'The pleasures of performing include the frisson that it might all go wrong - and the nice cup of tea afterwards': Kate Fox
Stand-up poet and writer Kate Fox has been a regular on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, and has two new shows due to be aired on Radio 4 this month. In an email interview with Greg Freeman, she talks about doing a university PhD in performance; her years in radio journalism; raising awareness of the value of poetry and spoken word by campaigning on pay issues and establishing a poets’ network; and ho...
30th June 2015
Deadline nears for £1,000 Ledbury poetry competition
Deryn Rees-Jones will be judging the £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition. The deadline is 9 July. More details
29th June 2015
Deadline close for £700 Battered Moons competition
Pascale Petit, pictured, and Cristina Navazo-Eguía Newton will be judging the £700 Battered Moons poetry competition. The deadline is 30 June. More details
28th June 2015
Deadline nears for Paragram's chapbook competition
Paragram, which was set up to encourage new writers, is offering the chance for one poet to publish a short collection in its chapbook competition. Poems submitted for the chapbook competition will al...
28th June 2015
Eileen Earnshaw at Write Out Loud Middleton at the Ring O' Bells tonight
Eileen Earnshaw is the guest poet at Write Out Loud Middleton on Sunday 28 June at the Ring O’ Bells, St Leonards Square, Middleton. Entry is £2 to this open mic event, hosted by Norman Warwick. It be...
28th June 2015
Y Tuesday, Clerkenwell: candles and cake, somewhere between seance and sewing circle
Paul Tims recalls a night at Y Tuesday, upstairs at the Three Kings pub in Clerkenwell, London:
“Number three: Poseidon is Morrissey,” said Kevin Rienhardt, before launching into his poem about tra...
28th June 2015
Larkin to get Poets' Corner memorial
Philip Larkin is to be honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. A floor stone dedicated to Larkin will join those of other poets including WH Auden, TS Eliot, William Wordsworth...
27th June 2015
Expecting rain? Pete the Temp is this year's Glastonbury website poet in residence
Pete the Temp, pictured, is this year’s website poet in residence at Glastonbury festival - and one of his first Glastonbury poems, 'Pray for Rain', concludes: "You’ll be digested / by the mud / in y...
26th June 2015
Write Out Loud's Risk a Verse at Huddersfield tonight
Write Out Loud’s Risk a Verse returns to the Red and Green Club, at Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, on Thursday 25 June. All are welcome to join in this laid-back, friendly poetry open-floor, which begins ...
25th June 2015
The power of Yeats: BBC's Fergal Keane on the poet he takes on his travels
A multi-award-winning BBC foreign correspondent, whose parents were both actors and whose father knew Louis MacNeice, drew fresh resonances from WB Yeats’ ‘Easter 1916’ on Wednesday night when he read...
25th June 2015
Counting down to Edinburgh: nine spoken word shows bound for the Fringe to be showcased in one day in Newcastle
With the countdown to Edinburgh Fringe festival in August now well under way, nine spoken word shows en route to Edinburgh will be showcased in one day at the beginning of August in Newcastle. No Slee...
24th June 2015
Calling Terry and Julie: poetry bookshop is opening soon near Waterloo
It is, as the words on the wall tell you, not far from the scene of the famous song. A London poetry bookshop will be opening within weeks at Old Paradise Yard, which is about 10 minutes’ walk from W...
23rd June 2015
Deadline nears for £1,000 McLellan poetry competition
Simon Armitage will be judging the £1,000 McLellan poetry prize, part of the annual McLellan arts festival on the Isle of Arran. The deadline is 30 June. More details
PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN...
21st June 2015
Write Out Loud Bolton at the Brooklyn tonight
Hosts Jeffarama! and Gordon Zola will be welcoming you once more to Bolton Write Out Loud on Sunday 21 June at the Brooklyn pub, Green Lane, Bolton. Entry is £1 plus raffle to this open mic event, whi...
21st June 2015
Deadline nears for Ambit's £500 poetry competition
Dan O’Brien will be judging Ambit magazine’s £500 summer poetry competition. The deadline is 15 July. More details
Background: the Write Out Loud interview
PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE...
19th June 2015
Write a short poem on reading and literature aimed at youngsters
The National Literacy Trust has launched its first poetry prize, in partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing, and is asking for short poems of up to 16 lines, on the themes of reading and/or literature,...
19th June 2015
An American at Oxford: AE Stallings on how she became a professor of poetry contender
The only female contender and the only American in the contest to become the next professor of poetry at Oxford has spoken of how it had originally “never crossed my mind” to throw her hat into the ri...
19th June 2015
Rant on: leading poets raise profile of 1980s movement
Attila the Stockbroker, John Cooper Clarke, John Hegley, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Janine Booth (The Big J) are among those on the bill at Stand Up and Spit at Camden Centre in London Thursday 18 June,...
