Poetry Cafe to close for months for work to improve access and capacity
The Poetry Society’s popular Poetry Café, which stages a succession of poetry events each week, will be closing from 1 September and is likely to remain closed for the rest of the year, while work is carried out to improve its “access, capacity and design”. Write Out Loud understands that this work at the society’s HQ in Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London, will include replacing and relocatin...
31st August 2016
Write Out Loud POTW winner Peter Knaggs in Forward prize anthology
Write Out Loud Poem of the Week winner and Hull poet Peter Knaggs has been included in this year’s Forward prize anthology as one of 65 highly commended poets.
Peter’s poem ‘Badger the Cadger’ will appear in the Forward book, to be published on 17 September. It comes from his collection You’re so...
30th August 2016
'My Telephone Week' by Claire Baldry is Write Out Loud Poem of the Week
‘My Telephone Week’, a comic poem by Claire Baldry recounting cold callers offering PPI claims, new boilers, accident compensation, computer scams and more, is the new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week....
30th August 2016
Getting in the groove at the Square Tower
Take one historic, atmospheric venue that once helped to guard a key section of Britain’s coastal waters. Add poetry and music there on every third Sunday of the month, and what have you got? It’s Por...
30th August 2016
Penny Boxall wins £20,000 Edwin Morgan award
Penny Boxall has won the £20,000 biennial Edwin Morgan poetry award for Scottish poets aged 30 or under, it was announced at the Edinburgh book festival on Thursday.
Boxall, who was born in 1987 an...
30th August 2016
Looking for bookings? Write Out Loud Sale is seeking guest poets
One of Write Out Loud’s regular open mic nights is on the lookout for guest poets for future nights as part of a raft of plans for its new season. Write Out Loud sale’s organiser, Sarah Pritchard, sai...
30th August 2016
To Fold the Evening Star: Ian McMillan, Carcanet
Barnsley-born Ian McMillan is an untiring advocate for poetry, as presenter of BBC Radio 3’s weekly programme The Verb. He has been poet-in-residence for English National Opera, The Academy of Urbani...
29th August 2016
'Weather had toughened the soft leather, and one lace had broken short'
Sylvia Ross is from California's Chukchansi people, and this poem, from the anthology Red Indian Road West (Scarlet Tanager Books), is as moving a description about the lasting warmth of hand-me-downs...
26th August 2016
New judge takes up investigation into poet's civil war death
An Argentinian judge has started an investigation into the death of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, who is believed to have been executed in 1936 during the Spanish civil war by for...
23rd August 2016
'I drinking deep of everything I saw, now mine to keep'
Roy Scheele, one of Nebraska's finest poets, has a new chapbook called The Sledders: Thirty Sonnets, from Three Sheets Press. One of any writer's most valuable tools is memory, and this poem shows it ...
23rd August 2016
The Poems of Basil Bunting: ed. by Don Share, Faber
Firstly, let’s get certain issues out of the way. This is an expensive book, a solid, serious-looking and weighty hardback, not a paperback you could take on the beach or read on the train. It’s inten...
22nd August 2016
'Lorraine Motel' by Colin Hill is Write Out Loud Poem of the Week
The new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Lorraine Motel’ by Colin Hill, about the former motel in Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, which is now part of the National Civ...
21st August 2016
Deadline nears for £1,000 Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre prizes
Daljit Nagra will be judging the £1,000 Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre competition, which has two £1,000 prize categories – an open category, and another for those who write with English as their second...
20th August 2016
Helen Mort to judge £500 Bare Fiction poetry prize
Helen Mort will judging Bare Fiction magazine’s £500 poetry prize. The deadline is 31 October. More details
20th August 2016
Keeping Write Out Loud's Poetry Directory up to date
We have just completed a review of all the 307 entries in the Write Out Loud Poetry Directory. Most entries contain a link to other sites. All the links have been checked as current. In many cases, th...
20th August 2016
Live Canon to perform poems from Shakespeare anthology
The poetry ensemble Live Canon will be performing a selection of poems from its specially-commissioned anthology on Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets on 4 November at Oxford Playhouse.
To celebrate Shake...
19th August 2016
Catherine Smith to judge £1,000 Kent and Sussex poetry competition
Catherine Smith will be judging the £1,000 Kent and Sussex Poetry Society competition. The deadline is 31 January 2017. More details
19th August 2016
Abigail Parry wins £5,000 Troubadour poetry prize
Abigail Parry has won the £5,000 Troubadour international poetry prize with her poem, ‘Pasodoble With Lizards’, it was announced on Wednesday. Judges Jane Yeh and Glyn Maxwell awarded second prize to ...
17th August 2016
Write Out Loud at Marsden library tonight
Write Out Loud Marsden’s host Julian Jordon is inviting poems on the theme of summer at Marsden library on Wednesday 17 August, at 7.30pm. The theme is not compulsory, of course. Entry is £2, includin...
17th August 2016
Alison Brackenbury to judge £600 Cornwall poetry festival competition
Alison Brackenbury will be judging the £600 Cornwall Contemporary Poetry festival competition. The deadline is 3 September. The festival will be held over the weekend of 12-13 November in Falmouth. Mo...
