All That Jazz and Other Poems: Adrian Green, Littoral Press
The first poem in the first poetry book I bought, way back in the early 1970s, consisted of two lines: “He breathed in air, he breathed out light./Charlie Parker was my delight.” The poet was Adrian Mitchell but I wasn’t quite sure who Parker was. After some research, and some vinyl borrowed from the library, I found out that Charlie “Bird” Parker was one of the greatest saxophone players ever to ...
19th December 2023
Tinikling: Karl Riordan, Smokestack
Library assistant Karl Riordan, who grew up in the former mining communities of the South Yorkshire coalfield, is the author of the chapbook The Tattooist’s Chair (Smokestack 2017). For the last five years he and his Filipino wife have been forced to live thousands of miles apart because of UK immig...
17th December 2023
Falling and Flying: Jeff Phelps, Offa's Press
This full collection - and with no pun relating to the title intended – feels like a breath of fresh air. ‘Remembering Snow’ is lyrical and profound in its recollections of childhood: “Steam is scrawl...
2nd December 2023
Making Other Plans: Nigel Planer, Flapjack
Nigel Planer is perhaps best known as Neil the hippy in the anarchic 1980s youth comedy The Young Ones. But as well as being an established actor with an impressive track record, he’s also a novelist,...
13th November 2023
Octopus Mind: Rachel Carney, Seren
Rachel Carney grew up in Sheffield and now lives in Cardiff where she teaches creative writing. For several years she worked in museums and is completing a PhD on the potential of ekphrastic poetry as...
10th November 2023
The Turpentine Tree: Lynne Hjelmgaard, Seren
Not to be confused with the turpentine tree in the Eucalypt forests of Australia, the tree in question here is Bursera simaruba, commonly known as gumbo-limbo or copperwood, a tree species native to t...
9th November 2023
Looking back at this year's Marsden poetry jam ... and remembering Paul Blackburn
It was all change for the Write Out Loud poetry jam last month at Marsden Jazz Festival. With our usual venue the Railway Inn unavailable, we decamped to Sass Wellbeing Studio and Coffee House, replac...
6th November 2023
Twelve hours of poetry, sea shanties, and a message from the laureate: pushing the boat out to celebrate publisher’s 50th anniversary
A north-east magazine and publisher celebrated its 50th anniversary in spectacular style on Sunday with a 12-hour reading comprising close to 50 poets, as well as musical interludes that included the ...
30th October 2023
Still a place of refuge? National Poetry Day raises questions
National Poetry Day 2023, and its theme of ‘Refuge’. For me that meant a bus trip into Newcastle on Thursday evening, to the university’s Culture Lab, to hear two poets – Jacqueline Saphra and Kostya ...
9th October 2023
Pressed for Time: John Foggin, Calder Valley Poetry
This collection, which was published in 2022, was John Foggin’s last before his death earlier this year. He liked to describe himself as a poetry ‘late developer’, and over recent years won a successi...
13th September 2023
England, his England: Harry Gallagher’s poetic plea for ‘decency’
He was constantly apologising – or maybe, mock-apologising – whenever a ‘political’ poem came up. But now and again they did. Popular north-east poet Harry Gallagher is passionate about … decency. It ...
1st September 2023
Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice: ed. Anne Caldwell, Oz Hardwick, Routledge
Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice is an engaging collection of essays that focus on the on the how and the why of prose poetry. However, the question I get asked most about this enigmatic form as a ...
25th August 2023
Wunderkammer: Helen Ivory, MadHat Press
Wunderkammer is the new and selected poems of UK poet Helen Ivory, published by New England publisher MadHat Press, based in Massachusetts. The book contains poems that chart Helen Ivory’s poetry care...
25th August 2023
We Wear the Crown: Lucy Heuschen, Hedgehog Press
We Wear the Crown is a brave and slant testament to surviving breast cancer, written by a poet who never fails to keep her readers close. This slim volume packs in a world of pain, family disruption a...
22nd August 2023
Magic in the mix: laid-back poetry night casts its own spell
I hesitate to write about this poetry night, for fear of breaking its spell. All poetry nights are different in their own way, but Wooler Poetry Café close to the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland has a...
12th August 2023
There is an England: Harry Gallagher, Stairwell
Harry Gallagher is a poet who grew up in Middlesbrough and now lives on the North Tyneside coast. He is a very popular poetry figure in the north-east, and also a singer-songwriter and playwright. He...
26th July 2023
The beauty and the pain: a view of strife-torn Sri Lanka, by more than 100 poets
“The time is right – the moment is now – for the world to know Sri Lanka better: its beauty and its pain.” These words come from the introduction to a new anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry ...
24th July 2023
Wild Orchids: Simon Fletcher, Offa's Press
Simon Fletcher is a freelance writer, editor and poet who lives in Shropshire, and has published a number of poetry collections. He runs workshops in green spaces and places, and was commended in last...
27th June 2023
Selected Poems of Clive Branson: ed. Richard Knott, Smokestack
Clive Branson was born in India in 1907, and studied at the Slade School of Art. Five of his paintings are today in the Tate. After becoming a Communist in the 1930s he fought with the International B...
27th June 2023
Not Glastonbury, but … finding poetry at a village festival just up the road
It was the weekend of Glastonbury. But unaccountably we took a wrong turning, and ended up just five miles away in the next village to ours, at an event called Feltonbury instead. It’s been staged in ...
27th June 2023
Look north! Kate Fox gives poetry a kick-start at arts festival
For almost 20 years the village of Alnmouth on the Northumberland coast has staged an annual festival where artists, craftspeople and designers exhibit and sell works in more than 20 private and publi...
