Seamus Heaney's tribute to Edward Thomas in new war anthology
A poem by Seamus Heaney, written two months before he died, has been published as part of a memorial anthology marking next year’s centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. Heaney’s ‘In A Field’ was inspired by Edward Thomas’s ‘As the team’s head-brass’, a poem apparently about rural life but overshadowed by world events. Thomas was killed at the front in 1917. Poet laureate Carol Ann D...
31st October 2013
Gingering the World from the Inside: Anna Freeman, Burning Eye
The title of this first collection from performance poet Anna Freeman is the only thing not to like about it. Freeman is a redhead, and, like many ginger performance poets, uses this fact to make points about oppression, bullying and being comfortable in your own skin. But this book is far bette...
29th October 2013
Urban verse: how to write about London and other big cities
A workshop on writing poems about London and other urban subjects is being offered by South Bank Poetry magazine on Saturday 16 November from 10.30am to 4.30pm in the Poetry Studio, at 22 Betterton...
29th October 2013
Forward winner Michael Symmons Roberts among TS Eliot contenders
The Poetry Book Society has announced the shortlist for the TS Eliot prize, which will be awarded early next year. The list includes Michael Symmons Roberts’ Drysalter, which won the Forward prize ...
29th October 2013
Deadline approaching to enter National Poetry Competition
The 31 October deadline is fast approaching to enter the £5,000 National Poetry Competition. The top three winning poems will be published in Poetry Review, and the winner is also invited to read a...
28th October 2013
The Write Out Loud interview: Jo Bell
Jo Bell has been the canal laureate for a year, navigating the waterways, from the north-west to the south-west to the Midlands, in pursuit of poetry. In an interview with Greg Freeman she talks of...
27th October 2013
Ringing the changes at Write Out Loud Middleton
Write Out Loud Middleton continues its popular monthly open mic poetry event on Sunday 27 October at the Ring O’ Bells, St Leonard’s Square, Middleton, with Norman Warwick taking over the reins fro...
27th October 2013
Daisy Behagg wins £5,000 Bridport prize
Daisy Behagg has won the £5,000 Bridport poetry prize with her poem, ‘The Opposite of Dave’. Judge Wendy Cope said of the poem: “They say that funny poems don’t win competitions. Well, this one did...
26th October 2013
Pascale Petit wins £10,000 Manchester poetry prize
Pascale Petit has won the £10,000 Manchester poetry prize, organised by Manchester Writiing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. The award was announced last night at the Baronial Hall, Ch...
25th October 2013
Write Out Loud's poetry jam: an eye-opener for a reviewer
There are poets who win the glittering prizes, and there are poets who head out of the door before the end of gigs if events don’t turn out to their liking. And then there are the poets who have no...
25th October 2013
Shades of the Beats: a poetry-jazz happening in the heart of the Pennines
I’d like to think that the spirits of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady were in the vicinity of the Pennine village of Marsden on Sunday afternoon. They were certainly invoked by a numb...
25th October 2013
Name that tune, and say where it takes you
A £100 competition linking poems to a piece of music has been launched by Bishops Castle arts festival in Shropshire. Poems need to be accompanied by details of the chosen music. The competition de...
24th October 2013
A walk on the poetic side of Manchester
Anne Beswick, one of Manchester’s terrific Green Badge guides, led a group of poetry enthusiasts into the city centre on Tuesday for Poetry in the City, a Manchester literature festival event, and ...
24th October 2013
Poems to Elsi: RS Thomas, Seren
“It was a day when Diane Abbott MP was 47, and Alvin Stardust 58, when they honoured RS Thomas.” So writes Byron Rogers in his introduction to The Man who Went into the West, a valuable and highly...
23rd October 2013
Patience Agbabi at Long Poem magazine reading
Forward prize shortlisted poet Patience Agbabi will be reading at Long Poem magazine’s launch of issue 10 at the Barbican library in London, on Wednesday 23 October, at 6pm for 6.30. Other readers...
21st October 2013
Rob Auton, Steve Pottinger and Wendy Klein in Pop Up Poetry anthology
Rob Auton, Steve Pottinger, Wendy Klein, AF Harrold, David Cooke, Mel Jones, Agnes Meadows, Bethany W Pope and Paul Sutherland are among more than 50 poets in the Pop Up Poetry anthology, to be lau...
20th October 2013
'Made from grit and granite': Tony Walsh's stirring poetic tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson
Leading performance poet Tony Walsh (Longfella) has written a poem in honour of Sir Alex Ferguson – and read it out at the renaming of a road in tribute to the former Manchester United manager.
...
19th October 2013
Romancing art: Jen Hadfield's visions of Scotland
Manchester literature festival joined the city’s glorious art gallery to celebrate a new exhibition of magnificent Scottish-themed art. And who better to add another focus to the art than previous ...
19th October 2013
Joy France triumphs again as Commonword slam champ
Poet and comedian Joy France has won the Commonword Superheroes of Slam title in Manchester to complete a remarkable week of triumphs. On Saturday she had appeared at Manchester’s Women in Comedy f...
17th October 2013
Animal magic: Carol Ann Duffy fires off poem after badgers remark
A remark by a government minister about “badgers moving the goalposts” that captured the nation’s imagination has inspired the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, to compose a new poem. ’22 Reasons fo...
17th October 2013
The Forward Book of Poetry 2014
In my bookcase are ranged the Forward prize collections for the last five years. They look so neat, lined up together in their plain white jackets. I bought the Forwards automatically and compulsiv...
