'Taking the poem inside you': pupils battle it out for place in Poetry By Heart finals
Throughout England secondary school pupils aged 14-18 are standing up to recite in public two poems that they have learned by heart. The regional and county contests for Poetry By Heart, an organisation set up by the former poet laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, are taking place, to find finallists to battle it out next month in Cambridge. I was at the Surrey heat on Wednesday night, as a member of the...
29th February 2016
Cocktail of sun, sea and Sheffield provides joyous mix at the Troubadour
Mix ingredients from the Caribbean with a pinch or two from Sheffield and Derbyshire. Think of love, death, and a day spent at home instead of going to work. Three poets - Malika Booker, Peter Sansom and Paul Maddern – linked up at the Troubadour on Monday night when they took part in What We Shoul...
29th February 2016
London literary weekend aims to redress festivals imbalance for writers of colour
Malika Booker, Jane Yeh, RA Villanueva, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Anthony Anaxagorou and Raymond Antrobus are among the poets that will be taking part in a new literature festival in London next weekend t...
28th February 2016
Deadline nears for £500 Poets & Players competition
Jackie Kay will be judging Manchester’s Poets & Players £500 poetry competition. The deadline is 29 February. More details
PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD
27th February 2016
Underneath the arches ... three spoken word stars at new venue in Bristol
Three spoken word stars - Salena Godden, pictured, Sabrina Mahfouz, and Vanessa Kisuule - are lined up at appear together at a new underground arts venue in Bristol next month. Joelle Taylor, regular ...
27th February 2016
'Maybe it's what we don't say that saves us'
After my mother died, her best friend told me that they were so close that they could sit together in a room for an hour and neither felt she had to say a word. Here's a fine poem by Dorianne Laux, ab...
25th February 2016
Write Out Loud's David Andrew heads off for philosophy stint in Iceland
Write Out Loud’s David Andrew is taking up a new challenge next month. Our long-standing Gig Guide editor and now board member will be philosopher in residence for a month at a “creative centre” at St...
23rd February 2016
Riot of poetry plus two laureates at City Voices in Wolverhampton
The West Midlands is a region of hidden gems. One such gem is the City Voices poetry evening in Wolverhampton. Now in its 15th year, it has hosted visiting poets each and every month since it was firs...
18th February 2016
A Gap in the Rain: Barbara Cumbers, Indigo Dreams
Barbara Cumbers is a poet whose work makes you think of sudden inundations and new landscapes, the slow movement and shape-shifting of continents. Her first full collection, ‘A Gap in the Rain’, (Indi...
18th February 2016
Hebden Bridge stages poetry night in aid of flood appeal
Rose Condo, pictured, and Rosie Garland will be the guest poets at a spoken word open mic night in aid of the Calder valley flood appeal at the Fox and Goose pub in Hebden Bridge on Thursday 18 Februa...
18th February 2016
Yesterday's Music Today: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press
This is a wonderfully varied anthology that, like a good compilation tape (remember those?), never settles down into the obvious, and can veer from Billie Holiday to the psychedelia of Gong in the tur...
18th February 2016
Irascible, ill-mannered, worthy but dull? An evening with Wordsworth includes his bad points
“You’ll have to stay another night. The Wordsworth Trust’s running a poetry session in the café tomorrow.” Jane Rousseau – no relation to Jean Jacques – was adamant, even offering to let me stay for f...
17th February 2016
Poetry from the heart at Write Out Loud Marsden tonight
Forget February fourteenth, select the seventeenth to consider affairs of the art of poetry. Romantic fools, or foolish romantics might focus on the heart as a theme at Write Out Loud Marsden at Marsd...
17th February 2016
Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside arts centre tonight
There are plenty of open mic slots available at Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside arts centre, Sale on Tuesday 16 February. Your hosts are Sarah Pritchard and Mo Harrop, and it starts at 7.30pm. En...
16th February 2016
'The older we get the stranger my husband becomes'
It's said that each of us undergoes gradual change and that every seven years we are essentially a new person. Here's a poem by Freya Manfred, who lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, about the changes in ...
15th February 2016
Shall I compare thee to a selfie stick? Dos and don'ts of first-person poetry
Can a poem be considered as a selfie stick? And how much “I” should there be in poetry? These were a couple of key questions considered by poets Fiona Sampson, Tim Liardet, RA Villanueva, and Fiona Mo...
