Bridport Arts Centre are asking for your poems and short stories for their latest competition – The Bridport Prize 2010.
In each category there is a first prize of £5000, as well as second and third prizes of £1000 and £500 respectively, and ten supplementary prizes of £50 – so it could be well worth your while entering.
In addition, there will be a further prize of £100 and a perpetual trophy awarded to the best local (Dorset, UK) winner or runner-up....

The Albany Theatre space in Deptford is looking for new writing talent for ‘Freshly Squeezed’ – a script writing evening for anyone with a desire to write performance poetry, spoken word or verse plays for performance within a theatre setting.
They are looking for scripts that focus on youth and young people’s experiences living in London. The writing selected will be developed by a professional director and actors to be shown as a rehearsed reading in front of a public...

The John Betjeman Young People's Poetry Competition is open to 11-14 year-olds living in the British Isles.
The prize is £1,000 (£500 to the winner and £500 to the English department of his or her school).
Pupils can enter the competition online by visiting the website: http://www.betjemanpoetrycompetition.com/pages/2010-competition/submit-entry.asp....

Well, I was picking the bones out of ‘Ancrene Wisse’, a 13th century masterpiece of Middle English prose - but what the hell - let’s talk about proper words and stuff innit.

I’ve not travelled to The Howcroft for several months. A combination of inclement weather and that over familiarity that breeds many things - not least - an embryonic contempt. Not for what the evening represents - but for the event’s venue and its unaccommodating ‘regulars’. Th...

This is your invitation to a live recording for BBC Radio 4 at Contact Theatre on Sunday 21st March at 6.30pm. This is a one-off version of Lems’s stage shpw with specially created new material for an invited audience. For one night only.
He didn’t know a black person until he was eighteen. It wasn’t his fault. They just thought it was better that way. He spent most of his adult life searching for his family who were black like him. It’s a story explored in his previous...

Blank Media Collective are looking for new voices for blankpages – their monthly online magazine – and Issue 19 is available online now!
They accept poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, and any themes will be considered. Though it should be noted that whilst swearing or explicit content is not automatically prohibited, it will only be included at the editors’ discretion.
To submit your fiction: Whilst simple prose is often the most effective, Blank Media are open to sub...

Leeds Trinity University College is holding its sixth annual Writers’ Festival Day on 10th March.
Explore the range of possibilities opened up by working with professional writers. Workshops in dramatic writing, building plots and characters, short stories, and firing your imagination will be offered by experienced writers in their fields: Michael Blackburn; Pat Borthwick; Miles Cain; Ray French, Neil Hanson; Sophie Nicholls; Paul Sutherland and Stephen Wakelam.
The aim of the Writers&rs...

The Metropole Hotel in MacCurtain Street is the venue for this year's Cork Spring Festival which runs from 17th to 20th February 2010. The theme for this year's festival is sense of place. Sense of place and the business of place-naming holds such an integral position in Irish literature that the theme warrants its own specialist term: Dinnseanchas.

Headline authors this year include an array of poets, novelists and story writers: Jennifer Johnstone, Martín Espada, Paula Meeh...

We're asking for your contributions to the Write Out Loud magazine now please.

You could be the star contributor to our next issue!

We want audio recordings of your poems - we will mix them, mash them and turn them into individual works of art in The Poetry Jam.

We want clever poems from fearless poets - poems that contain deep metaphors, none too obscure references that are relevant, poems that scan but don't bounce along, poems that condense so much into so few lines...

P.S. I LOVE YOU is a multi-disciplinary week long programme of events dedicated to the exploration and celebration of the legacy of The Beatles, at Bradford Playhouse 27th April to 1st May 2010.
It’s curated by artist filmmaker, curator and self-confessed Beatles anarok Jean McEwan.

Proposals are invited which explore, deconstruct, dissect and celebrate the cultural, societal, emotional and mythic impact of the Beatles. Submission are invited from the following art forms:
-visual...

The first Wenlock Poetry Festival boasts a line up that includes: Carol Ann Duffy(founding patron), Roger McGough, Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Daljit Nagra and many others.

9th April to 11th April 2010
The 2010 TS Eliot prize winner, Phillip Gross, will also be reading.