17th August 2016
Say Something Back: Denise Riley, Picador
Perhaps the most appropriate response to the death of a child remains Lear’s “Howl, howl, howl”. But, if this book is such a howl (and it is), it’s an eloquent, beautiful, intelligent howl, one that g...
15th August 2016
Write Out Loud Woking at the New Inn tonight
Write Out Loud Woking is back at the New Inn at Send on Monday 15 August at 7.30 for 8pm. Entry is free to this open mic poetry night, hosted this month by Greg Freeman. More details and Map
15th August 2016
'A hissing fury at the bottom of the garbage can, a vampire bathed in light'
Readers of this column have probably noticed how much I love poems that give us new ways of looking at things, and in this example Faith Shearin does just that. I especially like "four-legged relative...
15th August 2016
Scotland's laureate Jackie Kay takes leading role at Edinburgh book festival
Scotland’s new laureate, or makar, Jackie Kay, will one of the poetry stars of the Edinburgh book festival taking place from 13-29 August in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square Gardens.
14th August 2016
'Temporal Anomaly' by Trevor Alexander is Write Out Loud Poem of the Week
The new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Temporal Anomaly’ by Trevor Alexander, which cites Albert Einstein and muses on the possibilities and pitfalls of time travel back into the past. In a serie...
14th August 2016
Spines, signs and laureates: a snapshot of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe
British Sign Language meets spoken word, a slide show and found poem comprised entirely of book spines, and two poet laureates – one former, one current – with their own shows are among the poetry and...
13th August 2016
Text POET: Winston Plowes in new community poetry ploy
Innovative poet Winston Plowes has launched a new poetry experiment involving the making of “strange and wonderful short poems” via text messages. People are being invited throughout August to take pa...
12th August 2016
Scottish slam champion seeks crowdfunding help to publish first collection
Scotland’s current slam champion is seeking crowdfunding help to publish her first collection. Iona Lee, aged 20, who won the Scottish slam finals at Glasgow’s Tron theatre in February, is seeking hel...
12th August 2016
Poem of the Week winner at Write Out Loud Wigan tonight
This week’s winner of Write Out Loud’s Poem of the Week, Rachel Carter, will be reading for the first time at Write Out Loud Wigan, her home-town open mic night, on Thursday 11 August. Entry is free, ...
11th August 2016
'Nursery for the Old' by RM Carter is Write Out Loud Poem of the Week
The New Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Nursery for the Old’ by RM Carter, who is an English literature and creative writing student at Salford University. The poem describes older people in care ...
10th August 2016
Full collection and pamphlet competitions from Indigo Dreams
Publishers Indigo Dreams have launched two competitions, to publish a full collection and a pamphlet. The Geoff Stevens Memorial prize will go to two winners, who will each receive a royalty publishin...
9th August 2016
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery on Monday tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 8 August to share their poems at this open-floor poetry night. Each month a collage poem is produced from members...
8th August 2016
The Immigration Handbook: Caroline Smith, Seren
Caroline Smith’s collection The Immigration Handbook (Seren) is the product of her experiences as an asylum caseworker in the constituency office of a north London Labour MP, and the characters within...
8th August 2016
'The girl draws a webbed foot from her pocket and places it in his hand'
Here's a fine, deftly made poem by Meg Kearney, of New Hampshire, in which the details deliver the emotions, which are never overtly named other than by the title. It's my favorite kind of poem, and i...
5th August 2016
Northern Poetry Library moves to new location in Morpeth
The Northern Poetry Library, which boasts the largest collection of post-second world war poetry in England outside London, is moving to a new location at its home in the Northumberland town of Morpet...
4th August 2016
Tree planting in memory of John Clare at nature reserve
A society dedicated to rural poet John Clare has commissioned a tree to be planted in his memory at a nature reserve near Clare’s village of Helpston in Cambridgeshire.
The Langdyke Countryside ...
4th August 2016
Poetry's mystery man: now World Economic Forum listens to Brian Bilston's words
He is a poet who is listed as an “official contributor” on the World Economic Forum’s website. Brian Bilston (not his real name) has also been dubbed poetry’s Banksy, and the poet laureate of Twitter.
...2nd August 2016
Deadline nears for £600 Buzzwords competition
Jo Bell will be judging the £600 Buzzwords poetry competition. The closing date is 7 August. Proceeds of the competition will be used to fund Buzzwords, a long-running, regular poetry gathering in Che...
2nd August 2016
'I could smell your breath, your musty fur'
As children, just about everyone has experienced the very real fear of an imaginary monster. But what if our mothers could have spoken to our childhood fears? Carrie Shipers of Wisconsin, the author o...
2nd August 2016
Jimmy Andrex at Puzzle Poets in Sowerby Bridge's Blind Pig on Monday
Powerful and poignant Wakefield performance poet Jimmy Andrex is the guest at Puzzle Hall Poets at the Blind Pig in Sowerby Bridge on Monday 1 August. Your hosts are John Foggin and Bob Horne. It star...
1st August 2016
Linda France and Andrew Forster to judge £1,000 Flambard poetry prize
The £1,000 Flambard poetry prize, awarded annually to the best group of five poems submitted by a poet who has not yet published a single-authored pamphlet or collection, is once more open for entries...
1st August 2016
