Happy hols - but watch out for poetry event cancellations over Christmas and New Year
The festive holidays are upon us … and this can be one of those times when some gig owners forget to notify everyone that regular events listed on Write Out Loud are cancelled over Christmas and New Year.
Please let everyone know if your regular event is not happening during the Christmas holiday period by amending your listing in the Write Out Loud Gig Guide. Ands, at the same time, if your e...
31st December 2016
The medium's his message: how David Turner gets podcast poets to relax and chat
It might seem odd to some, one interviewer interrogating another, but David Turner was far too polite to comment on my old-tech approach of turning up with a list of questions on a clipboard, and then scribbling down the answers in a sub-shorthand, semi-legible scrawl. (It’s why I prefer to intervie...
27th December 2016
'The foxes are bouncing, the baby awakes': McGonagall's Christmas message
Stand-up poet Elvis McGonagall has sent out his own Christmas message to followers in the form of a festive poem – and explained it thus:
“Noddy Holder screaming ‘It's Christmas!’ for me is just th...
27th December 2016
We at Write Out Loud wish you the best at Christmas and a successful New Year
Joy to the world: poetry party to launch manifesto*. After one of the strangest years in living memory, having given up on politicians’ prosaic pontification, and fed up with the falsehoods of the med...
24th December 2016
Richard Scott and the Emma Press win £5,000 awards
Richard Scott has won the £5,000 Michael Marks poetry pamphlet award for his collection Wound, published by The Rialto. Judges Debbie Cox, Paul Batchelor, Adam O’Riordan said that Scott’s pamphlet “wo...
23rd December 2016
Absent Dylan 'panned poetry gold', says Swedish critic at Nobel awards night
True to form, Bob Dylan failed to turn up to receive his Nobel prize for literature at the annual awards dinner in Sweden. But in the speech he sent, which was read out by the US ambassador to Sweden,...
21st December 2016
Solstice poems from Coleridge, Jamie and Duffy on Radio 4
Actor Simon Russell Beale will be reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ as part of Radio 4’s day of poems for the winter solstice on Wednesday 21 December. Other winter solstice poems ...
21st December 2016
Huddersfield University launches Ted Hughes Network
Huddersfield University launched an initiative establishing the university as a new hub for research, collaboration, projects and events about Ted Hughes on Wednesday, with readings by poets Ian Parks...
20th December 2016
Write Out Loud Woking at the New Inn tonight
Join hosts Greg Freeman and Rodney Wood for some Yultetide cheer at a festive edition of Write Out Loud Woking at the New Inn at Send in Surrey on Monday 19 December. Entry is free to this open-mic po...
19th December 2016
Poet celebrates 45 years with milestone collection and the sounds of seagulls
A publisher paid tribute to “someone who has quietly become one of our best poets” at the launch of a collection covering 45 years of poetry. Tim Dooley is a tutor for the Poetry School and a visiting...
14th December 2016
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 12 December to share poetry. Each month a collage poem is produced from the poetic contributions of the evening, and you can...
12th December 2016
Westminster abbey finds room for Larkin in Poets' Corner
“Our almost-instinct almost true: / What will survive of us is love.” The final lines from Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, that describes the effigies of a knight and his wife, have been insc...
10th December 2016
Emily Berry is new editor of Poetry Review magazine
Emily Berry has been named as the new editor of the Poetry Society’s quarterly Poetry Review magazine. She succeeds Maurice Riordan, who has been editor since 2013.
Berry grew up in London and st...
8th December 2016
Christmas cracker at Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts tonight
Open micers in Wigan are invited to bring Christmas poems and humbug verse to Write Out Loud at the Old Courts, Wigan on Thursday 8 February. It’s an earlier start than usual – 8pm – to make sure ever...
8th December 2016
Poets in West Midlands launch collection for Syria
Writers from Stourbridge and elsewhere in the West Midlands have contributed to a collection of poetry aimed at raising money for humanitarian aid in Syria, with the plea “that the inhumanity of dropp...
5th December 2016
Church Going: Larkin to be honoured at Westminster on Friday
A stone will be placed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster abbey on Friday 2 December in memory of Philip Larkin, who died on the same date in 1985. It marks the culmination of a long campaign by the Phil...
1st December 2016
