Simon Armitage welcomes spring and the National Trust's blossom campaign
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a poem that welcomes spring, as well as marking World Poetry Day. ‘Plum Tree Among the Skyscrapers’ conjures up a plum tree growing through a “cracked slab in a city square”, and is the first in a collection of poems inspired by blossom that have been commissioned by the National Trust. In his poem Armitage goes on to describe the little tree as a “a ...
29th March 2023
John Cooper Clarke poem that's a favourite at weddings goes global - thanks to the Arctic Monkeys
Is it now the world’s favourite poem? According to an article in the Guardian, a musical version of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ by the Arctic Monkeys has clocked up almost a billion streams on Spotify, after becoming a sensation on the social media platform TikTok.
JJC’s poem, which i...
20th March 2023
Ambit ends publication after 64 years with issue 249
The quarterly poetry, fiction and art magazine Ambit, that was launched in 1959, has announced that it is ending publication with its 249th issue. A statement by its chair, Tim Bax, said: “Over the ye...
19th March 2023
Call to keep £20,000 Coleridge anti-slavery poem in UK
An anti-slavery poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is at risk of leaving the UK unless a domestic buyer can be found, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has warned.
Coleridge wrote th...
18th March 2023
Pupils 'missing out' on poetry in primary schools
Primary schools in the UK have “limited poetry book stock” and there are “many barriers” to the teaching of poetry, with a majority of teachers feeling that they don’t have enough knowledge about poet...
15th March 2023
Poetry of place: Gaia Holmes wins £10,000 Arts Foundation award
Popular Yorkshire poet Gaia Holmes has won a prestigious £10,000 Arts Foundation Future Awards fellowship for Place Writing, for her poetry collection Where The Road Runs Out (Comma Press). The collec...
4th March 2023
