National Poetry Competition opens for entries
Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long will be judging this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition, run by the Poetry Society, which is now open for entries. The deadline is 31 October. More details
ILLUSTRATION: WHOOLI CHEN
31st July 2021
Linda Gregerson and John McAuliffe to judge £2,000 Troubadour competition
Linda Gregerson and John McAuliffe will be judging the £2,000 Troubadour international poetry prize. The deadline is 27 September. More details
31st July 2021
Poetry competition seeks poems against cruel sports but covers wide field
Award-winning poetry publishers Indigo Dreams have launched a Wild Poetry competition. They are looking for unpublished poems about “cruel sports in their various forms, including trophy and other hun...
31st July 2021
Luke Wright heads a poetry festival fortnight in Tunbridge Wells
Luke Wright will be headlining Tunbridge Wells poetry festival, which will take place from 15-27 August. Organisers say there will be slam and open-mic opportunities throughout the festival fortnight,...
31st July 2021
In An Ideal World I'd Not Be Murdered, Chaucer Cameron, Against The Grain Press
The epigraph says it all: To my dearest Helen & [ ]. This magnificent book, part memoir and part fiction of the author’s experiences in the sex industry, exists to give voice to those m...
30th July 2021
Search for young polylingual poets to help develop skills
The deadline has been extended until midnight Monday 9 August to recruit eight young mixed-heritage people with an interest in polylingual poetry to develop their practice as poets or spoken word perf...
30th July 2021
Writing kitchen cooks up anthology to celebrate 20 years
Around 20 year ago, poets Malika Booker and Roger Robinson saw the need for a space where writers outside the establishment could grow, discuss and learn. One Friday night, Malika offered her Brixton ...
30th July 2021
The Earth is a Bookcase: Beth O'Brien, Black Pear Press
Writer, editor and reviewer Beth O’Brien is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Light Perception (2019) and I Left the Room Burning (2021), both published by Wild Pressed Books. Her late...
28th July 2021
BBC's Contains Strong Language spoken word festival coming to Coventry City of Culture
The annual poetry and spoken word festival BBC Contains Strong Language comes to Coventry City of Culture this year with over 50 Covid-compliant and in-person poetry events taking place in the city be...
26th July 2021
Deadline nears for Foyle Young Poets of the Year award
The 31 July deadline is nearing for entering the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year award. It is free to enter and is open to poets aged 11-17 anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile it has b...
26th July 2021
'Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me'
For many of us who live in landlocked states, an encounter with the tumult and power of the sea can be a bracing encounter with nature. Here, in a poem I came across in a clever new anthology called R...
26th July 2021
Enduring appeal of print: long-running poetry magazines set out their stalls
Evidence of the staying power of print poetry magazines and some of its most respected and distinguished editors could be found in London on Saturday. Free Verse organisers Chrissy Williams and Joey C...
25th July 2021
Poetry By Heart finalists perform on stage of Shakespeare’s Globe
On Sunday 18 and Monday 19 July over 300 students, parents, teachers and guests took part in the 2021 Poetry By Heart finalists’ celebration event at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. Children and young pe...
25th July 2021
Jacqueline Saphra to judge Winchester poetry prize
Jacqueline Saphra will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details
25th July 2021
Mersey Poets reunited as Brian Patten joins Roger McGough on Poetry Please
Two poetry veterans and comrades linked up on Radio 4 when presenter Roger McGough welcomed his old friend Brian Patten, pictured, to Poetry Please on Sunday 25 July at 4.30pm.
Roger McGough and Br...
25th July 2021
Sign up for our latest poetry workshop - with Matt Abbott
After delivering a hat-trick of sold-out poetry masterclasses, we’re excited to present the second in our new series of poetry workshops. It’ll take place on Wednesday 28 July, featuring guest tutor M...
25th July 2021
Casey Bailey and Victoria McNulty lead Write Out Loud's Spoken Sessions no 4
As the summer heat holds many of us hostage, live poetry in air-conditioned venues is a welcome and long overdue escape from the daily grind. But virtual poetry events continue to delight us, and we c...
25th July 2021
Ready for lift-off! Retired teacher Jonathan Humble launches children’s poetry webzine The Dirigible Balloon
A former deputy headteacher and poet is launching a monthly online magazine devoted to children’s poetry and aimed at linking up with children in schools. Jonathan Humble's webzine The Dirigible Ballo...
