Shooting from the hip: Dharker, Gross and Mort are quick on the draw at the Troubadour
Three leading poets at the top of their games amused, surprised and entertained an audience at the Troubadour in London last night as they delivered a succession of snippets of their poetry in an improvisation entitled, ‘What We Should Have Said’.
Imtiaz Dharker, pictured, Philip Gross, and Helen Mort passed on the poetic baton from one to another, to give a series of vignettes that took us fro...
30th June 2014
Saboteur award winner Steve Nash: the Write Out Loud interview
York-based poet Steve Nash is still reeling after beating such names as Kate Tempest and Hollie McNish to win the title of best spoken word performer in the recent Saboteur awards: "I was sat in the audience at the awards ceremony, and I just sat and stared into space for what felt like a very long ...
29th June 2014
Lightning, rain, and Metallica: Rob Auton turns Glastonbury festival into words
The Glastonbury festival website's poet in residence, Rob Auton, will be appearing on the Poetry&Words stage at the festival today, in a line-up that also includes Michael Rosen, Jess Green, Raymond A...
29th June 2014
Wanted: poems about ageing for new anthology
Specialist anthology publisher The Emma Press has launched a call for poems about age, for an anthology to be edited by Sarah Hesketh. The publisher hopes the book will address common fears about grow...
27th June 2014
Fans of Edward Thomas take the time to stop and remember 'Adlestrop'
One hundred years ago – 23 June 1914 – a famous poem about a railway halt was born when Edward Thomas’s train made an unscheduled stop at Adlestrop. The resulting poem is not very long - only 16 lin...
25th June 2014
Joyriding the Storm: Vanessa Kisuule, Burning Eye
Vanessa Kisuule is a multi-slam and award-winning young poet, who was voted best spoken word performer in the 2013 Saboteur awards. She writes plays, and one-woman shows, and performs regularly at fe...
24th June 2014
Poetry School students end Joyce odyssey with 'Bloomsound'
It was Bloomsday yesterday – Monday 16 June – in Dublin, and last night it was celebrated at the Blue Elephant theatre in Camberwell, south London, too, as students from the Poetry School, led by tuto...
23rd June 2014
'It's still a game that anyone can play with anyone, anywhere': Hollie McNish captures that World Cup moment
Top performance poet Hollie McNish may have launched a bid to become the next poet laureate. She is at least certain to capture all football lovers’ hearts with her latest poem, ‘This Game Means So Mu...
23rd June 2014
Deadline nears for £1,000 Ledbury festival competition
Ian McMillan will be judging this year’s £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition, which has a deadline of 10 July. All winners will get a chance to read at the festival. More details
23rd June 2014
All steamed up for Worcestershire literary festival
Poetry and trains are on the timetable at Worcestershire literary festival, which begins on Friday 20 June and continues until Sunday 29 June. The Steam Poets, led by Dave Reeves, the grand station ma...
23rd June 2014
End of month deadline for poems 'in the spirit' of Wilfred Owen
The Wilfred Owen Association has launched a competition inviting poems “in the spirit” of the first world war poet, with a first prize of £500, and the chance to be published in an anthology. Owen's b...
22nd June 2014
Write Out Loud Middleton at the Ring O' Bells on Sunday
Eileen Earnshaw is the guest poet at Write Out Loud Middleton, on Sunday 22 June at the Ring O’ Bells, St Leonards Square, Middleton, starting at 7.30pm. Entry is £2 to this open mic event, hosted by ...
21st June 2014
Spoken word stars on bill as Out-Spoken moves to new venue in Camden
Top performance poet Hollie McNish, and Chris Redmond, host of spoken word/music show Tongue Fu, are the star guests on Thursday 19 June at Out-Spoken, which has moved from its humble beginnings in a ...
19th June 2014
Write Out Loud at the Red and Green Club in Huddersfield tonight
Another day, another Write Out Loud night. Risk A Verse, Write Out Loud’s newest open mic night at the Red and Green Club, Milnsbridge, Huddersfield, is being held a week earlier this month, at 7.30pm...
19th June 2014
Barrier, battleground? The table as disturbing metaphor
Two Cinnamon Press titles were launched last week at the Poetry Cafe in London. The first reading was given by Jane Monson, pictured, from her new collection of prose poems, The Shared Surface. The C...
18th June 2014
Write Out Loud at Marsden library tonight
Come on down for another open-floor poetry evening at Write Out Loud Marsden, at Marsden library, Marsden Mechanics Institute, on Wednesday 18 June, at 7.30pm. Hosted by Write Out Loud founder Julian ...
18th June 2014
Moontide: Niall Campbell, Bloodaxe
Prompted by the news that Moontide had been shortlisted for best first collection in the Forward prize, and spurred on by the furore surrounding Jeremy Paxman’s remarks, I finally took the book out of...
18th June 2014
A sonnet, a sestina, plus four poppadoms: poetry and curry at Bradford festival
Poetry and curry – that combination must be hard to beat. Simon Armitage, Roger McGough, Moniza Alvi, Daljit Nagra, Patience Agbabi, Zaffar Kunial, Kate Fox and Ian Duhig are in the star-studded lineu...
17th June 2014
Zach Roddis and Tom Gill at Write Out Loud Sale tonight
Spoken word artists Zach Roddis and Tom Gill are the guests at Write Out Loud Sale open mic night at the Waterside arts centre, Sale, on Tuesday 17 June at 7.30pm. Entry is £/£2. Get there early to s...
