These are poems that you have to take time to, make time to read. I began by leafing through this Bloodaxe anthology – subtitled “Nourishing Poems of Hope and Light” – and thinking, these are all too optimistic, these are not my cup of tea. And then I found one that spoke to me – ‘Fabrications’, by ...

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“Just write, write, write, into the void. You have your unique way of telling that story. Your way of telling that story is important.”  … “I’m a slow writer. I’m reluctant to let drafts go out into t...

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‘The Hottentot Venus’ was Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa who was displayed at freak shows around 19th century Europe. It’s not ‘woke’ to draw attention to this; it’s an amazing and...

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Irish-born Pratibha Castle, who currently resides in Sussex, holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Chichester. A former singer, artist and holistic therapy workshop facilit...

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Patrick Osada’s collection The Warfield Poems is a lament for his village in Berkshire that over the last few decades has largely been swallowed up by the “tentacles” of housing development reaching o...

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Some traditions simply refuse to die. Back in 2010 Write Out Loud’s website founder Julian Jordon inaugurated the first Write Out Loud open-mic poetry jam at the Tunnel End Inn during Marsden jazz fes...

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Originally from Greater Manchester, Ron Scowcroft has lived in the Lancaster area since 1985. After a career in teaching and academic research, he began writing poetry in 2006. He is the author of two...

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Weighing in at over 600 pages, this is a substantial volume. Too big to be delivered through the letterbox, but handed in at the front door, it has given me an opportunity to renew my acquaintance wit...

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Katrina Naomi grew up close to the sea in Margate and now lives in Cornwall, where she combines her love of writing with sea swimming and a passion for wild places. Her poetry collections have won Aut...

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“It was the perfect tree, in the perfect place.” So said poet, performer, writer and broadcaster Kate Fox, in launching a book of poems at Waterstones in Newcastle to commemorate the shocking felling ...

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Lorcán Black, an Irish poet now living in London, is a Pushcart prize and Best of the Net nominee, and has been longlisted and shortlisted for the Two Sylvias prize and the Paris literary prize respec...

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Amble, for those that don’t know it, is a small town on Northumberland’s North Sea coast. There are parts of it that have seen better days. But there are other parts, including some colourful flats by...

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You could be forgiven for mistaking the Waddington Street Centre in Durham for just another terrace house at first glance, were it not for the Poetry Jam notice on the front door. Inside, the daytime ...

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This collection of snapshots from Neil Leadbeater is as clean-cut as the jewels that inspire ‘Diversion’, the fourth of its five sections. His perceptions alive to the details that assemble the world ...

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In his latest collection, the title of which is a partial echo of Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ and Richard Murphy’s ‘Sailing to an Island’, Mervyn Linford, who is himself 45% Irish, according to a DN...

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It is 1961. Aldous Huxley and his wife Laura flee the Hollywood Hills as a devastating wildfire rips through one of the most affluent areas of Los Angeles. What can they save of their lives? This is t...

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Author, poet, editor, librettist and literary critic Grahame Davies was brought up in the former coal-mining village of Coedpoeth, near Wrexham, in north-east Wales. His former career as a journalist ...

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In the heady days of the 1960s veteran north-east poet Tom Pickard was a kind of culture warrior, even though he may not have seen it in quite those terms at the time. But at an event to celebrate the...

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What are we doing to the planet? What is technology doing to us? These are the common themes, according to the poet herself, within the new collection of poetry by Katrina Porteous, who might well be ...

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The poems in Heather Cook’s debut pamphlet may deal with apparently ‘ordinary’ subjects, but they are certainly not run of the mill. I first read these poems a year ago, when I provided one of the end...

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It was just over a month ago that the poet laureate Simon Armitage launched Blossomise, a collection in celebration of spring, with illustrations by Angela Harding, and in collaboration with the Natio...

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I don’t usually kick off a review of a poetry night by writing about a musician – but in the case of Rod Clements, a founder member of the legendary Tyneside band Lindisfarne and writer of the much-lo...

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I began to read this collection from the end first. Don’t ask me why, it’s not something I usually do. Perhaps it’s because Dave Morgan and I are both of a certain age. The final poem, ‘Bravado’, star...

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Heather Moulson, left, Sharron Green, and Trisha Broomfield are three regulars at Write Out Loud Woking who have teamed up to form a poetic trio called The Booming Lovelies that celebrate “ladies of a...

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A would-be prime minister who confessed to liking – and writing - poetry? Was that why the ‘Red Wall’ working-class voters turned so decisively against him at the 2019 election, and gave Boris Johnson...

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Morpeth’s Northumberland Gathering is all about tradition: maintaining the county’s music, dance, crafts, folklore, dialects and customs at an annual three-day festival in the town.

And Eileen Beer...

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The last time I saw Richie McCaffery read was at Aldeburgh poetry festival at Snape Maltings, more than 10 years ago, with fellow up-and-coming poets such as Kim Moore. On Sunday he was reading in mor...

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Shropshire-based poet, writer and educator Jean Atkin is the author of two previously published collections from Indigo Dreams, How Time is in Fields (2019) and The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (2021). Sh...

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Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland is a ruined mansion with a rich history. The Delavals came over with the Normans, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that the current mansion was erected, desig...

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Mark Totterdell is the author of three previous collections of poetry: This Patter of Traces (Oversteps Books, 2014), Mapping (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Mollusc (The High Window, 2021). His poems have ...

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Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended in 1993 by President Bill Clinton as an American Health Hero in the tradition of physician-poets. More recently he was the recipient of the P...

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There are poetry night comperes that embrace the limelight, and there are other comperes who can’t help being the centre of attention, even if they’re not trying to be. Donald Jenkins, MC of the eclec...

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Far too often you come across volumes of poets talking about their craft, and you are left none the wiser. Rather than dispelling the mystique, they merely add to it. Now here comes a book that miracu...

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In April last year Croydon became the latest London Borough of Culture, a title it will hold for a year, and which was secured with the help of Shaniqua Benjamin, the south London borough’s first poet...

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Take a Bronze Age burial site, add a tsunami from Norway that saw off Doggerland, fossilised tree stumps, and tales of Grace Darling. Plus wonderful birds making the most of a reclaimed opencast mine ...

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Britain’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which takes place each year at the end of January, with many thousands taking part, is said to be the world’s largest garden wildlife survey. Even if we don’t agree on ...

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In 1799 - the year that Napoleon gained power in France – the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, at the age of 21, discovered the physiological effect of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Being Davy, he wrote a ...

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Adrian Green is a former small press editor who has published two other full collections, Chorus and Coda and All that Jazz and Other Poems. He is a trustee of the Jazz Centre (UK), and ran a traditio...

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