Heather Moulson, left, Sharron Green, and Trisha Broomfield are three regulars at Write Out Loud Woking who have teamed up to form a poetic trio called The Booming Lovelies that celebrate “ladies of a certain age”. Here’s a review of their recent performance at Cranleigh arts centre in Surrey:  

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A would-be prime minister who confessed to liking – and writing - poetry? Was that why the ‘Red Wall’ working-class voters turned so decisively against him at the 2019 election, and gave Boris Johnson...

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Morpeth’s Northumberland Gathering is all about tradition: maintaining the county’s music, dance, crafts, folklore, dialects and customs at an annual three-day festival in the town.

And Eileen Beer...

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The last time I saw Richie McCaffery read was at Aldeburgh poetry festival at Snape Maltings, more than 10 years ago, with fellow up-and-coming poets such as Kim Moore. On Sunday he was reading in mor...

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Shropshire-based poet, writer and educator Jean Atkin is the author of two previously published collections from Indigo Dreams, How Time is in Fields (2019) and The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (2021). Sh...

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Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland is a ruined mansion with a rich history. The Delavals came over with the Normans, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that the current mansion was erected, desig...

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Mark Totterdell is the author of three previous collections of poetry: This Patter of Traces (Oversteps Books, 2014), Mapping (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Mollusc (The High Window, 2021). His poems have ...

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Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended in 1993 by President Bill Clinton as an American Health Hero in the tradition of physician-poets. More recently he was the recipient of the P...

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There are poetry night comperes that embrace the limelight, and there are other comperes who can’t help being the centre of attention, even if they’re not trying to be. Donald Jenkins, MC of the eclec...

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Far too often you come across volumes of poets talking about their craft, and you are left none the wiser. Rather than dispelling the mystique, they merely add to it. Now here comes a book that miracu...

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In April last year Croydon became the latest London Borough of Culture, a title it will hold for a year, and which was secured with the help of Shaniqua Benjamin, the south London borough’s first poet...

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Take a Bronze Age burial site, add a tsunami from Norway that saw off Doggerland, fossilised tree stumps, and tales of Grace Darling. Plus wonderful birds making the most of a reclaimed opencast mine ...

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Britain’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which takes place each year at the end of January, with many thousands taking part, is said to be the world’s largest garden wildlife survey. Even if we don’t agree on ...

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In 1799 - the year that Napoleon gained power in France – the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, at the age of 21, discovered the physiological effect of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Being Davy, he wrote a ...

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Adrian Green is a former small press editor who has published two other full collections, Chorus and Coda and All that Jazz and Other Poems. He is a trustee of the Jazz Centre (UK), and ran a traditio...

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