Visiting the Minotaur: Claire Williamson, Seren
Processing bereavement and progressing along the difficult path of recovering trauma are the excruciating steps that delineate Clare Williamson’s poetry. Her mother and brother committed suicide and she was abused verbally and physically when she was a child. These experiences are revisited and explored in her poems, which connect with ancient myths, mediated by pictures, dreams and lyrical visio...
30th June 2020
'Her smile an invitation to join in her bliss'
I was once on Deer Isle, Maine, on the Fourth of July, and attended their own town parade. Deer Isle isn’t big enough to mount a very long parade, so they ran it past us twice, first down to the water, and then back up. And we applauded as much with our second viewing as we did with the first. July ...
29th June 2020
Six black British poets on Black Lives Matter, and publishing challenges in the UK
The Observer has published interviews with six leading black British poets – Linton Kwesi Johnson, Vanessa Kisuule, Raymond Antrobus, Grace Nichols, Kayo Chingongi, and Malika Booker, pictured. The in...
28th June 2020
'Let the poem go where it wants to go': AC Clarke
AC Clarke is a poet and translator who has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She did not concentrate on her writing until retirement in 2002, when she also moved to Scotland. Her fir...
28th June 2020
'Just like a chat down the pub': Luke Wright takes a break - after 100 consecutive online shows
There were times during his 100 consecutive online shows when leading performance poet Luke Wright felt that he “desperately wanted it to end, that it’s all been too much”. Whether he meant lockdown i...
27th June 2020
Frail Rosen home after three months in hospital with Covid-19 but not fully recovered
The writer and poet Michael Rosen has returned home, after spending three months in hospital with Covid-19, including many weeks in intensive care. His wife Emma-Louise Williams posted this picture on...
27th June 2020
Poems for the Planet: Mervyn Linford, Littoral Press
Mervyn Linford has been writing poetry and prose for nearly 50 years. He has had work broadcast on local and national radio and has been a featured poet at festivals in Essex and Suffolk. His publicat...
27th June 2020
Luke Wright performs his 100th consecutive online show - and now he plans a break
Indefatigable performance poet Luke Wright notched up his 100th consecutive spoken word show since the lockdown on Twitter last night – and now he’s finally taking a break. Luke will be switching to p...
27th June 2020
Hollie McNish in Manchester, 2015
I was expecting her to be polished and professional. I was expecting her to be entertaining and enthralling. What I was not expecting was to be laughing like a drain for the majority of her show. Holl...
26th June 2020
'She told us children how the cows could sense when their calves were marked for butchering'
Now and then, I get a complaint from one of our readers saying that what we publish isn’t poetry because it doesn’t rhyme. Actually, we’ve published quite a lot of poetry with rhymes — end-rhymes, hal...
22nd June 2020
CoronaVerses: ed. by Janine Booth, Attila the Stockbroker, Roundhead
Remember the start of this pandemic? The panic buying, the looting of toilet rolls? Seems a long time ago. Almost historic. On 18 March activist poet Janine Booth set up a Facebook group called Corona...
20th June 2020
'I wanted a real live reacting audience ... live streaming isn't the same thing at all. But now I've been converted to the potential of online gigs'
The Covid19 pandemic lockdown has hit live performance hard. Venues and artists have suffered loss of incomes, gigs and festivals have been cancelled, and book and album launches have had to be deferr...
20th June 2020
Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm poetry competition raises £7,000 for NHS Charities Together's Covid-19 appeal
Our heartfelt thanks to all those who have entered Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm poetry competition to raise funds for NHS Charities Together’s Covid-19 Urgent Appeal. At the competition’s deadlin...
20th June 2020
Simon Armitage in Washington DC, 2015
Simon Armitage is famously from Marsden, as is Write Out Loud. I walked past his dad the other day, during my morning constitutional; and here I was attending his and Peter Oswald’s reading at the Fol...
20th June 2020
BBC Casualty producer and actors back our competition to raise funds for NHS appeal
Write Out Loud is grateful for the support of BBC Casualty producer Dafydd Llewellyn and actors Gabriella Leon, Kirsty Mitchell and Olivia D'Lima, all poetry lovers, in backing our competition to rais...
19th June 2020
Questions answered: this is where the competition money you've been donating will go
You can find out in detail about the NHS Charities Together Covid-19 Urgent Appeal here. But below is a summary of where the money goes, taken from the organisation’s website Q&As:
What is the...
19th June 2020
'We love you NHS': moving messages from donors on our fundraising JustGiving page
We at Write Out Loud take pride in the fact that our Beyond the Storm competition has helped to emphasise once again that special bond between our wonderful National Health Service and the people it s...
19th June 2020
Don't leave it too late! It's deadline day to enter Write Out Loud's Beyond the Storm poetry competition
It's deadline day in Write Out Loud's Beyond the Storm poetry competition in support of NHS Charities Together’s Covid-19 Urgent Appeal! You have until 11.59pm tonight to enter your poem or poems base...
