Happy hols - but watch out for poetry event cancellations over Christmas and New Year
The festive holidays are upon us … and this can be one of those times when some gig owners forget to notify everyone that regular events listed on Write Out Loud are cancelled over Christmas and New Year.
Please let everyone know if your regular event is not happening during the Christmas holiday period by amending your listing in the Write Out Loud Gig Guide. Ands, at the same time, if your e...
31st December 2016
The medium's his message: how David Turner gets podcast poets to relax and chat
It might seem odd to some, one interviewer interrogating another, but David Turner was far too polite to comment on my old-tech approach of turning up with a list of questions on a clipboard, and then scribbling down the answers in a sub-shorthand, semi-legible scrawl. (It’s why I prefer to intervie...
27th December 2016
'The foxes are bouncing, the baby awakes': McGonagall's Christmas message
Stand-up poet Elvis McGonagall has sent out his own Christmas message to followers in the form of a festive poem – and explained it thus:
“Noddy Holder screaming ‘It's Christmas!’ for me is just th...
27th December 2016
'That apple bride was sweet, and I want to bring it back to him'
A while back we published a column in which I talked about my delight in the many names of kinds of apples, and mentioned Louise Bogan's marvellous mid-century poem 'The Crossed Apple'. Here's yet ano...
25th December 2016
'Going, Going, Gone' by Jeff is Write Out Loud's Poem of the Week
The Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Going, Going, Gone’ by Jeff, about a failed relationship. Jeff says he has been writing poems for the last two years. He says he is no expert on poetry, but it ...
24th December 2016
We at Write Out Loud wish you the best at Christmas and a successful New Year
Joy to the world: poetry party to launch manifesto*. After one of the strangest years in living memory, having given up on politicians’ prosaic pontification, and fed up with the falsehoods of the med...
24th December 2016
Richard Scott and the Emma Press win £5,000 awards
Richard Scott has won the £5,000 Michael Marks poetry pamphlet award for his collection Wound, published by The Rialto. Judges Debbie Cox, Paul Batchelor, Adam O’Riordan said that Scott’s pamphlet “wo...
23rd December 2016
Absent Dylan 'panned poetry gold', says Swedish critic at Nobel awards night
True to form, Bob Dylan failed to turn up to receive his Nobel prize for literature at the annual awards dinner in Sweden. But in the speech he sent, which was read out by the US ambassador to Sweden,...
21st December 2016
Solstice poems from Coleridge, Jamie and Duffy on Radio 4
Actor Simon Russell Beale will be reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ as part of Radio 4’s day of poems for the winter solstice on Wednesday 21 December. Other winter solstice poems ...
21st December 2016
'She knows she is not looking at the sky. But she calls out, still'
What would our lives be like if we didn't have imagination? Here's a poem by Rachel Richardson, who lives in California, from her book, Hundred-Year Wave, from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
...
21st December 2016
Huddersfield University launches Ted Hughes Network
Huddersfield University launched an initiative establishing the university as a new hub for research, collaboration, projects and events about Ted Hughes on Wednesday, with readings by poets Ian Parks...
20th December 2016
Permission to Speak in Stourbridge: cool surroundings and no sign of hipsters
Some poetry nights hide themselves away in the back rooms of pubs like a guilty secret. Permission To Speak does no such thing. Instead, it revels in taking over the cool, funky venue which is the Sca...
19th December 2016
Write Out Loud Woking at the New Inn tonight
Join hosts Greg Freeman and Rodney Wood for some Yultetide cheer at a festive edition of Write Out Loud Woking at the New Inn at Send in Surrey on Monday 19 December. Entry is free to this open-mic po...
19th December 2016
Poet celebrates 45 years with milestone collection and the sounds of seagulls
A publisher paid tribute to “someone who has quietly become one of our best poets” at the launch of a collection covering 45 years of poetry. Tim Dooley is a tutor for the Poetry School and a visiting...
14th December 2016
'I want to be at both houses'
Here's a short but loaded poem by a six-year-old from South Carolina, Jo'lene Dailey, from RYPA, the Rattle Young Poets Anthology. Rattle is a prominent literary journal. How many children have felt t...
14th December 2016
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Write Out Loud Stockport will be meeting at Stockport art gallery on Monday 12 December to share poetry. Each month a collage poem is produced from the poetic contributions of the evening, and you can...
12th December 2016
Poet & Painter: Helen Jagger and Michael Moss
Cornwall for our many visitors is perhaps mainly bucket and spade, surf, ice-cream, and, inevitably, crowds. But what those of us who live here value most are the empty landscapes and seascapes, at th...
11th December 2016
Too Brave to Dream: RS Thomas, Bloodaxe
This is a book of ekphrastic poems by an elderly Welsh clergyman, left between the pages of two treatises on art. An inspiring description? It makes a difference that the artists included Dali, Tanguy...
11th December 2016
'Forever and a day' by Natasha Bowman is Write Out Loud's Poem of the Week
‘Forever and a day’ by Natasha Bowman is the new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week. Natasha, whose profile page on Write Out Loud is labelled Silent Song Symphony Sadness Soul, is a teenager who started...
11th December 2016
Westminster abbey finds room for Larkin in Poets' Corner
“Our almost-instinct almost true: / What will survive of us is love.” The final lines from Philip Larkin’s poem, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, that describes the effigies of a knight and his wife, have been insc...
10th December 2016
Emily Berry is new editor of Poetry Review magazine
Emily Berry has been named as the new editor of the Poetry Society’s quarterly Poetry Review magazine. She succeeds Maurice Riordan, who has been editor since 2013.
Berry grew up in London and st...
8th December 2016
Christmas cracker at Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts tonight
Open micers in Wigan are invited to bring Christmas poems and humbug verse to Write Out Loud at the Old Courts, Wigan on Thursday 8 February. It’s an earlier start than usual – 8pm – to make sure ever...
8th December 2016
'Gazing into the world: at our walls, my red cup, my sleepless hair'
I suppose there have been other poems about a baby's first look at and into the world, but they couldn't be more touching than this, by Faith Shearin, who lives in West Virginia, and whose most recent...
6th December 2016
Hannah Lowe to judge £600 Ware Poets competition
Hannah Lowe will be judging the £600 Ware Poets competition. The deadline is 30 April 2017. More details
5th December 2016
Poets in West Midlands launch collection for Syria
Writers from Stourbridge and elsewhere in the West Midlands have contributed to a collection of poetry aimed at raising money for humanitarian aid in Syria, with the plea “that the inhumanity of dropp...
5th December 2016
High on Rust: Ray Webber, Tangent
Ray Webber is an anarchic ex-postman from Bristol, an artist, writer, thinker and drinker, who has published his debut collection of poetry at the age of 93.
His poems are generally short and weave...
4th December 2016
'Schoolbuddy' by Ray Pool is Write Out Loud's Poem of the Week
This week’s Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Schoolbuddy’ by Ray Pool. It’s a poem about finding out about the death of an old musician friend on Facebook - a friend the poet has only recently reco...
4th December 2016
The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence, Selima Hill, Bloodaxe
Selima Hill’s readers are fortunate indeed, because she is writing prolifically (four books in the last four years) at the height of her powers. She is funny, tragic, acerbic, brilliant. There is some...
2nd December 2016
Church Going: Larkin to be honoured at Westminster on Friday
A stone will be placed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster abbey on Friday 2 December in memory of Philip Larkin, who died on the same date in 1985. It marks the culmination of a long campaign by the Phil...
1st December 2016