18th June 2023
Amplify: Janine Booth, Allographic Press
Following a live performance, there are some poets whose voices you continue to hear whilst reading their printed words. Janine Booth is one such poet. Once heard, her sometimes strident, often mockin...
17th June 2023
Earth Walker: Ros Woolner, Offa's Press
Ros Woolner grew up in the Thames Valley. After studying and working in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Germany and West Africa, she now lives in Wolverhampton, where she works as a translator. She i...
28th May 2023
Picture this: poets give their support to north-east photographic gallery forced to close
A much-loved photographic and film gallery in the centre of Newcastle was forced to close in April after losing its Arts Council grant, and facing rising energy bills. But that’s not the end of the st...
28th May 2023
The Spaces Between Us, eds. Kathleen Morgan, Jamie Stewart and Oz Hardwick, Indigo Dreams
This miscellany of poetry and prose comprises the eighth annual Wordspace anthology produced in collaboration with Indigo Dreams Publishing. All of the 30 contributors in this volume, ranging from est...
20th May 2023
To the lighthouse? Pointing out new directions at bookshop reading
Before the bookshop reading I spoke to another early arrival, a man who had only recently retired. Since retiring he had discovered writing, and now rarely thought of anything else. He had come, he sa...
5th May 2023
Out for Air: Olly Todd, Penned in the Margins
What do poetry and skateboarding have in common? The answer might well be Olly Todd. Former professional skateboarder turned poet, Todd now lives in East Sussex. His poems have appeared in Ambit, The ...
24th April 2023
After: Mark Connors, Yaffle
Too many fine poetry collections are published and then languish, unsung. That’s just the way it is. This review is an attempt to redress the balance in the case of just one of those collections – Aft...
21st April 2023
Under the Ice: the sounds of Antarctica, by poet, composer, and scientists
“Immense creaks, cracks, rumbles …” a few of the opening words from Northumberland poet Katrina Porteous’s ‘Under the Ice’, a 30-minute poetry performance with electronic music by the late Peter Zinov...
17th April 2023
Remembering Henry: poets gather to aid children’s cancer charity
This weekend marks the Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering, a three-day festival of street entertainment, indoor events, music, dance, craft, dialect, heritage and general fun that’s held the weekend after...
15th April 2023
Yes Life: Dominic Berry, Flapjack Press
Manchester-based performance poet Dominic Berry has twice been voted best spoken word artist in the Saboteur awards. The affirmative title Yes Life gives a major clue to the uplifting content of most ...
19th March 2023
'It's me, she said. It was the physio': Michael Rosen recounts his Covid ordeal, step by step, in new collection
In early March 2020 the poet Michael Rosen was doing what he normally did, making school visits, socialising. Then Covid struck him down, and nearly killed him. He spent three months in hospital, of w...
17th March 2023
The Ghostly Effect: Paul Surman, Dempsey & Windle
Oxford-based poet Paul Surman’s first collection, Places (Oversteps Books) was published in 2018. A further collection, Seasons of Damage and Beauty (Dempsey & Windle) followed in 2021. He is a member...
10th March 2023
The Taking Part: Joe Williams, Maytree Press
This short collection by Joe Williams comes with an evocative cover image by Walker Scott. In a Lowryesque scene in a back street a hunched figure passes by while two youngsters play football, the goa...
10th March 2023
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head: Warsan Shire, Chatto & Windus
Warsan Shire’s first full collection captivates the reader with the precision and pressing rhythm of her lines that reflect the urgency of her message. Shire is a Somali-British poet who was born in N...
6th March 2023
Reinforcements! Yorkshire contingent joins Words on the Wall
You might be forgiven in February for shivering at the thought of Northumberland’s Words on the Wall, given Hexham’s setting, close to the evocative Hadrian’s Wall. Cold, bleak, inhospitable? Not a bi...
23rd February 2023
Resurrection of a Black Man: Jenny Mitchell, Indigo Dreams
Jenny Mitchell’s impressive and award-winning two previous collections – both reviewed by Write Out Loud – were largely about Britain’s involvement in slavery, and its pain, misery and legacy as seen ...
10th February 2023
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head: Warsan Shire, Chatto & Windus
Warsan Shire’s first full collection captivates the reader with the precision and pressing rhythm of her lines that reflect the urgency of her message. Shire is a Somali-British poet who was born in N...
10th February 2023
For those in peril ... a heady brew of music, poetry and beer
Music and poetry is generally a good mix. Add beer, history, and stirring tales of lifeboats, and you have all the ingredients for a heady brew. And so it proved at Newcastle’s Biscuit Factory art gal...
6th February 2023
Taking the last bus home after nights like these! Brian Bilston wows big audience at the New Poetry Shack in London
The hugely popular “poet laureate of Twitter” Brian Bilston has always been somewhat of a mystery man, keen to obscure his true identity and limiting his public appearances. He does seem to be getting...
2nd February 2023
Second Glance: Ron Scowcroft, Oversteps Books
Ron Scowcroft lives in Lancaster. His pamphlet Moon Garden was published by Wayleave Press in 2014 and his full collection Second Glance by Oversteps Books in 2022. A number of poems in the latter hav...
2nd February 2023
Workwear: Carla Scarano D'Antonio, The High Window Press
There is much to admire and enjoy in Workwear. Carla Scarano D’Antonio’s clarity of vision, disarming directness and artist’s eye for detail take us on a journey in which portraiture, domesticity and ...
30th January 2023
Poet of the borderlands: uncovering the riches of Northumberland with Noel Hodgson
To Horncliffe, the most northerly village in England, on the southern side of the river Tweed, for a poetry reading. It is what the Scots call a dreich day, cold and wet. Well, it is January. But the ...
12th January 2023