There will be a Poetry Slam hosted by Spoz; writing workshops from Peter Diamond; Roz Goddard; Gill McEvoy and Gladys Mary Coles, also Barry Tench will lead a workshop for under 25's.

There will be street ent...

The Magazine "Söyleşi Üç Aylık Şiir Dergisi!" issue 2"is now available to download for free.

This issue conencrntrates on philosophical poems concerned with memory and melancholia translated from various languages into both Turkish & English.

http://soylesipoetrymagazine.com/...

NXNW Festival is looking for recordings of poets to play on loops throughout their forthcoming exhibition ‘Illuminate’ at The Turnpike in Leigh, in March.
The exhibition explores the themes of illumination, innovation, and brightness, and enlightening the dark with ideas.
Poets should send their work, recorded in mp3 format, together with a transcript of the poem and a brief biography, to: woodenhorse@tiscali.co.uk...

The 2010 John Betjeman Poetry Competition is open to 11-14 year olds living in the British Isles.
The competition, which is co-sponsored by Shell International and St. Pancras International Station, has a prize of £1000 (which is donated by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.), £500 to the winner and £500 to the English department of their school. The closing date is 31st July, winners will be notified by early September, and a prize-giving event will be held in October at St. Panc...

York Literature Festival 18 - 28th March at venues around York
York Literature Festival returns for its fourth outing in March 2010, with a splendid line-up of local and national talent, including York-born Kate Atkinson, one of the UK's most popular novelists and Jim Crace, author of Quarantine. Also appearing are Jon McGregor, author of 'If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things', and popular novelist Andrew Martin. There's also a wide range of local authors, poets and storyteller...

The Third International Samuel Taylor Coleridge Memorial Poetry Prize 2010 welcomes new work.

This year's competition closes on June 1st.

1st prize, £300 2nd prize, £200, 3rd prize, £100.

Highly Commended £50.00

The Coleridge Award also publishes new poems in their Poetrybacks series.

Also, poets will be invited to read at the 4th Watchet Music Festival, Friday August 27th.

E-mail John Garland for Coleridge Prize Entrance...

Poets Clare Potter and Duncan McGibbon will read their latest works at the new Poetry on Tap reading series in Cardiff on Sunday, 14thFebruary.
Clare Potter was the 2004 John Tripp Award Winner, and is the author of ‘Spilling Histories’ (Cinnamon Press), inspired by the aftermath of the New Orleans disaster. While Duncan McGibbon is the author of ‘The Consolations’ (Mulfran Press), a poetry collection that journeys from Our Lady of Geneva to the heart of the poet’s...

Manchester Cathedral are holding their 12th interfaith, religious poetry competition.

For this year's competition, the judge is Vona Groarke. Winners of the competition will be announced at a special event at Manchester Cathedral as part of Manchester Literature Festival later this year. Entry forms for this year's competition are available by emailing Canon Albert Radcliffe at: albert.radcliffe@dsl.pipex.com

Further details at the Cathedrals web site - click here...

What I Do That's New is a series of articles in which poets share their trade secrets with the rest of us i.e. they describe aspects of what they do that is either innovative or just plain clever.
If you would like to feature in a future article in this series then contact feature editor Dermot Glennon dermot@writeoutloud.net
________________________________________________________
What goes around comes around, as they say. And the funny thing is that ‘what I do that’s new&r...

This is a good exercise, I enjoyed doing it. All you do is listen to songs and interpret them innocently but not in depth.
Translations encourages you to play music and to write down the words you hear first, irrelevant of the original lyrics. Commonly, people do this all the time when singing along to songs. Having no idea of the words but, just saying what they think it could be.
I chose Van Morrison because the rhythms behind this song are driving and sustain lots of mad thinking. Inte...

This month's poem was chosen by Norman Hadley. After trawling through all the profile he chose a short list of five but chose this poem because:
"The first three stanzas have a McGoughian lightness of touch soused with sharp observational humour and the veining of scientific detail marbles the meat of the poem. Mandy just gets you comfortable with her gentle playfulness before smarting your cheek with the well-merited slap of the final stanza."

Find out more about Mandy and...

