Carcanet poet Katherine Horrex is guest at Write Out Loud Bolton on Sunday
“This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.” - Charles Dickens, Bleak House
So you’ve been working your way up the greasy pole of qualifications to get to university, having left mainstream school at 13; you’ve met some inspirational teachers who recognise a deep and genuine interest in literature (you had read all of Larkin including the letters by th...
29th April 2025
It's never too late! Graham Sherwood makes live poetry debut
A momentous occasion has taken place in the poetry realm, an event rarer than hen’s teeth. Write Out Loud ‘old timer’ Graham Sherwood took to the stage for the very first time at Waterstones in Milton Keynes, as part of the 2025 MK Lit Fest celebrations.
Graham won the 2024 MK Lit Fest poetry co...
28th April 2025
The Hawthorn Bride: Victoria Gatehouse, Indigo Dreams
Victoria Gatehouse is a zoologist, award-winning poet and children’s writer. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC radio and published in several leading magazines. Her pamphlet The Mechanics of Love (...
27th April 2025
Campaign to save Wordsworth home as museum after Rydal Mount goes up for sale
A campaign has been launched to preserve William Wordsworth’s family home at Rydal Mount in the Lake District, as a site of literary heritage. The poet lived there from 1813 to his death in 1850. It i...
27th April 2025
Pupils add voices in telling Marsden's story with Simon Armitage
In October last year a unique creative venture involving Marsden-born poet laureate Simon Armitage, his LYR band and Marsden Mechanics was launched. The project invited the people of Marsden to engage...
27th April 2025
Write Out Loud looks back … at the early days of lockdown. How did poets cope?
As part of our 20-year anniversary celebrations, Write Out Loud will be looking back at significant moments for us and the wider poetry world over the last two decades. They don’t come much more signi...
26th April 2025
Pam Ayres looks back and forward at Hexham book festival
There is plenty of poetry among the literary events at Hexham book festival in Northumberland next month. On Thursday 8 May Pam Ayres will be talking about her new collection, Doggedly Onward: A Life ...
24th April 2025
Andy Porter looks forward to debut pamphlet
Write Out Loud regulars who have delighted in the entertaining and crafted poems of RA (Andy) Porter that have been posted here will be pleased to hear that his high-spirited verses have been spotted ...
14th April 2025
Meet Neil Astley, celebrated Bloodaxe editor - and our competition judge
Bloodaxe … what an arresting name for a poetry publisher. I may have first come across Neil Astley’s name when my wife gave me the second anthology in the Bloodaxe Staying Alive series, Being Alive, a...
12th April 2025
When Neruda arrived in search of Write Out Loud (in a manner of speaking)
The Write Out Loud team has perhaps been more focused on our 20th anniversary and fundraising poetry competition than the recent World Poetry Day. Mea culpa!
And yet we consider ourselves internat...
12th April 2025
Fiona Larkin wins National Poetry Competition
Fiona Larkin has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with ‘Absence has a Grammar’, which was described by judges Romalyn Ante, John McAuliffe and Stephen Sexton as “very impressive, ing...
12th April 2025
This Transfigured Chapel of the Threads: Sarah Law, Resource Publications
This collection of one hundred short poems is inspired by the life of Carmelite nun Thérèse of Lisieux, who died in 1897 aged just 24. In her elegant introduction to the poems, Sarah Law explains how ...
11th April 2025
Caroline Bird Poetry Masterclass available to all
Following Anthony Anaxagorou's mind-stretching masterclass, re-released last week, we've now re-launched Caroline Bird's workshop, giving you a whole new set of challenges to stretch and stimulate you...
6th April 2025
