Simon Armitage returns to Cornwall to launch new selection of his work
A year after his south-west coastal walk, Simon Armitage will be returning to Cornwall to launch his new book at the Porthminster Gallery in St Ives. Armitage gave a reading at the gallery during his “Walking Away” tour last year. Now he will be giving two readings on Thursday 7 August at 7.30 and 8.30pm to launch Paper Aeroplane: Poems 1989 – 2014, his own selection of poems from across a quarte...
31st July 2014
Write to an unknown soldier - and play your part in war centenary project
There’s still time to play your part in a mass creative project to create a new memorial to the first world war, made out of words. Letter To An Unknown Soldier – exemplified by the statue at Paddington station, left, - is asking for letters and poems to help create a snapshot of how 21st century Br...
31st July 2014
Last few days before Foyle Young Poets deadline
Grace Nichols and Simon Barraclough will be judging the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year award, open to those aged 11 to 17. The deadline is 31 July, and the winners will be announced o...
30th July 2014
Weather, birdsong, exposing yourself: Jo Bell on the 52 project's success
It began as a new year resolution – to encourage the poetry community to write a poem each week, for all 52 weeks of the year. Within days there were 3,000 people following canal laureate Jo Bell’s 52...
29th July 2014
Deadline nears for £1,000 Live Canon competition
Glyn Maxwell is the judge of the £1,000 Live Canon poetry competition, which has a deadline of 31 July. Twenty-five shortlisted poems are published in an annual anthology, and all 25 are also performe...
28th July 2014
Waving the flag: why poetry has a big role to play in political protest
Poetry is not a weapon, but it can be a flag that unites. That was the view of leading Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan, speaking at an English PEN event, Is poetry the strongest form of protest? on Sunda...
27th July 2014
Talent night at Write Out Middleton on Sunday: your chance to grab a 2015 guest spot
It’s a “two for one” talent night at Write Out Loud Middleton on Sunday 27 July at the Ring ’O Bells, St Leonard’s Square, Middleton. All floor-spot readers will be able to read two poems in each half...
26th July 2014
Isabel Rogers wins £5,000 Cardiff poetry competition
Isabel Rogers has won the £5,000 Cardiff international poetry competition with her poem ‘John’s Curious Machines’. Her poetry has been published in magazines including Poetry Wales and Mslexia, and wa...
25th July 2014
Roll up for Stanza's digital slam - and share a virtual stage with some of Africa's finest poets
Stanza, Scotland’s international poetry festival, is staging a digital poetry slam with a Commonwealth theme to mark the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. It’s being run in partnership with the pan-Afri...
25th July 2014
Coolest place to be? Finding shelter in Latitude's poetry tent
Rain or shine, you can always take shelter in the poetry tent. It’s cool in every sense of the word. On Friday during glorious weather at the Latitude festival there were clearly a few there seeking r...
25th July 2014
Write Out Loud's Risk A Verse at Huddersfield tonight
Risk A Verse, a Write out Loud open mic night at the community-run Red and Green Club at Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, will be held on Thursday 24 July at 7.30pm. All are welcome to read their own work, ...
24th July 2014
From Leeds to Covent Garden: footslogging poet's 250-mile trek
A wandering poet already famous on Write Out Loud for trekking across the Pennines on foot, from Leeds to Manchester, and beyond, to seek out live poetry events has now footslogged down to London from...
23rd July 2014
Monkey Kettle mag halts publication after 15 years
A poetry magazine that has been on the scene since 1999 has announced that its latest issue, no 41, will be its last “for the foreseeable future”. Monkey Kettle, based in Milton Keynes, says on its we...
23rd July 2014
Is poetry the strongest form of literary protest?
Bejan Matur, pictured, is a Turkish poet, author and journalist of Kurdish heritage. While reading law at Ankara university, she was arrested and imprisoned under false political charges. She has sinc...
23rd July 2014
End of July deadline for Ambit magazine's £500 competition
Do you like to write outside, inside, or off your head? Scrawling ink across paper, or scribbling in bed? Is it nature, is it nurture? What’s your influence? Roddy Lumsden is the main judge of Ambit m...
22nd July 2014
'I don't know what I'm thinking unless I'm writing': Sharon Olds
When she was a young girl, Sharon Olds told an audience at Ledbury poetry festival, she knew God could read her thoughts. But for some reason she believed He could not look over her shoulder, and see ...
21st July 2014
Slate Voices: Mavis Gulliver and Jan Fortune, Cinnamon
Landscape and memory, landscape and voices, landscape and ghosts. How inevitably connected is the human spirit to the places we inhabit or have inhabited, both in life and death. This is the subject ...