The Masked Poet is a man on a mission to reveal to you poetry's most closely guarded secrets. He wears the mask to conceal his face, because if his fellow poets were to find out his true identity, he would almost certainly be asked to leave the poetic circle, called names, slapped about a bit and extroardinarily renditioned to Guantanamo bay for polite and reasonable questioning of the type that you just can't do in the civilised world. Last month he revealed to you the secrets of scan...

First of all, for anyone who doesn’t know, a zine is a booklet you make yourself of whatever you want, which you then photocopy the crap out of and either sell or give away. Sometimes you hear poets call them chapbooks, but whereas chapbooks smell like libraries and smoke pipes, zines wear big boots, dance hard and cure themselves of their own thrush with vegetables. Essentially the point of zines is that you can say what you want and get it out there without having to go through any middlem...

Here are six more photos to make some sort of creative reaction too... whether it's a poem, flash fiction, short sentence, a short story, six words describing each image, a poem, or, if you have loads of time why not write a screenplay or novella!

Whatever, write something and put it in Comments box below this article to share with the world.

The rules are:
Whatever you want them to be!!
You can use just one photo or them all!
The choice is yours!...

Locked away in WOL’s genetic engineering laboratories, the infamous Dr. Van Kinston has been experimenting with the DNA of famous poets past and present and has had some startling if disturbing results. In this feature his creations have been ‘reborn’ for all to see. Each amazing entity is a complex scientific merging of two different individuals and this new creation has developed poetic powers gleaned from its twin origins.

By examining both pictures and words, can you ide...

NEW CRITICS PROGRAMME LAUNCHED
SCHEME WILL OFFER TRAINING TO HELP CREATE A NEW GENERATION OF ARTS CRITICS IN WALES

National Theatre Wales, in partnership with Academi, is launching an exciting new initiative that aims to boost arts criticism in Wales, and give budding theatre critics a unique opportunity to have their say on the company’s opening season.

The New Critics Programme will offer development opportunities and training for a selected group of applicants. Participants will...

Manchester Cathedral are inviting entries for their 12th International and Religious Poetry Competition.
The competition is open to everyone, of whatever faith tradition, and also to those seeking to discover their own sense of the sacred; they can be in any form or style and will be judged solely on their merits as poetry.
This year’s judge is Vona Groarke, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a lecturer at the University of Manchester; she is also the author of several poetry col...

If you are in the Bradford area next Saturday afternoon, you might like to go along to Debjani Chatterjee’s workshop at Kala Sangam, St. Peter’s House in Forster Square.
The workshop is to be held on Saturday, 6th March, from 2-4.30pm, and is inspired by the theme of mothers and sisters as March 8th is International Women’s Day and the 14th is Mothering Sunday.
It is absolutely free and open to both men and women, of any ability. The workshop is in English, but participants m...

Poetry Jam celebrates St Patrick's day with another of their open mic poetry jams, where new voices perform alongside established poets.

They are also featuring Irish poet, Racker Donnelly, who will be performing poems from his new CD "Rhymes of the Racker".

To jon the jam, telephone the number below or turn up on the night - Doors 7.30pm on Friday 12th March.

It's at the Tea Box, 7 Paradise Road - see gig guide for full details and map

tel: 020 8940 3521 www.th...

Dead Good Poets Society organised a poetry slam to find Liverpool's Most Romantic Poet.

On Wednesday 17th February, in the 3rd Room of the Everyman Bistro, sixteen poets performed poems on love, romance, lust, passion in front of a capacity crowd.

It was a fierce battle. The poets flirted, sweet-talked and wooed the audience in order to earn their votes. Poems such as Sex For the Over Sixties, A Passion For Celebrity Chefs, and Boyfriends to Avoid were met with laughter and appl...

The Red Shed Reading's open poetry competition is now open for submissions - £3 for first entry, £2 for subsequent entries. The sole adjudicator is Gerard Benson and the closing date is Friday 30th April, 200.
Prizes: first prize: £100, second prize: £50 and a local Wakefield Postcode prize of £25.
Full Details: http://www.currockpress.com/competition_entry_form

Competition winners will be announced on Wednesday June 9 at
The Wakefield Live Music Proj...

‘Things I Did While I Was Dead’ is the intriguing title of a new book by Rosie Garland (a.k.a. Rosie Lugosi), launched on 23rd February by Flapjack Press.
Powerfully articulating themes as diverse as relationships, serial-killers, and gender, this passionate and thought-provoking new collection showcases Rosie’s affecting and award-winning poetry; and, as with her previous collections under the guise of her alter-ego – Rosie Lugosi, it has a deliciously determined bite....

