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Let's dance: Emma Press seeks submissions for new anthology

The Emma Press is inviting submissions for its next anthology, on dance, aimed at capturing its “exhilaration and joy”. They say: “We want poems about first dances, last dances, slow dances, panicky dances, school discos, dance lessons, dance competitions, dancing in your bedroom, ballet, tango, quickstep, freestyle, street dancing, hip-hop, Zumba, softshoe, tap, Northern Soul, dancing around a to...

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Publications

The Museum of Disappearing Sounds: Zoë Skoulding, Seren

Writing on her staff profile page for Bangor University, where she is senior lecturer in the school of English, Zoë Skoulding says: “I perform poetry with field recordings and electronic music as an exploration of relationships between language and the physical environment.” This cross-art nature of...

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Review

'We like oddball, fringe-dwelling weirdos.' Burning Eye's call to performance poets

Calling all performance poets yet to publish a first collection – performance poetry publisher Burning Eye is waiting to hear from you. Burning Eye’s publisher, Clive Birnie, pictured at the London Po...

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News

Forget Barbie: women seek poems for anthology celebrating the body

Four women editors are inviting submissions to a new poetry anthology inspired by “a passionate desire” to celebrate women’s bodies, “leaving Barbie ... in her box for good”. Sue Jones-Davies, Dee Orr...

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Publications

Nominations deadline for Saboteur awards is end of April

Nominations have opened for the 2014 Saboteur awards, which include best spoken word performer, best spoken word night, and best spoken word show, as well as new categories for best reviewer and best ...

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News

'Yes. I remember Adlestrop.' Village's competition to mark poem's centenary

One of England’s most famous poems is the subject of a competition on its centenary. ‘Adlestrop’, by Edward Thomas, was written about a stop made by his train at a deserted country station in June 191...

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Competitions

Tributes follow death of Lorraine Charlesworth, co-host of Write Out Loud at Middleton

Sunday’s meeting of Write Out Loud Middleton on 27 April will be held in memory of Middleton’s recent co-host Lorraine Charlesworth, who has died suddenly. Her fellow host at Middleton, Norman Warwick...

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News

The bright side of Elvis McGonagall, to be aired on Radio 4

Stand-up poet, armchair revolutionary, comedian and broadcaster Elvis McGonagall takes to the airwaves on 30 April when the first episode of ‘Elvis McGonagall Takes A Look On The Bright Side’ goes out...

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News

Steve Ely and Kim Moore join Marsden poets for Cuckoo festival jam

Two leading poets will be reading at Marsden’s famous Railway Inn, home of the legendary Write Out Loud poetry jam, on Saturday 26 April as part of a Write Out Loud fringe event at the West Yorkshire ...

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News

Armitage, Hegley and Wright lead star line-up at Wenlock

Simon Armitage, John Hegley, Daljit Nagra, Frieda Hughes, Luke Wright, Elaine Feinstein, Glyn Maxwell and David Morley are just some of the star names at Wenlock poetry festival, in the Shropshire tow...

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Festivals calendar

Write Out Loud's Risk a Verse at the Red and Green Club in Huddersfield on Thursday

Write Out Loud’s newest monthly open mic event, Risk a Verse at the Red and Green Club, Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, is on Thursday 24 April at 7.30pm. Bring a couple of poems, or just your ears to hear...

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News

Forward and Costa winner to judge Poetry London competition

Forward and Costa poetry prize winner Michael Symmons Roberts will be judging Poetry London magazine’s £1,000 competition. The deadline is 2 May. More details 

 

 

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Competitions

Roddy Lumsden to judge Ware poetry competition

Roddy Lumsden will be judging the £600 Ware Poets open competition. The deadline is 30 April. More details 

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Competitions

Deadline nears for Cornwall poetry competition

Imtiaz Dharker will be the judge of the £500 Cornwall contemporary poetry festival competition, with a deadline of 30 April 2014. The festival, organised by Falmouth Poetry Group, will take place on 2...

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Competitions

Back at the mic: Write Out Loud Bolton returns

Write Out Loud Bolton is back on Sunday 20 April after a three-month break, hosted by Jeff Dawson, pictured, aka Jeffarama!, and Gordon Zola.  The start is 7.30pm for 8 for the open mic event at the B...

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News

Performance poet Jess Green's attack on Michael Gove and plea for teachers is runaway YouTube hit

A five-minute poem attacking the education secretary, Michael Gove, has proved a runaway success on YouTube, amassing over 200,000 hits. Stories about the video have been featured by the Independent n...

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News

Carol Ann Duffy gives reading to aid literary festival

The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, is to give a special reading at the Orangery in Wakefield on Easter Saturday, 19 April, at 6pm to help raise funds in support of Wakefield Lit Fest. The poet laurea...