21st July 2014
Soaking up the words: last chance to have your poem on beermat
You could have your poem printed on a beermat as one of 10 shortlisted poets in Bradford on Avon arts festival’s competition. Send in a poem of up to 12 lines on the festival’s theme of Light. If it’s...
20th July 2014
Write Out Loud Bolton at the Brooklyn tonight
It’s Write Out Loud at Bolton on Sunday 20 July, with comperes Jeffarama! and Gordon Zola. Entry is £1 to this open mic event, which starts at 7.30 for 8pm, at the Brooklyn, Green Lane, Bolton. Conta...
20th July 2014
Word Wizards line up 32 performers for Buxton's Free Fringe
Buxton Word Wizards have lined up 16 events with 32 spoken word performers, including Helen Mort, Matt Merritt, and Josh Ekroy, as part of Buxton festival’s Free Fringe, starting on 19 July. There ar...
19th July 2014
Rappers, slammers and laureates collide in lineup at Latitude
A dazzling lineup across the spectrum of poetry is on the bill at the Latitude festival in Suffolk from Friday 18 July to Sunday 20 July. Spoken word stars in the poetry tent include Hollie McNish, pi...
19th July 2014
The Hundred Years' War: edited by Neil Astley, Bloodaxe
You could hear the guns firing on the western front back in England. I didn’t know that was also true in the second world war, but ‘that low pulsation in the east is war’, realised Denise Levertov, in...
17th July 2014
Write Out Loud at Marsden library tonight
Write Out Loud Marsden will be meeting on Wednesday 16 July at 7.30pm at Marsden library for an open-floor poetry evening, open to all to read a poem, your own or a favourite. It’s also open to short ...
16th July 2014
Verse-drama by Owen Sheers is Wales Book of the Year
A verse-drama by poet Owen Sheers about three young soldiers from Bristol who are deployed to Afghanistan has won the Wales Book of the Year award, and a total of £8,000. Pink Mist was published in 20...
16th July 2014
Poetry publisher appeals for £500,000 to secure 10-year future
The small press poetry publisher, Eyewear, is appealing to “the reading public” to help it raise £500,000 to secure its future for the next 10 years.
Eyewear received a big funding blow earlier th...
16th July 2014
Matthew Hedley Stoppard and Ralph Dartford at Write Out Loud Sale tonight
Matthew Hedley Stoppard and Ralph Dartford are the guest poets at Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside arts centre on Tuesday 15 July. Entry is £3/£2 to this popular open mic event, hosted by John Dar...
15th July 2014
American website for English students puts Write Out Loud on its list of 'inspiring' poetry sites
Write Out Loud has been included on a list of “inspiring sites for poets and poetry lovers” by a US website that offers help to American students in finding the right masters degree in English program...
14th July 2014
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 14 July at 7pm to read and discuss their own poetry. Entry is a £1 donation. Each month a collage poem is create...
14th July 2014
Wish you were here? Mini-break or world cruise? Here comes summer at the Poetry School
The Poetry School is running a five-day summer school in London later this month, from 21-25 July. All workshops and sessions on A True Account of Talking to the Sun, a quote borrowed from American po...
13th July 2014
Mark this: open mic event celebrates Beyond Graffiti project for Yorkshire milestones
Write Out Loud founder Julian Jordon is compering a free open mic event at Oakwell Hall, Birstall, Batley, on Saturday 12 July from 12 noon to 4pm as part of the Milestone Society’s Beyond Graffiti pr...
11th July 2014
Hear 50 of the world's greatest love poems at the Royal Festival Hall
Fifty leading actors and poets from across the world will each read one of the greatest love poems from the last 50 years at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 20 July. The event is part of the Southba...
11th July 2014
'We will emerge stronger': Manchester's Commonword reacts to funding axe
Days after losing its Arts Council funding, Manchester’s Commonword, a writer development organisation, is still taking stock and looking at its future options. But in a defiant message its artistic d...
10th July 2014
Expect a rollicking at Write Out Loud Wigan tonight
Roll up at Write Out Loud Wigan on Thursday 10 July for another rollicking good night of live poetry - funny, melancholy, political and absurd. Entry is free, and it starts at 8.30pm at the Tudor Hous...
10th July 2014
Monthly poetry magazine to be launched next month
A new, monthly poetry magazine that aims to include a strong focus on live performance will be launched next month. Lunar Poetry’s Paul McMenemy said: “The idea behind the mag is to provide something ...
10th July 2014
Yorkshire's True Grit poetry project reaches finishing line - just in time for the start of Le Grand Depart
A poetry project was just in time for Le Grand Depart – the start of the Tour de France – in Yorkshire at the weekend. The True Grit Poetry Cycle, led by performance poet Kate Fox and Leeds Young Aut...