Submissions requested for an eco minded arts / lit ezine. Art, literature, commentary, rants, etc. Follow the link for details...
http://www.theivorytowerzine.com/submissions.htm

Loose Muse is London’s only regular event for women writers of all genres. That doesn’t mean though that men aren’t welcome to come and listen, they most certainly are!
Hosted by Dzifa Benson and Sara-Mae Tuson, there will be two featured guests at the next meeting on Wednesday, 10th March, each followed by a Q&A session, and an open-mic session.
Firstly, Catherine Brogan – who you may remember hitch-hiked her way around the country last year, using poetry venues as...

Puppy Wolf Press are currently seeking submissions for the first issue of the anthology from all corners of the Manchester poetry/spoken word scene.

Best of Manchester Poets is the first major attempt in recent times to showcase the stunning talent and creativity in the (Greater) Manchester poetry/spoken word scene. It's a perfect-bound book of approximately 128 pages that will retail nationally for £7.99.

Anybody who defines themselves as a Manchester poet is invited to submit w...

‘Animal Writes’ in Manchester, is a relaxed, friendly workshop, where anyone interested in creative writing can go to share work, get some feedback, and maybe take part in a short writing exercise to generate some fresh ideas.
Hosted and run by Manchester’s Queer Vegan Poet – Dominic Berry, all are welcome at this beautiful veggie restaurant (privately hired for this group) to meet with like minds over a hot cuppa and a slice of cake.
It runs from 3pm – 5pm, on Su...

Wafts is a Beachcomber type column where you can expect the unexpected...

What’s this? Why, lubbers, it’s a sea shanty, cribbed and condensed from the voicemail signatures of a thousand ship-to-shore radios, harvested over a half century of illicit eavesdropping. My shanty’s about the problems encountered playing harmonica during bouts of hyperfluid, staggering seasickness. It also tells of the ruffle-haired Head Boy of the Ocean, a mythic individual blessed with Neptune&rs...

How does the sound of a holiday combined with expert tuition aimed at improving your writing appeal to you? – perhaps a week in wonderful Wales? - or fabulous France?
Well courses from Cinnamon Press may be just what you’re looking for and may be a great way to bring energy and commitment to your writing.
Whether you write fiction or poetry - the workshops are designed to bring it to life, exploring starting points, imagery, and structure, and ways of bringing precision and vividne...

Poets from the Pennine Lancashire Poetry Stanza will take to the stage at Starbucks, at the Capitol Centre in Preston, next Wednesday, 17th February.
The readers will include award winning poet Jo Harding, proprietor of Clitheroe Books, and Phil Burton, known as Pip the Poet, who performs and runs workshops in schools and libraries throughout the U.K., and has been extensively published.
The hour long event starts at 7pm, and is entitled ‘Family’ - it will feature work with a famil...

The Tea Box in Richmond, Surrey, is hosting an open-mic Poetry Jam On Friday, 12th February, where new voices can perform alongside established performance poets.
Poets-in-residence – Julie Mullen and Racker Donnelly, will be performing together. Julie Mullen was nominated for the Ted Hughes Award for ‘Erotic Poetry for Vegans and Vegetarians’, whilst Racker Donnelly was the U.K.s Slam Champion 2005/06.
Not only that but you can enjoy the Poetry Jam with your choice of the si...

They say that London’s heart lies in its East End – the history, the people, the culture, and now.... the poetry! Every third Wednesday the Rich Mix Bar in Tower Hamlets, is set to pulse with poetry, vibrate with verbs, and spill over with spoken word.
Hosted by Pete the Temp, the irrepressible king of foot-stomping street poetry, the first session will feature sets from Mr T, Chris Syrus, Hannah Osaguona, Ant ‘The Rant’ Smith, plus an open-mic session, and all for free....

The deadline for this year’s short poetry and short story writing competition from The Huddersfield Literature Festival is Wednesday, 10th February.
The aim of this year’s event is to write a story in fewer than 1,000 words, or a poem with 10 lines or fewer. There is an entry fee of £3, and a first prize in each category of £200, a second of £100, and a third of £50; with the best entries also being published in the next Grist Anthology.
For more details,...