19th June 2020
Stockport Write Out Loud poets record eight weeks of lockdown in anthology
Members of Stockport Write Out Loud have produced an anthology of pandemic poetry, titled Eight Weeks of Lockdown, a week by week poetic diary about their thoughts and experiences.
Each week took a...
17th June 2020
'The music lived in his head, the tip of his tongue'
Karla Huston was Wisconsin’s poet laureate in 2017 and 2018, and lives in Appleton. She’s published several books and chapbooks and does the good work of reviewing poetry for various journals. 'Lip', ...
16th June 2020
He's tweeting again: recovering Michael Rosen returns to social media
The poet and writer Michael Rosen has returned to Twitter, almost three months after being taken to hospital with suspected Covid-19 and spending many weeks in intensive care.
Rosen, aged 74, who i...
14th June 2020
Poetry Foundation promises sweeping changes after Black Lives Matter resignations
The Poetry Foundation has promised sweeping reforms after an extraordinary few days in which its president, Henry Beinen, and the chair of the foundation’s board, Willard Bunn III, resigned in respons...
14th June 2020
Jo Bell, London, 2015
A journey through Jo Bell’s three years as canal laureate took place at Little Venice in London on Wednesday night, involving, among other things, kingfishers, dry docks, the enormous Caen Hill flight...
11th June 2020
'My dead father’s Brooks Brothers wingtips, heels worn down from running between women'
Here’s a delightful poem you can almost smell. Don’t we all know that old-shoe-plus-shoe-polish odour? I don’t remember oxblood smelling different from plain old black or brown, but Andy Roberts, writ...
9th June 2020
192 Miles with Carla: Robbie Frazer, Dempsey & Windle
An intriguing poetic journey is delineated in 192 Miles with Carla, the debut pamphlet by Robbie Frazer. The 18 poems are unique and diverse and never banal in their imageries and structures. Skilful ...
9th June 2020
Simon Armitage's band LYR sets sail with debut album Call in the Crash Team
Simon Armitage has found a place for “some little bits of writing that I really didn’t have a home for” – by turning them into lyrics performed by a band called LYR (Land Yacht Regatta) who will be re...
6th June 2020
Haggards: Elizabeth Rimmer, Red Squirrel Press
Elizabeth Rimmer is the author of two previous collections of poetry from Red Squirrel Press, Wherever We Live Now (2011) and The Territory of Rain (2015). In 2016 she was the Makar for the Federation...
6th June 2020
The Healing Next Time: 'This is poetry about an issue that should concern us all'
Last year Write Out Loud reviewed a collection by Midlands poet Roy McFarlane that we described as "a serious and determined attempt to document in poetry institutional and everyday racism in Britain"...
6th June 2020
Simon Armitage's band LYR sets sail with debut album Call in the Crash Team
Simon Armitage has found a place for “some little bits of writing that I really didn’t have a home for” – by turning them into lyrics performed by a band called LYR (Land Yacht Regatta) who will be re...
6th June 2020
Simon Armitage's band LYR sets sail with debut album Call in the Crash Team
Simon Armitage has found a place for “some little bits of writing that I really didn’t have a home for” – by turning them into lyrics performed by a band called LYR (Land Yacht Regatta) who will be re...
6th June 2020
Kate Tempest, Manchester, 2014
I’ll be honest, dear readers, I expected to hate this performance at Manchester’s Contact theatre as part of the literature festival. There is so much hype and bluster around Tempest, what with a Merc...
4th June 2020
Black people suffer police brutality in the UK, George the Poet tells Newsnight
A poet who was interviewed about the politics of race on the BBC’s Newsnight programme this week insisted there were parallels between the riots in the US following the death of George Floyd, and blac...
3rd June 2020
'Poetry is a conversation, not a proclamation – it can’t happen in a vacuum': Elizabeth Rimmer
Elizabeth Rimmer is a Stirling-based poet, editor and occasional translator who has been widely published in magazines and online. She writes poems based in landscape and community, and is also influe...
2nd June 2020
Midlands arts organisation Scriptstuff launches pandemic anthology
Midlands-based arts organisation Scriptstuff Entertainment has published an anthology of poetry written in response to the lockdown and the spread of Covid-19. Formatted to resemble a classic open mic...
2nd June 2020
BBC networks launch search for new spoken word artists
BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Asian Network have launched ‘Words First’ alongside BBC Arts and Contains Strong Language festival, aiming to discover the best emerging spoken word artists from across the UK.
...1st June 2020
Poetry online: perhaps there's an open-mic future that might include Zoom when all this is over?
Don’t get me wrong. We at Write Out Loud Woking love our regular venue in the cafe area at the Lightbox museum and art gallery. It makes us feel part of a wider arts community – and we know they value...
1st June 2020
'All his calculations secretly yearning away from algebra'
How fascinated a young person can be with the secret lives of his or her teachers. I left junior high — middle school today — more than 60 years ago but still I occasionally wonder about the private l...
1st June 2020
