'Today is a good day': Lemn Sissay awarded OBE in Queen's birthday honours list
Poet and playwright Lemn Sissay has been awarded the OBE in the new Queen’s birthday honours list. Sissay, who was previously awarded an MBE, said on Twitter: “Today is a good day.” Sissay, who is chancellor of Manchester University and current guest director of Brighton Festival, was born to an Ethiopian mother in Britain in 1966. A social worker assigned to his mother by Wigan social services found foster parents for Sissay,...
News and Opinion
BBC2 has screened an examination of the pandemic, using a film-poem written by the poet laurate Simon Armitage as a narrative that charts the progress...
18th Jun 2021 11:49 pm
It’s all a question of timing if you want to succeed in sending the ball past the custodian – and in poetry, too. Here’s the ever-popular Brian Bilsto...
15th Jun 2021 3:55 pm
Luke Wright, this year’s Saboteur spoken word award winner and an indefatigable online performer during lockdown, is taking three different shows on t...
15th Jun 2021 1:38 pm
Our first two poetry masterclasses were a roaring success. Delivered by Rachel Long and Caroline Bird respectively, they fully sold out and generated ...
18th Jun 2021 5:12 pm
Life & Rhymes, a four-part spoken word series on Sky Arts that was filmed during lockdown in a London park, was a surprise winner of the Bafta best e...
6th Jun 2021 9:39 pm
An album pairing spoken word artists with scientists is being launched by spoken word label Nymphs & Thugs. The Experimental Words album features well...
10th Jun 2021 10:02 pm
The spoken word scene in London is slowly returning to live – and meanwhile a brand-new night has risen with easing of lockdown. The Mother Wolf Club ...
17th Jun 2021 12:38 pm
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are holding a reception “to celebrate contemporary British poetry” on Tuesday 19 November at 6pm – and, not surpr...
14th Jun 2021 11:22 am
Simon Armitage is heading down the garden path for a second series of The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed on Radio 4. The former Smiths guitarist J...
18th Jun 2021 12:00 am
The 2021 Forward prize shortlists for best collection, best first collection and best single poem are announced today. The collections in the running ...
8th Jun 2021 12:00 am
I heard Yona Harvey say in an interview that this loose Shakespearean (“the bard”) sonnet was written for her teenage daughter, which makes its...
15th Jun 2021 1:37 pm
This is a brave collection that revisits the seven stages of women’s lives from the angles of displacement and personal trauma and from an LGBT perspe...
16th Jun 2021 12:00 am
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