Congratulations to Write Out Loud team member Graham Sherwood, who has won the Milton Keynes Litfest poetry prize for the second time in three years. Graham manages the profile section for Write Out Loud welcoming all new subscribers, and as a member of the moderating team reads every poem and comme...

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An anthology containing poems by more than 60 poets to mark the centenary of the General Strike in support of locked-out miners resisting pay cuts and harsher working conditions, which lasted from 4-1...

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The Write Out Loud Poem of the Month for April is Atoms of You, by Clare Kinnaird. It’s a poem that seems to span the planet, if not the universe, and includes these lines: “You were not a drop in the...

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Every year the US poet Jane Hirshfield writes a poem on New Year’s Day. One such poem concludes with the admonition: “Don’t despair of this falling world, not yet …” (‘Counting, New Year’s Morning, Wh...

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The news has become so bad it’s difficult to find the words to write about it. That’s how I feel, sometimes, at least. But luckily Attila the Stockbroker has not been left speechless. The veteran punk...

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It’s almost a year since the culmination of the Tenterhooks project - a collaboration between the Marsden-born poet laureate Simon Armitage, his acclaimed band LYR, Marsden Mechanics, and most importa...

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“I knock on the door … I count to 45 in my head. I tell them I’m doing an art project, being a bit liberal with the truth. And then I do a poem to introduce myself.” Thus spoke Rowan McCabe, aka the D...

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Pascale Petit has won the £1,000 Keats-Shelley poetry prize for her poem, ‘Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval’. A second poem by Pascale Petit,  ‘John Gould’s Hummingbird House’, was highly commended by thi...

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The poet JH Prynne, who became a cult figure despite an aversion to publicity, interviews, poetry readings and having his photograph taken, has died at the age of 89.

Born in Bromley, Kent, in June...

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It’s taken me a while to get round to writing this review of a momentous poetry gathering, but I couldn’t let it go unrecorded. On the last weekend in March around 40 poets and audience gathered at Wo...

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A few weeks ago, I managed to find a gap in Matt Panesh’s busy schedule to catch a quick chat with him about his plans for Morecambe poetry festival 2026 – taking place from 18-20 September - and to ...

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I have seen people physically moved by the ghosts that haunt the Newcastle Lit and Phil Library. One such apparition is said to be the ghost of the legendary Mrs Affleck. On Wednesday night she would ...

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Partridge Boswell has won the Poetry Society’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with his poem ‘The Gathering’. It was described by judges Denise Saul, Ian Duhig and Susannah Dickey as “an ever more ...

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A few weeks ago, I managed to find a gap in Matt Panesh’s busy schedule to catch a quick chat with him about his plans for Morecambe poetry festival 2026 – taking place from 18-20 September - and to ...

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I heard that Portsmouth Football Club were planning a series of projects to mark their 125th anniversary. I saw a tweet that the club, and the Portsmouth FC History Society in particular, were looking...

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Award-winning poet Tallulah Howarth celebrated the publication of her latest book An Alternative Xanadu this month with two launch events. The first was in her home city of Leeds last week and the Lon...

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Write Out Loud’s Poem of the Month for March is ‘Skylark on the meadow’ by David RL Moore. This lyrical poem talks of daydreaming of “summers turned and gone”, and has been praised for its mastery of ...

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Four female poets who between them have been largely responsible for any increase there has been in poetry sales over the last few years – but who have nevertheless faced criticism from poetry critics...

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The editor of a poetry magazine has drawn attention to the way another literary journal first published a review of a poet’s book, then withdrew it on the grounds that social media posts by the poet, ...

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Faber is to publish what it describes the “definitive edition “ of Sylvia Plath’s poems in May. Edited by Amanda Golden and Karen V Kukil, it is said to be for scholars, students and general readers a...

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The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has said he hopes that work on the National Poetry Centre in Leeds - one of his key declared aims when he became laureate in 2019 – will begin later this year. In an...

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William Wordsworth’s final family home, at Rydal Mount in the Lake District, has been bought by the Wordsworth Trust, to ensure it can stay open to the public.  

Wordsworth lived there with his wif...

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Birmingham-based multidisciplinary artist and writer Rupinder Kaur Waraich is a BBC New Creative. Her one-woman show Imperfect, Perfect Woman was performed at Wolverhampton literature festival in 2022...

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Pure&Good&Right open-mic poetry night will be celebrating its 20th anniversary on Thursday 19 March at the Tree House bookshop, in The Square, Kenilworth, at 7.30 for an 8pm start. Organisers are invi...

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The poetry world has its festivals, awards, creative courses, workshops, readings, and open mic nights. And these are all well and good. But every now and again someone has a brainwave, that no one el...

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The founder of Aldeburgh poetry festival, Michael Laskey, is to receive the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, it has been announced. Laskey, aged 81, who was once shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, said ...

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Julia Copus will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details 

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We are delighted to point you to our selected Poem of the Month for February – ‘Close to you’, by Freda Davis. Freda may have posted it a few days after Valentine’s Day, but her poem is an examination...

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This latest collection of poems by Surrey-based writer Jeremy Loynes follows on from his poetry pamphlet Turning which was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018. In Wise as Water we discover similar p...

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The Booming Lovelies – from left, Sharron Green, Trisha Broomfield, and Heather Moulson - describe themselves as “ladies of a certain age, unafraid to share their wealth of life experience with anyone...

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This collection of poems by Adam Horovitz was inspired by the Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of the Cotswolds exhibited at the Corinium museum, Cirencester, and the prehistoric and Roman artefac...

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We have reintroduced an old Write Out Loud favourite - Poem of the Month. John Coopey, one of Write Out Loud's stalwart contributors for many years, posted a belated tribute to Holocaust Memorial Day ...

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Catherine Redford began writing after the early death of her partner and is now widely published. The Way the Water Held Me is her debut collection, dedicated to the memory of her partner, Rebecca Mar...

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Danish-born writer Pia Tafdrup is the author of over 20 collections of verse, which are often organised into themed sequences. Her latest is a series of five books on the human senses collectively ref...

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We at Write Out Loud have been saddened to hear of the death of Keith Jeffries, a long-time contributor to this site. Keith has died after a long illness. Fellow Write Out Loud poets have paid tribute...

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London’s Southbank Centre will be celebrating its 75th anniversary this year with a national project, A Poet in Every Port, that will tour a number of coastal communities across the UK.

Inspired by...

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Tributes have been paid to Connie Pickard, who with her former husband, the poet Tom Pickard, set up the legendary Morden Tower poetry readings in Newcastle in the 1960s that attracted legions of poet...

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