Alice Oswald is Oxford's first female professor of poetry
Alice Oswald has been elected as the next Oxford University professor of poetry, it was announced today. She received 1,046 votes, followed by Andrew McMillan with 210, and Todd Swift with 58.
Her awards include the TS Eliot prize in 2012 and the 2017 Griffin poetry prize, which she won for her seventh collection of poems, Falling Awake. She will succeed Simon Armitage, who has been appointed p...
21st June 2019
Joy Harjo is first Native American US poet laureate
Joy Harjo has been named as the first Native American poet laureate by the US Library of Congress. Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, will take over from Tracy K Smith, who has held the position for two years, and follows in the footsteps of such names as Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and Bill...
19th June 2019
Slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo wins Carnegie book award
A Dominican-American slam poet has won the UK children’s books award, the Carnegie medal. Elizabeth Acevedo, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, was awarded the medal for her verse novel, The Poet X...
19th June 2019
Posthumous collection by Leanne Bridgewater will aid animal protest campaigns
A posthumous collection of poetry and art by innovative poet, artist and animal rights campaigner Leanne Bridgewater, who died earlier this year at the age of 29, has been published by Hesterlock Pres...
18th June 2019
Yomi Sode, Anthony Joseph, and Hafsah Aneela Bashir awarded £15,000 Jerwood Fellowships
Hafsah Aneela Bashir, Anthony Joseph and Yomi Sode have been chosen as Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows for 2019-20. Each poet receives £15,000, and is given a year of critical support and mentoring aim...
17th June 2019
A villanelle for the cup that cheers: Julian Jordon's poem accompanies Refugee Week animation
Refugee Week begins today, Monday 17 June – and Write Out Loud is playing its part. Write Out Loud’s editor-in-chief, Julian Jordon, pictued below, was asked to write a poem to accompany a short piece...
17th June 2019
Listen up! Accent's on Yorkshire poets in dialect programme on t'radio
A radio series looking at dialect poetry in different parts of England visits Yorkshire on Sunday. Dr Katie Edwards, who found herself mocked in academic circles for her broad South Yorkshire accent, ...
13th June 2019
New laureate plans environment award and hopes for national poetry centre
The new poet laureate Simon Armitage has spoken of setting up an award for poets responding to the climate crisis, and even a national poetry centre. In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian he a...
11th June 2019
The poetry of science: new book links creativity and discoveries
A new book that investigates the ways in which poetry has influenced the lives and works of six pioneering scientists has been written by an author who writes a weekly poem about science.
A Sonnet ...
10th June 2019
Mapping England and Wales with poetry - how you could be involved
A project centred on place is inviting poets to add their poems to a new digital map of England and Wales. The organisers say Places of Poetry is open to all readers and writers, and aims to use creat...
7th June 2019
Wenlock's bookshop and poetry hub is forced to close
In 2016 the-then poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, led a readings tour to support independent bookshops. Her itinerary included Wenlock Books, in the small town of Much Wenlock, Shropshire, which is no...
6th June 2019
'Unclaimed child' Lemn Sissay wins PEN Pinter prize
Lemn Sissay has won the PEN Pinter prize, set up in memory of playwright Harold Pinter. Sissay, who is chancellor of the University of Manchester, was born to an Ethiopian mother in Lancashire in 1967...
3rd June 2019
