Tony Walsh, pictured, Kate Fox and Paul Cookson will be providing some of the poetic highlights at Prestwich book festival in north Manchester, starting next month and running until the middle of June. Walsh (aka Longfella) and BBC Radio Saturday Live’s Fox will be featured acts at Vocabaret, upstairs at the Church Inn on 15 May at 7.30pm. Cookson, poet in residence at Manchester’s National football Museum, will be at Prestwich library on Saturday 25 May from 9.30-11.45am 

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The national poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, will be giving the Housman lecture at this year’s Hay festival, on Wednesday 29 May, on The Name and Nature of Poetry. You can find more details of the festival here

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American poet and novelist Patrica Averbach has won this year’s Lumen / Camden poetry competition, in support of London’s cold weather shelters, with her poem Smoke Rings. The judge was Anne Stevenson. You can read the winning poem, and details of the commended and highly commended poets here 

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The third Loose Muse anthology of new writing by women was launched last week at Cottons Caribbean restaurant at London’s Exmouth Market. Thirty-three UK and international writers read at the event, hosted by poet Agnes Meadows, who also runs the regular Loose Muse night at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden, on the second Wednesday of each month. The next Loose Muse night is Wednesday 10 April, at 8pm. You can read an account of the anthology launch here.