14th February 2016
Malika Booker will be chairing the Forward prize judges
Writer and spoken word artist Malika Booker will be chairing this year’s judging panel for the Forward poetry prizes. The panel also includes poets George Szirtes and Liz Berry, singer-songwriter Trac...
14th February 2016
Stepping up to the mic: Steve Pottinger is Write Out Loud's new chief executive
Write Out Loud is delighted to announce that poet Steve Pottinger has agreed to become its chief executive to oversee the next stage of this unique poetry organisation’s development. With his fantasti...
12th February 2016
Writing project to celebrate Batley and Dewsbury - with linkup to Tunisia
Two creative writing and poetry workshops that will celebrate Batley and Dewsbury, past and present, and link up with a similar initiative in Tunisia will be taking place at Batley library later this ...
11th February 2016
Sweetheart deal tonight for Write Out Loud in Wigan
It’s a Valentine’s special at Write Out Loud Wigan on Thursday 11 February. The message is: Bring your words of love, romance, sex, even anti-valentine! This free open mic night starts at 8.30pm at th...
11th February 2016
Louise Fazackerley to open new spoken word night in Wakefield
Louise Fazackerley will be the guest poet at a new monthly spoken word night in Wakefield opening later this month, organised by Wakefield’s A Firm of Poets, in partnership with Sheffield-based Word L...
11th February 2016
Northern poets Kim Moore and Andrew Forster selected for Read Regional campaign
Kim Moore’s debut collection, The Art of Falling, and Andrew Forster’s Homecoming have been selected by arts organisation New Writing North in their list of 10 titles from the north of England for thi...
10th February 2016
'Our small talk numbing as a dial tone, serious as prayer'
A friend told me recently that he tries to keep in touch with people he's known even though they don't put any effort into doing that themselves. Here's William Trowbridge, who lives in Missouri, maki...
9th February 2016
VerseMobbers look for recruits to create public poetry encounters
A London-based group of poets that aims to create “public poetry encounters”, writing, creating and then performing together ”in unusual and unexpected places” are looking for more recruits. VerseMobb...
9th February 2016
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 8 February for another open-floor poetry reading, starting at 7pm. Each month the group produces a collage poem b...
8th February 2016
Nicaragua declares poet a national hero to mark centenary
Parliamentarians have declared a revered Nicaraguan poet a “national hero” on the centenary of his death, the Telesur news agency reported. Rubén Darío was given the accolade by the national assembly ...
6th February 2016
Poets back National Libraries Day as campaigners fight closures
There will be poetry events in libraries up and down the country on Saturday 6 February to mark National Libraries Day, with campaigners hoping it will also draw attention to the number of libraries f...
6th February 2016
Wanted: poems about Yorkshire for new anthology by Valley Press
Scarborough-based Valley Press is calling for submissions for an anthology of poetry about Yorkshire, to be published in October this year, from writers based anywhere in the world. Poems can be on an...
5th February 2016
Deadline nears for £500 York literature festival competition
Carole Bromley will be judging the £500 York literature festival / YorkMix poetry competition. The deadline is 14 February. More details
5th February 2016
Small Nuclear Family: Mel Pryor, Eyewear Publishing
Small Nuclear Family is a debut collection. This, too, is the first time that a collection from the excellent Eyewear Publishing has been reviewed on this site. A wrong hereby righted. I love the appe...
4th February 2016
Deadline nears for poetry competition in aid of cold weather shelters
George Szirtes will be judging the 2015-16 Camden Lumen poetry competition in aid of the Cold Weather Shelters project for the homeless. The winner have 20 pages of poetry published in a perfect bound...
3rd February 2016
Luke Wright brings award-winning Edinburgh show about Blair years to London
Luke Wright will be appearing in his latest show, What I Learned From Johnny Bevan, which won two awards at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, in a three-week run starting in February at London’s Soho thea...
3rd February 2016
Poet reprieved from execution but still faces 800 lashes and long jail term
A Saudi court has overturned the death sentence of a Palestinian poet accused of renouncing Islam, and imposed an eight-year prison term and 800 lashes instead. The decision by a panel of judges came ...
2nd February 2016