10th July 2014
Poetry publisher Penned in the Margins wins £135,000 grant from Arts Council
The innovative, independent poetry publisher Penned in the Margins has won a three-year grant of £135,000 from Arts Council England. On its website, director Tom Chivers, pictured, said: “This new sup...
9th July 2014
Poetry festival founder named as Costa prize judge
The founder of Wenlock poetry festival, Anna Dreda, has been named as one of three judges for the Costa poetry award, along with poet and arts journalist Charlotte Runcie, and author and poet Owen Sh...
8th July 2014
Kathryn Simmonds to judge £2,000 Charles Causley competition
Kathryn Simmonds will be the judge of the £2,000 Charles Causley poetry competition. The deadline is 6 November. More details
7th July 2014
Did Edward Thomas get it right? Or could 'Adlestrop' be improved?
‘Adlestrop’, the much-loved – and much parodied – poem by Edward Thomas about stopping at a deserted railway station, shortly before the outbreak of the first world war, has been “workshopped” by a gr...
7th July 2014
Four new Eric Gregory award winners to give festival reading
Four of the five young poets who were awarded £4,000 Eric Gregory awards last week will be reading at an event at Ledbury poetry festival on Friday 11 July. The Gregory awards are for collections by p...
7th July 2014
Prolific poetry publisher branches out into pamphlets
A publisher that already publishes around 30 individual collections of poetry each year is branching out into pamphlet publishing. Indigo Dreams has formed a new poetry pamphlet division, Indigo Pamph...
6th July 2014
Can't sleep? Explore the dark in a poetry all-nighter at Ledbury
A poetry all-nighter at the atmospheric Hellens Manor is on the agenda at Ledbury poetry festival this weekend, on Saturday night and Sunday morning of 5-6 July. It starts off at 7pm-8pm, with At Mald...
4th July 2014
Ian McMillan and the Poetry Proms at Wirral Festival of Firsts
Ian McMillan is one of the stars of Wirral’s Festival of Firsts, performing at Hoylake Chapel on Thursday 10 July at 7.30pm. Another big poetic highlight of the festival is the Poetry Proms at New Bri...
4th July 2014
Monthly poetry magazine to be launched next month
A new, monthly poetry magazine that aims to include a strong focus on live performance will be launched next month. Lunar Poetry’s Paul McMenemy said: “The idea behind the mag is to provide something ...
4th July 2014
The poets now standing near platform one
“What’s this, a Punch and Judy?” inquired one curious bystander as the Worcestershire literature festival’s Martin Driscoll was setting up chairs, mic and amplifiers for the Steam Poets on the concour...
3rd July 2014
Look At All The Women: Cathy Bryant, Mother's Milk
I have just had a nasty dose of sunburn and I blame Cathy Bryant. You see, doctor, I was sitting in my garden after a vigorous bout of weeding and decided to flick through her latest book of poetry wh...
3rd July 2014
Natacha Bryan wins Poetry School/Pighog pamphlet competition
Natacha Bryan has won the Poetry School/Pighog poetry pamphlet competition, with her pamphlet If I talked everything my eyes saw. London-based Natacha has been working as a workshop facilitator for t...
2nd July 2014
Celebrating Shakespeare, Heaney and Dylan Thomas in month of poetry at Stratford-upon-Avon
The poetry of Shakespeare, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon and Norman MacCaig will be celebrated during a month of festival events that begin in Stratford-upon-Avon on Wednesday 2 July....
2nd July 2014
A taste of Ruskin College's writing for performance course with tutor John Retallack
There’s a chance to attend a two-hour taster of Ruskin’s College’s two-year writing for performance course on Saturday 5 July, at the Oxford college. The course tutor is John Retallack, pictured. The ...
1st July 2014
Poetry group appeals for help as arts bodies await crucial funding news
The south-west poetry organisation, Poetry Can, has launched a last-ditch attempt to prevent its entire funding from Bristol city council for the next three years from being axed. The council is due t...
1st July 2014
Sharon Olds leads the big names at Ledbury poetry festival
An interview with and a reading by American poet Sharon Olds, who won last year’s TS Eliot prize with her collection Stag’s Leap, will be one of the highlights of this year’s Ledbury poetry festival, ...
1st July 2014
Poet, publisher, patron and Oz trial defendant Felix Dennis dies aged 67
The poet, publisher and philanthropist Felix Dennis has died of cancer at the age of 67. In 1971 he was a defendant in the notorious Oz trial, and jailed, as a co-editor of the underground magazine, f...
1st July 2014