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News

Portrait of the artist as a young reporter: tour of Dylan Thomas haunts this weekend

Dylan Thomas fans have a chance to tour some of his Swansea haunts this Easter weekend. The two-hour tour, which is being led by Fluellen Theatre Company, starts from the Maritime Quarter’s Dylan Thom...

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News

John Cooper Clarke: 'Poetry is not something you retire from. There is no heavy lifting involved'

John Cooper Clarke has talked of turning 65, living in Essex, how Pam Ayres was a great inspiration to him – and how the only politician whose language “I even remotely understand” is Ukip’s Nigel Far...

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News

Travel the Pennine way: Write Out Loud at Marsden tonight

Travel is the theme of Write Out Loud at Marsden, at the library, in Marsden Mechanics Institute, on Wednesday 16 April. Travel is what Marsden is about, with the A62, once the Liverpool- Manchester-L...

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News

Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside tonight

Ian Whiteley and Jeffarama! (aka Jeff Dawson) are the guests poets at Write Out Loud Sale, at the Waterside arts centre, Sale, on Tuesday 15 April. It’s hosted by John Darwin, entry is £3/£2, and it s...

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News

Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight

Members of Write Out Loud Stockport meet on Monday 14 April at Stockport art gallery to share poems, and to help construct the group’s collage poem that is put together on the same night. Beginners ar...

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News

Winning run: John Foggin triumphs again with second poetry prize

John Foggin has won the Lumen/Camden poetry competition, his second big poetry prize within a few months. John, pictured at Puzzle Hall Poets in Sowerby Bridge last year, is based in Ossett, West York...

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News

My Family and other Superheroes: Jonathan Edwards, Seren

This collection, in parts nostalgic and emotional, reveals a poet preoccupied with heart and hearth. However, Jonathan Edwards’ characters and places stop short of being caricature, and his appeal to ...

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Review

Poets in all their glory at Write Out Loud Wigan tonight

Bawling, drunken, old, young, new and subtle poets - some funny, some melancholy, some political and some absurd. That’s the promise at Write out Loud Wigan, at the Tudor House hotel on Thursday 10 Ap...

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News

Chance of a lifetime as three northern writers win The Verb awards

Three northern writers - Louise Fazackerley, Matt Miller, and John Hamilton May - have been given the chance to work with BBC Radio 3’s The Verb as recipients of the Verb New Voices award.

Verb New...

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News

He wrote in the trenches, and died in 1918. But Isaac Rosenberg did not see himself as a war poet

Frances Spurrier writes about Isaac Rosenberg, a poet who was killed in the first world war. Some of his best-known poems deserve their place alongside those of Owen and Sassoon. Rosenberg died on pat...

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Platform

In the name of Dorothy: festival of women's poetry at Grasmere

Rebecca Goss, pictured, will be taking part in a panel discussion on “writing motherhood” with TS Eliot prizewinner Sinead Morrissey and Carolyn Jess-Cooke at the Dorothy Wordsworth festival of women’...

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Festivals calendar

Leaf encounter: Linda France wins National Poetry Competition

Linda France has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with her poem ‘Bernard and Cerinthe’. It imagines an erotic encounter in a greenhouse between a shy man and an enticing flower. Judg...

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News

Maggie Sawkins wins £5,000 Ted Hughes award with multimedia look at addiction

Maggie Sawkins has won this year’s £5,000 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for Zones of Avoidance, a multimedia live literature production written and performed by Sawkins and directed by Mark ...

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News

It's National Poetry Month: read all about it, says Winston Plowes

It’s National Poetry Month in the US and Canada – and for a lot of poets in the UK, too, who will be striving throughout April to produce a poem a day, using a wild variety of prompts.

Winston Plow...

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News

On the trail of Ted Hughes: more twists in tale of biographer's row with estate

The estate of Ted Hughes has hit back at claims after a biographer abandoned plans to publish his book with Hughes’s poetry publisher, Faber. According to reports in the Sunday Times and the Guardian,...

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News

Carol Ann Duffy leads poetry reading outside Pentonville jail in books protest

The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has led a protest poetry reading outside Pentonville prison in north London, against a government ban on sending books and other essentials to prisoners. Jo Shapcot...

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News

Dizraeli and Hannah Silva top bill at Wise Words festival

Performance poet Dizraeli, and Hannah Silva, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes award, top the bill at Canterbury’s Wise Words festival, from Friday 4 April to Sunday 6 April. There’s an inclusive feel to...

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Festivals calendar

The Killing of Sophie Lancaster: a tragedy that continues to haunt

There are the sounds of children playing as the audience files in, shouts and laughter; it could be a playground in a park. With the knowledge of what we are about to see, the sounds are eerie, sinist...

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Review

Aid for inspiration: poets win Literature Wales bursary awards

A filmmaker embarking on her first poetry collection; a poet and journalist who is tracking down 150 poets from six continents to ask them about their inspiration; and a publisher of contemporary expe...

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News

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