at York’s Grand Opera...
18th November 2015
John Darwin's farewell at Write Out Loud Sale tonight
It’s the last Write Out Loud Sale of 2015 tonight – and the last one with John Darwin as compere. He’s bowing out after two years at the mic. Thanks for all your good work, John! Guest poets tonight a...
17th November 2015
Andrew McMillan on Guardian book award shortlist
Andrew McMillan, who last week won the Fenton Aldeburgh first collection award, has moved from longlist to shortlist in the Guardian first book award for his collection physical.
Talking about his ...
17th November 2015
'Obviously I don't have a self-doubt gene': the thoughts of Attila the Stockbroker
Attila the Stockbroker has an autobiography out that has been very well received – and he’s very happy to tell you all about it. Write Out Loud’s Laura Taylor can testify as to what a good read it is ...
16th November 2015
Travelling ladders, Shetlandic translations, and outlaw poets
MOST VISITORS to the Hoffman Building at Snape Maltings during the Aldeburgh poetry festival could not have failed to notice a number of roughly made ladders attached or suspended about the place, wri...
16th November 2015
Quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes: Tony Hoagland laces anger with wit and humanity
American poet Tony Hoagland provided a fitting and satisfying finale to round off this year’s Aldeburgh poetry festival on Sunday afternoon. His poetry abounds with warmth, wit, anger, and humanity, a...
15th November 2015
Andrew McMillan wins first collection prize
Andrew McMillan’s new poetry collection physical has won this year’s Fenton Aldeburgh first collection prize. His book, described by one of the judges, Tiffany Atkinson, as “a dazzling meditation on c...
13th November 2015
Poet to perform Hacienda tribute before film screening at festival
Performance poet Trevor Meaney will be performing a commissioned poem about the legendary Hacienda night club in Manchester, on Sunday 15 November at 6.30pm at Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds, as par...
13th November 2015
Undertone of disaster: John Burnside mourns the countryside's disappeared
This conversation between leading poet John Burnside, pictured, and Costa prize winning writer Helen Macdonald at Aldeburgh poetry festival was billed as “language and nature’. But it proved to be abo...
12th November 2015
Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts tonight
Darren Thomas will be compering Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts, Crawford Street, Wigan on Thursday 12 November. Entry is free to this open mic night, which begins at 8pm. Bring your poems, ran...
12th November 2015
Poet reaches for the sky to remember those magnificent women in their Spitfires
Diana Barnato Walker, who delivered 260 Spitfires and many twin-engined bombers during the war, was convinced she had a guardian angel, in the form of a badly-burnt pilot. Lettice Curtis ferried almo...
12th November 2015
'Visionary in a utilitarian age': John Cooper Clarke on 19th century opium eater Thomas De Quincey
Dr John Cooper Clarke, to give him his full honorary academic title, does have a certain affinity with Thomas De Quincey, 19th century author of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and friend and a...
9th November 2015
The Leeds picture show: two poets to launch their take on city's lost and surviving cinemas at film festival
A collection of poems about the cinemas of Leeds, from Woodhouse to Burley, from Armley to Beeston – some abandoned, some converted and some still proudly operational – will be launched at Leeds Inter...
9th November 2015
True Tales of the Countryside: Deborah Alma, The Emma Press
What a treat for lovers of exuberant, lusty, warm-hearted poetry - Deborah Alma’s first collection of her own gutsy poems, plus her Anti-Stress Anthology which she uses in her guise as the Emergency P...
9th November 2015
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 9 November at 7pm to share poems at their-open floor poetry night. Every month a collage poem is produced from me...
9th November 2015
Smoke Rising: John Seed, Shearsman
I first came across the poetry of John Seed in the anthology, A Various Art, a gathering of British experimental poets from the 1970s and 80s. I can’t say that I was struck by them, not that they were...
9th November 2015
No one gets hurt as A Firm of Poets do the business
It must be made clear at the outset that A Firm of Poets are a collective of northern-based, er, poets. It’s just that whenever I’ve heard their monicker I’ve always found myself thinking of the kind ...
7th November 2015
Jeremy Reed - aka 'poetry's David Bowie' - on the bill at Aldeburgh festival
A poet who has been described as the poetry circuit’s David Bowie will be appearing at the Aldeburgh poetry festival on Friday 6 November. Jeremy Reed, whose 1994 collection Pop Stars includes poems o...
6th November 2015
The Lambeth walk: explorers discover the poetry of the street
“Lambeth is not one of those areas that people go to … which is what I like about it … a lot of the things that are interesting [about Lambeth] aren’t there anymore.” Thus poet and tutor Tamar Yoselof...
5th November 2015
Kultura, a literary salon in the land of Tod
Todmorden’s Kava café became 18th century Paris’s Hotel Rambouillet on Thursday as Anthony Costello and Shirley-Anne Kennedy hosted the latest of their events that reflect the philosophy of the salon...
5th November 2015
Poet's tribute to women pilots who ferried planes in the war
A poetry collection that celebrates the women who flew with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during the second world war, ferrying all types of planes from open cockpit Tiger Moths to Wellingtons and...
3rd November 2015
Helen Mort to judge pamphlet competition for poets aged 16-22
Helen Mort will be judging the inaugural Poetry Business New Poets prize, a pamphlet competition for writers aged 16-22. Entrants should submit short collections of 12 pages of poems. Four outstandin...
2nd November 2015
Poets support cafe that inspired global food movement
Two poets will be aiming to raise money for a Leeds cafe that has inspired a global movement of recycling food that has been discarded as “waste” by supermarkets. Steve Pottinger and Mark Connors will...
2nd November 2015
What are your favourite 'desert island' poems? Poetry group launches public poll
What are your seven favourite “desert island” poems? A poetry group is asking the public to send them their favourites before a poetry event next month. On 3 December, Live Canon, a group of actors th...
2nd November 2015
Calypso, cabaret, a cultural collision: John Agard maps out his view of Columbus
John Agard believes in the “subliminal” power of poetry. In Portsmouth before his new one-man show, Roll Over Atlantic, which is about the “cultural collision” between Columbus and the “New World”, he...
2nd November 2015
Forward winner Claudia Rankine on TS Eliot prize shortlist
Forward prize winner Claudia Rankine is a contender for this year’s £20,000 TS Eliot prize with her collection Citizen: An American Lyric, included on a shortlist that also includes an American and tw...
1st November 2015
Bridport prize judge Roger McGough notes lack of anger and 'rarity' of rhyme
This year’s Bridport prize poetry prize judge, Roger McGough, has observed in his judge’s comments that rhyme was “such a rarity” among the entries that he found himself “gasping for a villanelle or t...
1st November 2015