The Northern Writers’ Awards have been helping to boost the careers of writers from the north-east of England for the last ten years, during which time no fewer than 89 writers have received awards, many of whom have gone on to publish their work.
The annual awards are produced by New Writing North, who aim to support writers to complete new work and move forward with their careers. Each year £25,000 is awarded both to support emerging talent and to recognise the work of established...

On Friday, 12th February, Litfest will be holding a ‘Shakespeare in Love’ event in Lancaster's Storey Auditorium to celebrate the Valentine’s weekend. And they’ll be doing so with style – serving afternoon tea alongside Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The event, one of the litfest Classics series, starts at 4pm, and will feature Lancaster University’s Alison Findlay and Dr Elizabeth Oakley-Brown, who will introduce, read, and explore Shakespeare’s sonn...

Quaintness and Other Offences, Ann Drysdale (Cinnamon Press, 2009)
The Shadow House Kathy Miles (Cinnamon Press, 2009)
Drysdale and Miles have different writing styles, however both poets tend to end-stop every stanza so there is no rolling on of the sound of the words. This was the greatest disappointment for me as I felt I was being pulled up short at regular intervals. Drysdale has an ear for sound but mainly for rhyme. She can be very witty and for those that like the anecdotal po...

Poetry seems to be turning up the temperature this winter to beat the cold. When Rob Mackenzie realised that the first Poetry at the ... of 2010 was due to fall on Sunday 14th February, his initial thought was to cancel, but his second better one was to commission a couple of dozen poets to produce a Valentine’s Day feast of new love poetry.

Originally Poetry at the Great Grog when it all began in a Rose Street bar a few years ago, since then Poetry at the... has not only presented a...

The poem is regularly rhymed. The rhyme scheme is ABA BCB CDC DED EE. There are ten syllables in each line. Return the poem to its original form using the cryptic clues below.

Answers to last months cryptic poem appear underneath.

Sometimes the ---- and scope of my -----
And its high-wired ----- ----- certainties
Thrills a ---------, -------- hour

With the ---- ---- that it actually is,
That its web is ------ from what I --------.
My eye ------ the -------- parodies,

The ---- bet...

Yes, it's February and time to burn off all those New Year's Resolutions that you vehemently swore you'd adhere to. And what better way to start than by believing the following mumbo jumbo...

Aquarius (Jan 20 - Feb 19)
On the fifth of this month you will experience a blockage
Caused by too many eggs and not enough roughage
But the ninth will bring release, you’ll stop feeling all pushed-in
Be careful to avoid spontaneous human combustion!
Don’t worry, this all just down to the...

Sympathetic Sybil is Write Out Loud's own Agony Aunt...

Dear Sympathetic Sybil
I am struggling trying to write a sestina. Should I try a villanelle instead or try to persevere with the original structure for my poem?
Yours
Anon

Dear Reader,
A lot of these complicated poetic forms were invented by the Ancien Régime (in France – where else?) who called themselves troubadours, thought of themselves as intellectual amoureux and ponced about with lutes, les luthes.
In...

Yes, yes, Dear Dermot indeed.

Or, perhaps I should relabel this feature: Inexpensive Dermot, because (to show solidarity with our hard-working team of unpaid features editors here at Write Out Blagh!) I limit my Editor-in-Chief's stipend to that which barely covers my first and second home comfortable living allowances.
Anyway and whatever, hello and welcome to the Editorial and Letters Page of our February edition. And, might I say, it's that time of the month when I can put my fe...

A review of Nigh-No-Place by Jen Hadfield.
There are many things to like about this book, not least the cover picture of one very aware horse in an open landscape, that we can only take to be part of the Shetlands.
What else is to like? Dogs. Jen Hadfield likes dogs too, they are everywhere, from ‘Canis Minor’ to the sign-off poem ‘In the Same Way’. And it’s not only dogs, we have sheep, cows, horses, not to mention huskies and a polar bear. We also have, predomin...

Send your Audio recorded poems to Steve Garside together with a word document of the text.

Send your submissions to stevegarside@hotmail.com

Your audio poem will then be cut up and spliced together with other audio poems and music to create an original art work in THE POETRY JAM