17th October 2013
Spirit of the 60s inspires poets and musicians at Rhythm & Muse
Rhythm & Muse, a combined poetry and music open mic night at the Ram Jam Club, Kingston, south-west London, has been going for six years – but its roots stretch way back further than that.
Orga...
17th October 2013
Linda Cosgriff's South Africa poem in human rights anthology
A poem about censorship in South Africa in the apartheid era by Linda Cosgriff, a member of Stockport Write Out Loud, is included in a new anthology, In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights, that al...
12th October 2013
Wanted: 100 poets to kick off rugby league World Cup match
Walt Whitman said: “To have great poets, there must be great audiences’” - so a rugby international crowd should do nicely. Although sport and poetry might seem unlikely teammates, the spoken word...
12th October 2013
The A-Z of poetry: Write Out Loud unveils new listing service
Write Out Loud has rolled out its Poetry Directory, a brand-new listing service that complements our famous Gig Guide. It’s already packed with publications, festivals, competitions and other poetr...
12th October 2013
Poetry on the canals: laureate Jo Bell at Birmingham festival
Canal laureate Jo Bell will be reading new poetry inspired by canals by well-known and unknown voices as part of the Waterlines project on Saturday 12 October in Birmingham, the hub of England’s ca...
11th October 2013
The Beat is Back: poetry mixes it with jazz at Marsden
Write Out Loud, now an established poetry presence at Marsden's renowned Jazz Festival, this year introduces poetry and music show, The Beat is Back, as well as our ever-popular brunchtime Poetry J...
11th October 2013
Write Out Loud at Wigan tonight
Write Out Loud Wigan convenes on Thursday 10 October for another shindig at the Tudor House hotel in Wigan. Entry is free at this ever-popular open mic event, which kicks off at 8.30pm. More detai...
10th October 2013
Simon Armitage at Nantwich Words and Music festival
Simon Armitage will be appearing at the Crown Ballroom, Nantwich on Thursday 10 October as part of the Nantwich Words and Music festival. And that’s not all … Write Out Loud’s Laura Taylor will be ...
10th October 2013
Evidently: new poetry night launched in Salford bard's heartland
A regular poetry night is being launched in the heartland of Salford bard John Cooper Clarke. Evidently, at the Black Lion, Salford, starts on Monday 14 October, and then runs every second Monday o...
8th October 2013
Sisters: Jennifer Copley, Smokestack
If death is the last taboo this book breaks it open and stares unflinchingly inside. Beginning with the rather startling front cover – an example of Victorian post-mortem photography of two sister...
8th October 2013
Behind the scenes at the Poetry Library
The pleasures and benefits of using the Poetry Library are extolled by fellow 60-year-old John Hegley in his poem, ‘From a Grateful Borrower’, one of six currently beamed on to and broadcast from L...
8th October 2013
The Write Out Loud beat is back at Marsden jazz festival
Roll up, roll up for the poetry jam at the Marsden jazz festival. This year Write Out Loud, high on the buzz generated by the success of its popular poetry jam, is staging a new, extra event at the...
8th October 2013
Michael Symmons Roberts wins top Forward prize
Michael Symmons Roberts has won the £10,000 Forward prize for his collection Drysalter, a spiritual sequence of metaphysical poems. Emily Berry’s Dear Boy took the prize for best first collection,...
8th October 2013
National Poetry Day: going with the flow at the Southbank
National Poetry Day may be over for another year, but the memory lingers on. For some, it may be the Prince of Wales reading Dylan Thomas. For me it is of a splendid afternoon of live poetry compe...
7th October 2013
Smokestack champions the radical and unfashionable
In the first of a series of Write Out Loud articles showcasing the work of publishers, Frances Spurrier interviews Andy Croft, pictured, editor of Middlesbrough-based Smokestack Books. Two of Smoke...
6th October 2013
Robert Frost tops the list on BBC's Poetry Please request show
Robert Frost tops the 10 most broadcast poems on BBC radio’s poetry request show, Poetry Please, with Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edward Thomas close behind. The revelation comes in advance of p...
5th October 2013
From poetry to stand-up comedy: Joy France's one-woman show
Not that long ago Joy France stepped on to the stage to make her open mic debut at Write Out Loud Wigan. Now, many gigs and awards later, the north-west poet is appearing in her first one-woman sho...
4th October 2013
Let's make a big splash on National Poetry Day
A poetry breakfast, a poetry relay, a poetry marathon and poets performing in tube stations are among the huge number of events taking place in London, Edinburgh, Grasmere, Havant, Grimsby, Chorlto...
3rd October 2013
'Poetry can't exist without rhythm. Don't be academically bullied into dropping rhymes'
Earlier this year Write Out Loud’s founder, Julian Jordon, saw a poetry performance by Cynthia Buell Thomas and was moved to write: “Everything about it was absolutely top quality … a lesson in how...
3rd October 2013
Mud Wrestling With Words: Bang Said The Gun, Burning Eye
Bang Said The Gun’s anthology Mud Wrestling With Words defies the conventional, carefully-weighted review – and I’m sure that’s the way the organisers of the weekly ruckus at the Roebuck pub in sou...
1st October 2013
Forward book of poetry launched at Brick Lane on eve of prize night
The Forward book of poetry, which accompanies the annual prizegiving and contains the work of many illlustrious, commended poets as well as the shortlisted ones, was launched on Monday night at Ro...
1st October 2013