18th June 2015
In the footsteps of WB Yeats to mark his 150th anniversary
A sequence of events celebrating WB Yeats’ 150th birthday on 13 June and his links with the Bedford Park area of Chiswick, west London will be staged this month. On Wednesday 17 June, journalist, broa...
18th June 2015
Taking your poetry pulse at Write Out Loud Marsden tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Marsden have a chance to check their poetry pulses at their meeting at Marsden library, on Wednesday 17 June at 7.30pm. The non-obligatory theme for the open-floor evening is...
17th June 2015
Craig Raine hits back at 'Gatwick' critics
Craig Raine has replied to critics of his poem, published in the London Review of Books, about admiring a young woman at Gatwick airport. Raine’s poem includes these lines: “I want to say I like your...
17th June 2015
John Foggin and Heather Jane Fleming at Write Out Sale tonight
John Foggin and Heather Jane Fleming are the guests at Write Out Loud Sale on Tuesday 16 June at the Waterside arts centre, Sale. Entry is £3/£2 to this open mic event, which begins at 7.30pm and is h...
16th June 2015
Imagined Sons: Carrie Etter, Seren
Discussing the topic of lyric poetry on an Arvon course last year, I heard someone say that all lyric is about the absence of the loved one.
True or not, I found this idea an arresting and fruitful...
15th June 2015
Thought-Apples: Bert Flitcroft, Offa's Press
The title is apt; former English teacher and Midlands poet Bert Flitcroft has put a lot of thought, and indeed thoughts, into these poems. An insight may be gained from ‘Forbidden Fruit’; its content ...
14th June 2015
Michael Longley wins £34,000 Griffin international prize
Michael Longley has won Canada’s Griffin international prize, said to be the world’s largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in or translated into English. Belfast-born L...
14th June 2015
Fenland's poet laureate launches poetry and prose magazine for 'overlooked' region
A new literary magazine for East Anglia has been launched by Fenland’s new poet laureate, Jonathan Totman. The Fenland Reed will be edited by Totman and local writer Mary Livingstone, with one themed ...
11th June 2015
Darren Thomas is compere at Write Out Loud Wigan tonight
Darren Thomas will be compering Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts, Crawford Street, Wigan, on Thursday 11 June. Entry is free to this long-running open mic event, and it starts at 8.30pm. More de...
11th June 2015
Forward director praises 'transformative' best first collection shortlist
The diversity of this year’s Forward prize shortlist for best first collection has been hailed as “a transformative moment in poetry publishing”. The shortlist for the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize includ...
10th June 2015
Heartwarming night as Jackie Hagan, Jo Bell, Hollie McNish win Saboteur awards
There were some dramatic and heartwarming stories as the 2015 Saboteur awards were handed out on Sunday night. Jackie Hagan, whose Some People Have Too Many Legs won best spoken word show, sent a mess...
9th June 2015
'There's no reason why poetry should have such a small readership': Paul McMenemy on his plans for a poetry bookshop
A crowdfunding appeal to raise £5,000 to fund a poetry bookshop in London has ended up just a few hundred pounds short of its target. In an interview with Frances Spurrier, the man behind the idea, Pa...
8th June 2015
Stitching together text and textiles at Write Out Loud Stockport tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be taking part in a workshop with author Sarah Butler to find The Heart of Stockport at their meeting on Monday 8 June, at Stockport art gallery. Work produced...
8th June 2015
Meeting up with Muldoon: Manchester's Poets and Players competition winners
What a great return to the newly-extended Whitworth art gallery for Mancheser's Poets and Players, where a full house heard the results of the 2015 poetry competition. Not only did we hear the winners...
8th June 2015
New 'page and stage' anthology to be launched in Guildford
Two new, previously unpublished poems from veteran playwright and poet Bernard Kops, plus contributions from Ash Dickinson, Steve Pottinger, Chrys Salt, Wendy Klein, David Cooke, Paul Sutherland and B...
5th June 2015
'Self-schooled poet' Simon Armitage bids to become Oxford professor of poetry
Simon Armitage has thrown his hat into the ring to be the next professor of poetry at Oxford University, a prestigious position seen as second only to the poet laureateship. In a statement, the bestse...
4th June 2015
Deadline nears for Mslexia poetry competitions
The Mslexia women’s poem and pamphlet competitions are open for entries, with a closing date of 15 June. Deryn Rees-Jones will be judging the £2,000 single poem competition, which has an etnry fee of ...
3rd June 2015
US poet Maya Popa and Cornwall's Kate Compston win Hippocrates prizes
Teacher and writer Maya Popa, pictured, from New York, has won the £5,000 Hippocrates open prize for poetry and medicine. Second was Pascale Petit, and third was Catherine Ayres.
Another £5,000 Hip...
3rd June 2015
'Poetry should have bite and snarl, but it's better for joy and sadness than anger': Luke Wright
Energetic performance poet and broadcaster Luke Wright has a new show out – and he’s still touring with his old one, too. He was performing his new production, What I Learned from Johnny Bevan, at the...
1st June 2015
