Deadline day for £5,000 National Poetry Competition
It's deadline day for entry to this year's £5,000 National Poetry Competition, to be judged by Mona Arshi, Helen Mort, and Maurice Riordan. It’s run by the Poetry Society, which spotlights up to 150 longlisted poets each year. The deadline is 31 October. More details
ARTWORK: CAT O’NEIL
31st October 2019
Write Out Loud Woking at the Lightbox tonight
Richard Hawtree will be the featured poet at Write Out Loud Woking on Thursday 31 October at the Lightbox art gallery in Woking. It will be a night when a Halloween theme may be inescapable – but any others associated with the date of 31 October will be well and truly ditched. Sign up for the open m...
31st October 2019
'While these old bones are still working, my darling, let's dance'
How about a light-footed Irish reel before winter sets in, before the rest of our lives sets in? Here's a poem by Barbara Crooker, who lives in Pennsylvania. Her most recent collection of poems is Th...
30th October 2019
Docklands: Damian Walford Davies, Seren
Damian Walford Davies has taught in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Cardiff University since 2013. He is now pro-vice chancellor for the university’s college of arts, humanities, and...
28th October 2019
Andrew McMillan wins £2,000 Polari prize
Poet Andrew McMillan has won the inaugural £2,000 Polari prize recognising work that explores the LGBT experience with his second collection Playtime. McMillan won the Guardian First Book award with h...
28th October 2019
'One more hour to get the words right; one more chance for the heart in hiding'
Here's a poem by Holly J Hughes, who lives and writes in Washington state, about finding joy in what's before us. I found it in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, published by Gray...
27th October 2019
The Big J vs The Big C: Janine Booth, Flapjack
There is a sobering and rather worrying statistic that has emerged from Cancer Research UK since 2015, which is that one in two people will develop cancer at some point in their lives (published in th...
27th October 2019
Notes from a small island (2)
We’ve been going to the Isle of Skye for 20-odd years, renting a bungalow from Norman and Effie Macpherson in the crofting valley of Achnacloich on the Sleat peninsula. Norman was a shepherd all his w...
27th October 2019
Fathima Zahra wins £5,000 Bridport poetry prize
Indian poet Fathima Zahra has won the £5,000 Bridport poetry prize with her poem ‘Things I wish I could trade my headscarf for’. Fathima, who has also just won the Wells Festival of Literature young p...
23rd October 2019
Poet laureate receives his sherry - and remembers the Marsden cuckoo
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has travelled to Jerez in southern Spain to choose and sign a sherry barrel, bequeathed to him by the Consejo Regulador de los Vinos de Jerez y Manzanilla – and in d...
22nd October 2019
Anthology of poetry in endangered languages launched by National Poetry Library
Two years ago the National Poetry Library launched an ambitious, global project to track down poetry written in endangered languages, to collect and preserve them. On Saturday the library’s Chris McCa...
22nd October 2019
Fiona Benson wins £10,000 Forward poetry prize for best collection
Fiona Benson has won the £10,000 Forward prize for her collection Vertigo & Ghost, it was announced on Sunday night at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank. After receiving the prize, she sai...
20th October 2019
Notes from a small island (1)
For 30 years or more, we’ve been coming to the Isle of Skye at the end of October. Thirty years ago you could more or less rely on frosty nights and snow on the Cuillin. The world is warming, and thes...
20th October 2019
Write Out Loud at Bolton Socialist Club tonight
It's Bolton Write Out Loud at Bolton Socialist Club on Sunday 20 October. Entry is £1 plus raffle to this open-mic poetry night, hosted by Jeffarama! and Gordon Zola. Arrive from 7.30 for 8pm start. M...
20th October 2019
Performance poet Louise Fazackerley joins Write Out Loud
We are delighted to announce that leading performance poet Louise Fazackerley has become a director of Write Out Loud. The Wigan-based professional poet and artist-in-education cut her poetry teeth at...
17th October 2019
Anthony Anaxagorou and Jay Bernard on £25,000 TS Eliot prize shortlist
British-born Cypriot poet Anthony Anaxagorou, pictured, and Ted Hughes award winner Jay Bernard are included on the shortlist for the £25,000 TS Eliot prize, it was announced today.
Anaxagorou is a...
17th October 2019
Jay Bernard wins Ted Hughes award
Jay Bernard has won this year's £5,000 Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry for Surge: Side A, which was performed last year at the Roundhouse as part of the Last Word festival, investigating the N...
17th October 2019
It's goodbye from him ... Julian Jordon hands over baton at Poetry Jam's 10th anniversary
It was the end of an era at Write Out Loud’s Poetry Jam at Marsden jazz festival on Sunday. The ever-popular and energetic Julian Jordon bowed out after a decade of compering the event, and handed ove...