25th July 2021
Poignant poem about wartime disaster that claimed 61 lives in Lancashire
A poem that originally appeared on Write Out Loud, about a forgotten tragedy that claimed the lives of 38 primary school pupils in Lancashire during the second world war, has been published in full in...
22nd July 2021
A new look for Write Out Loud - and an updated Gig Guide for in-person AND online events
You may well have noticed that we have updated the look of the Write Out Loud website. Not only that, we have updated our popular Gig Guide, so that you can now list online and in-person events as wel...
21st July 2021
Write Out Loud poet’s tribute to abused England penalty takers is posted on Marcus Rashford mural
A poem posted on Write Out Loud about the online racist abuse suffered by England players after the Euros final penalty shoot-out has been read in front of a mural celebrating Marcus Rashford in Manch...
21st July 2021
Pig's Ear, Dog's Dinner: Paul Cookson, Flapjack
As a reviewer, your heart inevitably sinks when you read a sub-title, ‘A Covid-19 Poetry Diary, Vol 3’. It seems only yesterday that I was leafing through a book by Paul Cookson, which I now know to b...
19th July 2021
'I went to the hospital to hear my heart beat in her various chambers'
There is nothing quite like the relief of good news from the doctors. Of course, it is a reminder of the bad news we eventually expect, the faith that the word “cure” demands of us. I have always enjo...
19th July 2021
Campaigners reach £134,000 target for sculpture to mark WB Yeats in England with day to spare
Campaigners seeking to reach a £134,000 target to erect a monument for a poet who was brought up in England and won the Nobel prize have achieved their goal with a day to spare. Ireland’s WB Yeats spe...
19th July 2021
Cultural campaigner and poetic free spirit Michael Horovitz dies aged 86
A veteran poet of energy and spirit who determinedly kept the flame of the 1960s burning for another 50 years and beyond has died at the age of 86. In 1965 Michael Horovitz helped to persuade Allen Gi...
16th July 2021
Yay!: Robert Garnham, Burning Eye
An acclaimed performer of comedy poetry, Robert Garnham reads his poems at fringes and festivals. His work is double-edged, humorous and entertaining but also profoundly connected to the human conditi...
16th July 2021
Festival's Poet on the High St prepares to pop up in Winchester
Winchester poetry festival’s Poet on the High St (aka performance poet Jonny Fluffypunk) will be popping up at Winchester’s Projects Café in Middle Brook Street on 23 July from 10.30am-2pm, and at Pie...
15th July 2021
If You Want Thunder: Ruth Valentine, Smokestack
Ruth Valentine is a writer of poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction. A number of her previous poetry collections – Downpour, On the Saltmarsh, and The Tide Table – suggest an interest in water...
14th July 2021
'I want to kiss them as I hurt to be kissed'
Sasha Pimentel’s poem is a splendid example of the poetic device called the conceit, which refers to an extended metaphor, and of course, the image here is the violin. Yet the title of the poem is tak...
12th July 2021
Poetry Review in the 1980s: the golden years?
I always peruse the poetry sections of secondhand bookshops more in hope than expectation. And even at the renowned Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, housed in a beautiful former railway statio...
12th July 2021
Blakefest, Bognor Regis, 2019
The visionary poet and painter William Blake only lived in the Sussex village of Felpham for a couple of years - just enough time to begin writing Jerusalem and to be cleared at Chichester assizes of ...
10th July 2021
‘I was too ill to write as normal, but the poems kept flowing’: Alwyn Marriage on her long battle with Covid, and the loss of a loved one
Alwyn Marriage is a much-published poet and novelist, and publisher, who last year found herself facing the “jaws of hell”. Her latest poetry collection Pandora’s Pandemic tells how she and her husban...
6th July 2021
'The truth is I love watching you trot away from me'
It is reassuring to know that other dog owners struggle with the strange way in which we project our humanity on animals and ignore the implications of such an “unnatural” act. Nikki Wallschlaeger’s n...
5th July 2021
Anthony Anaxagorou to judge Ledbury poetry competition
Anthony Anaxagorou will be judging the £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition. The deadline is 15 July. More details
3rd July 2021
Plath letters and photo album to be auctioned by Sotheby's
A number of Sylvia Plath’s letters and personal items – including her wedding ring, a captioned photo album and her drawings of Ted Hughes – are to be sold at Sotheby’s.
Dr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’...
3rd July 2021
Poetry project for the canals makes waves
Milnsbridge on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is being put on the poetic map, in the form of poetry carved on lock gates, in the latest addition to the Locklines project run by the Canal and River Trus...
1st July 2021
