A merry, poetic, peaceful Christmas to all
A merry, peaceful, poetic Christmas to our thousands of users, from the Write Out Loud team. It has been a bumper year in terms of participation, quality of work uploaded, events on the gig guide, poet profiles; all in support of the great open-mic poetry movement that we expect to continue to grow into 2012. In an era of interesting political movements – Arab Spring, the ‘occupy’ protests, sti...
28th December 2011
Welcome, Matt! Write Out Loud's poet profile no. 1000
Write Out Loud has just notched up its 1,000th poet profile, in another sign of the site's surging success. Matt Tilke is 28, from Brighton, and discovered WOL through an old school friend. He explained: "I had been starting to write again after a bit of a hiatus and I knew he was doing quite a l...
22nd December 2011
Wanted: poetry-reading volunteers to help RNIB
Do you have experience of reading poetry aloud? RNIB needs people to record poetry competition submissions and is looking for three volunteers who can offer up to 16 hours each over two weeks in Ja...
22nd December 2011
Costing the Earth? Submissions wanted for ecopoetry anthology
Submissions are being sought by Hebrides-based publisher Two Ravens Press for an anthology of ecopoetry to be published in November 2012. The deadline for submissions is 31 March, 2012. The antholo...
22nd December 2011
Roger McGough is new Poetry Society president
Roger McGough is the new president of the Poetry Society, which has heard that its Arts Council grant, suspended during the summer furore at the society, is being restored.
The Poetry Society s...
21st December 2011
Beware - check before travelling to events over Christmas
Our famous gig guide enables event organisers to have their listings automatically appear monthly, or weekly. Over Christmas this means the gig guide might show an event that is not actually on.
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18th December 2011
The WOL interview: John Siddique
Earlier this year John Siddique did Write out Loud the honour of appearing at our open mic night. His collection Full Blood has been at the top of the Amazon modern poetry chart. We asked him via e...
14th December 2011
The thrill of it all: a big night out with the Best of Manchester Poets
Having never been to a book launch before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was that I was really excited about attending and reading, but most of all, utterly thrilled that the editors th...
14th December 2011
Chance to be published: Flarestack Poets pamphlet competition
Flarestack Poets have launched their 2012 pamphlet competition, with two winners' pamphlets published in late spring 2012. Each winner will receive £300 and 20 copies of their winning pamphlet. A s...
14th December 2011
Rhian Edwards wins Welsh performance poetry award
Poet and musician Rhian Edwards, from Bridgend, has won the 2011 John Tripp award for spoken poetry – the top performance poetry award in Wales. She was presented with a cheque for £500 at the gran...
10th December 2011
WOL favourite adapts Rabelais for Radio 4
Prolific Radio 4 playwright, Lavinia Murray - known to her friends on Write Out Loud via her Moxy Casimir persona - has adapted Francois Rabelais’ most famous work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, as a t...
10th December 2011
Christmas crackers: some poetry gift ideas
The Christmas present choice is already snowballing for poetry lovers out there. As well as the Naked Muse calendar of tastefully-photographed male poets, Write Out Loud at Wigan has produced its o...
8th December 2011
Office Party Hell with Edinburgh's Inky Fingers
Inky Fingers, Edinburgh's grassroots event for writers and performers, is putting on a spectacular literary office party on Tuesday 13 December. As well as festive and unfestive performances from t...
7th December 2011
Daljit Nagra to judge Wigan's Greenheart competition
A £1,000 first prize is on offer in a poetry competition focusing on Greenheart regional park, a new sustainable and environmental initiative outside Wigan. The themes are the park, and the word “g...
7th December 2011
Rachel Pantechnicon at Petersfield Write Angle
Hilarious poet Rachel Pantechnicon - “she treads the line bet ween funny (ha-ha) and funny peculiar with aplomb” - will be the guest at Petersfield Write Angle’s Christmas celebration on 20 Decembe...
7th December 2011
The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli: Julian Stannard
Julian Stannard's Parrots, published by Salmon Poetry, is the third volume of a trilogy, set mainly in Genoa where the poet lived and taught for years. The title poem concerns the narrator's occup...
7th December 2011
New monument to Philip Larkin at Hull station
Philip Larkin’s well-loved poem, The Whitsun Weddings, is particularly appreciated by those fond of literary works about trains and stations. And now excerpts from Larkin's poetry have been set int...
7th December 2011
Performance or page? Meeting of minds at Lumb Bank
The world of open-mic poetry just went up another notch, as a wonderfully diverse group of poets worked and performed together on our recent week-long Write Out Loud/Arvon open-mic poetry course. W...
7th December 2011
Ted Hughes honoured in ceremony at Poets' Corner
The former poet laureate Ted Hughes is being celebrated at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey today. A memorial stone for Hughes was being placed at the foot of the stone commemorating his Faber p...
6th December 2011