17th June 2014
Poetry as a shooting script: Paul Muldoon on movies, rhyme, rock and roll
The cowboy film is close to Paul Muldoon’s heart, even though he fears the Western may be a doomed genre. The Pulitzer prizewinning poet, who emigrated to America in 1987, talked about his enthusiasm ...
15th June 2014
Countdown to Bolton's poetry festival at Write Out Loud on Sunday at the Brooklyn
It’s a big night at Write Out Loud Bolton on Sunday 15 June. The event is also a curtain-raiser for Worktown, Bolton’s poetry festival, and a number of writers with poems in the festival anthology ar...
14th June 2014
Deadline approaching for £2,000 Mslexia competition
Wendy Cope will be judging the £2,000 Mslexia poetry competition, with an extra prize of £1,000 for the best poem by a previously unpublished woman poet. There is also a separate pamphlet competition,...
13th June 2014
Poets should engage with ordinary people much more, says Forward prize chairman Paxman
The chairman of the Forward Prize judges, BBC TV presenter Jeremy Paxman, has warned that poets today have stopped talking to the public and are only addressing each other. He was speaking after the u...
13th June 2014
Recapturing that 60s mood with Brian Patten in night of laughter and nostalgia
Brian Patten is a survivor of the 1960s. As one of the Liverpool Poets, with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, he took poetry to a new audience with the joint Penguin publication, The Mersey Sound. Patt...
12th June 2014
The Tudor roar at Write Out Loud Wigan tonight
Never mind the opening of the World Cup - step into the spotlight and enjoy your own fanfare at Write Out Loud Wigan on Thursday 12 June at the Tudor House hotel. This famed open mic event with its ow...
12th June 2014
Louise Fazackerley on her BBC award, living in Wigan, and Jarvis Cocker
Wigan poet Louise Fazackerley, a well-known figure at Write Out Loud and other spoken word events in the north-west, and now a winner of BBC Radio 3’s Verb New Voices award, has written a blog for the...
12th June 2014
Knife wielding, protective gloves: dipping a toe into the world of experimental poetry
How do you feel about experimental poetry? And who defines it anyway? As an amateur listener in this field I went to the latest evening of performance at The Other Room in Manchester in some trepidati...
12th June 2014
Never mind the Forward: Smokestack publisher's breath of fresh air
Smokestack Books is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. In that time it has published 90 titles, “and not one of them has been reviewed by Poetry Review”, said publisher Andy Croft, introducing a...
11th June 2014
Prayer to Imperfection: Lucy English, Burning Eye
Burning Eye Books specialise in publishing performance poetry. Most publishers won’t touch performance poets with a big stick, so my curiosity was instantly piqued. Prayer to Imperfection is Lucy Engl...
9th June 2014
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Members of Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting on Monday 9 June at Stockport art gallery to read and discuss their poetry, and to contribute to the collage poem that is composed after each monthl...
9th June 2014
Steve Nash and Sophia Walker win Saboteur spoken word awards
Yorkshire-based Steve Nash, pictured, has been voted best spoken word performer in the 2014 indie lit Saboteur awards. Nash, who beat last year's Ted Hughes award winner Kate Tempest to first place, p...
8th June 2014
Making themselves heard: festival puts Suffolk poetry groups on map
From the drowned churches of Dunwich, to the rivers Deben and Orwell, to nightingales at the RSPB haven at Minsmere, Suffolk is a place that produces an impressive amount of inpirational poetry locati...
6th June 2014
Still time to join a summer solstice poetry weekend overlooking Coniston
There are places still available on a weekend Summer Solstice poetry course from 20-22 June at Brantwood, the former home of John Ruskin, overlooking Coniston water in Cumbria. Tutors are Geraldine Gr...
5th June 2014
Maya Angelou, 'black woman's laureate' and worldwide inspiration, dies aged 86
The American poet and writer Maya Angelou has died at her home in North Carolina at the age of 86. A statement from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, where she had served as a professor of Amer...
5th June 2014
War poetry evening launches Bridlington poetry festival
Tickets are now on sale for the Bridlington poetry festival, from 12-15 June, which will be launched with poetry and performance marking the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. Former po...
4th June 2014
Winston's poetry invention puts the spoke in word
Poet and dedicated cyclist Winston Plowes has invented a “poetry generating” bicycle – and is planning to take it to Glastonbury. Winston, who is the Pop-up Poet at the forthcoming Hebden Bridge arts ...
4th June 2014
Louis de Bernières wears his heart on his sleeve at the Troubadour
“This is like a mini poetry festival,” said one enthusiastic poet at Coffee-House Poetry at London’s Troubadour on Monday night. You could see her point.
There were seven poets, each with at least ...
4th June 2014
John Evans to judge £400 Welsh poetry competition
John Evans will be judging this year’s £400 international Welsh poetry competition, which has a deadline of 15 June. Writer and competition organiser Dave Lewis said: “We do not use filter judges and ...
3rd June 2014
Liverpool Poet Brian Patten reading at Teddington Word Cafe
One of the most popular poets of the 1960s, Brian Patten, is making a rare London appearance early next month at the Word Cafe in Teddington, south-west London, on Thursday 5 June. Patten made his nam...
2nd June 2014