16th October 2019
'We trade our hungers for hearth, for the clank and hiss of warmth'
One of poetry's most important tools is sensory imagery, and the following poem, by Christie Towers of Massachusetts, brings in pleasurable smells, tastes, and sounds to evoke a rich experience starti...
16th October 2019
Baldwin's Catholic Geese: Keith Hutson, Bloodaxe
Keith Hutson is a poet who has emerged to widespread acclaim via a more unconventional route than most. He is a former Coronation Street and comedy writer, whose debut collection, Baldwin’s Catholic G...
14th October 2019
Thinking about extinctions: 'This Tilting Earth', by Jane Lovell
The other day, I came across an interview with the poet Kim Moore in which she says in response to the question: What does poetry mean to you?
“This is a hard question! I’ve just had a baby, so my ...
14th October 2019
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Write Out Loud Stockport meets at Stockport art gallery on Monday 14 October. Entry is £1.50 to this open-floor event where poems are shared. Each month a collage poem is produced from contributions. ...
14th October 2019
'That river of sky, neck stretched toward heaven, maybe beyond'
Wallace Stevens, the great modernist poet, wrote about setting a jar down in a wild place, and how by doing so he organised that space around the jar. Here's Marilyn Dorf, a Nebraska poet, using a sin...
10th October 2019
American poet Nikki Giovanni at Southbank Centre's Poetry International
Poetry International is at the forefront of the forthcoming London literature festival, and will take place over five days from 17-21 October of the 11-day festival at London’s Southbank Centre.
M...
10th October 2019
Write Out Loud Wigan at the Old Courts tonight
It’s Write Out Loud Wigan on Thursday 10 October in the Bailiffs Bar at the Old Courts, Crawford Street, Wigan. Entry is free to this open-mic poetry night, which starts at 8pm. More details and Map
10th October 2019
Award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards to edit Poetry Wales magazine
Award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards is taking over as editor of Poetry Wales magazine. His debut collection My Family and Other Superheroes won the 2015 Costa prize for poetry, and was recently chosen...
10th October 2019
Deadline nears for £2,000 Troubadour poetry prize
Kathryn Maris, pictured, and Pat Boran are the judges of the £2,000 Troubadour international poetry prize. The deadline is 21 October. More details
10th October 2019
Wolverhampton poet laureate Emma Purshouse promises 52 poems about city
Emma Purshouse has been named as Wolverhampton’s first poet laureate – and has already promised to write 52 poems about her sometimes “unfairly maligned” home city.
Emma, a performance poet, writer...
8th October 2019
Necklace of haiku puts Exeter on map as popular project enters its final month
A renga is a term for a series of haiku linked to a theme – “a necklace of poems”, poet Sara-Jane Arbury called them. What a lovely idea. People in Exeter were invited to write haiku while visiting a ...
8th October 2019
Leading poets back protests over management of Scottish Poetry Library
A number of leading poets have severed their links with the Scottish Poetry Library in protest at the way it is being run, and former staff members issued a statement of support calling for action to ...
8th October 2019
Foyle Young Poets 2019 - the top 15 winners and 85 commended poets
The Poetry Society has announced the top 15 poets and 85 commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award 2019. The winning entries were selected from over 6,000 poets and over 11,000 poems ...
7th October 2019
A collection that matters: Clare Shaw's 'Flood'
About three years ago, Clare did something I find unnerving even now. She sent me the manuscript of the new collection she’d been putting together (it was provisionally called Floodtown) and asked me ...
6th October 2019
Louise Fazackerley and John Foggin lined up for Write Out Loud's Poetry Jam
Two award-winning poets will be making guest appearances at Write Out Loud’s open-mic Poetry Jam at Marsden jazz festival on Sunday 13 October. Louise Fazackerley, who made her poetry debut at Write O...
6th October 2019
Just the right medicine: the Poetry Pharmacy is opening its doors
The Emergency Poet Deborah Alma opened her permanent Poetry Pharmacy in the town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire on Friday 4 October. Its website says that the “beautiful Victorian shop with its orig...
5th October 2019
'It could only belong to him for fifteen minutes'
I'd guess that at least every other person reading this column did at one time, as a child, carry home some animal that he or she wouldn't be able to keep. Here's Connie Wanek, who lives in New Mexico...
3rd October 2019
To tell the Truth, it's National Poetry Day!
It’s National Poetry Day today – will you be taking part in a poetry event somewhere? This year’s theme is Truth. The organisers of National Poetry Day have put together a map of events taking place, ...
2nd October 2019
Distance Sweet on my Tongue: Kerry Darbishire, Indigo Dreams
Songwriter and poet Kerry Darbishire lives on a Cumbrian fellside in the Lake District with her artist husband Stephen. Her first poetry collection, A Lift of Wings, was published by Indigo Dreams in ...
2nd October 2019
