Write Out Loud news editor Greg Freeman looks back at the poetry stories of 2015:

Poets are often looking for a prompt – and many found them, in a good way, this year. Not only from the publication this month of Jo Bell’s excellent book arising out of her 52 Project, but also from world events, such as the Syrian refugee crisis. 

Moved by the photographs that shocked the world of a three-year old Syrian boy who drowned and was found on a beach in Turkey, performance poet and Write Out Loud team member Laura Taylor came up with a poem that found its way into an anthology to aid refugees, Over Land, Over Sea, one of a number of such publications. And at the last count a 10-hour Poem-A-Thon involving dozens of poets held in London in early December had crashed past its £12,000 target and raised £20,000 for Médicins sans Frontieres, to support their crucial work with refugees in the Mediterranean. Who says poetry makes nothing happen?

January saw performance poetry take its rightful place alongside page poetry as Hollie McNish won a £10,000 spoken word award, while the more traditional, and not inconsiderable page poetry prizes went to David Harsent (TS Eliot prize), and Jonathan Edwards (Costa poetry prize). Meanwhile the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, became a dame in the new year honours.

February saw Kate Fox launch her fair pay for poets campaign. The month also saw the death of US poet Philip Levine, American’s poet of the industrial heartland, followed in March by that of Swedish Nobel poet Tomas Transtromer.  Later in the year saw the loss of another US poet, CK Williams. 

In April Roger Philip Dennis, an artist and tutor running painting workshops from his studio in Devon was named as winner of the Poetry Society’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition. In the same month the tireless ‘Grandfather of Albion’ Michael Horovitz celebrated his 80th birthday with three consecutive nights of performance, and also gave a fascinating and detailed interview to Write Out Loud. The following month he helped to mastermind a day of poetry events at the Roundhouse marking the 50th anniversary of the legendary Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall, in which he had taken part in 1965 along with Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Adrian Mitchell, and many more.

In May the “misappropriation” of fellow poets’ work by north-east poet Sheree Mack resulted in a huge furore, the pulping of a collection, and collateral damage to her publisher Smokestack, after poetry sleuth Ira Lightman highlighted what had been going on. This was our most widely read news story in 2015. On a more upbeat note at the end of the month, Jackie Hagan, Jo Bell, and Hollie McNish were among those to win Saboteur awards.

There were two big university elections in June, with Simon Armitage succeeding Sir Geoffrey Hill as  Oxford professor of poetry, and Lemn Sissay elected chancellor of Manchester University.  Cheers rang out.

In September the Jamaican-born writer Claudia Rankine won the Forward prize with Citizen: an American Lyric, a collage of prose, poetry, prose poetry, graphic art, photography and scraps of documentary film script, all centred on the theme of racism. Veteran punk poet Attila the Stockbroker published his autobiography, Arguments Yard, an anecdote-packed look back at his 35-year career, to great acclaim.

October saw the continuation of the row between the estate of Ted Hughes and Sir Jonathan Bate, with the publication of his unauthorised biography. The estate – and in particular, Hughes’s widow Carol – took issue with a number of details in the book. Bridport prize judge Roger McGough’s remarks that there was not much rhyme or anger in the poems that had been filtered through to him provoked plenty of interest, as did Poetry Review editor Maurice Riordan’s call for all poetry prize judges to declare any interests, after “instances of favouritism over the years”.

In November Andrew McMillan won two poetry prizes in the same month – the Fenton Aldeburgh first collection award, and then the Guardian first book award, the first time the Guardian prize had been won by a poet. The Aldeburgh poetry festival was its customary, unique blend of stunning readings from a range of international poets, with performances from Jeremy Reed, Attila the Stockbroker and Hollie McNish among the highlights, plus stimulating, thought-provoking discussions, and that Aldeburgh vibe that allows people to fall into conversation with complete strangers at the drop of a hat. All the more shocking, then, that only a few weeks later Aldeburgh’s organisers, the Poetry Trust, threw the future of the festival into doubt  with the news that it was letting go of staff and moving out of its Suffolk headquarters. 

December proved a dispiriting month in other ways, with a Palestinian poet facing execution in Saudi Arabia, while a fresh plea was made to free another poet serving 15 years in Qatar. A poetry translator returned his prize after accusations of plagiarism. But the month was rounded off with the splendid news that the 2015 recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry will be Scotland’s national poet, Liz Lochhead. Hooray!

As well as our interview with Michael Horovitz, in 2015 Write Out Loud put questions to Dan O’Brien, Hollie McNish, Lee Blunt, Louise Fazackerley, Jackie Hagan, Luke Wright, Kate Fox, Paul McMenemy, Owen Lowery, Attila the Stockbroker, and John Agard.

This year Write Out Loud said goodbye to two hard-working open mic night co-ordinators – Norman Warwick at Middleton, and John Darwin at Sale. Norman has been succeeded by co-hosts Shirley-Anne Kennedy and Eileen Earnshaw, and John’s Sale successors will be Sarah Pritchard and Mo Harrop. 

And if you’ve got this far, poetry bloggers on Write Out Loud might be interested to know that among the most widely read poems on the Write Out Loud poetry blogs in the last year were John Coopey’s Ken Dodd’s Dad’s Dog’s Dead, Ian Whiteley’s Don’t Pay The Poets, Lynn Hamilton’s Strip Light, and David Subacchi’s Crosswords in the Pub. As always, an eclectic and often excellent mix!