Two pamphlets: Victoria Gatehouse and John-Paul Burns
I read this on Julie Mellor’s poetry blog last week: “I aim to post something once a week on my blog but last weekend I skipped it. Maybe I didn't have anything to say. Maybe I didn't have the energy or drive to write it. Anyway, I thought I'd better get on with it today before another weekend slipped by.”
Me too, I thought. Me too.
And then I read this in Anthony Wilson’s Lifesaving Poems:...
29th September 2019
National Poetry Library suspends new membership scheme after protests
The National Poetry Library at London’s Southbank Centre has suspended the introduction of a membership scheme it had said was needed to raise funds, after an outcry from poets. The about-turn came on Thursday after over 1,500 people had signed a petition protesting about the plans. The library had...
27th September 2019
'Those tokens I harvested from her deathbed are more like the pearl'
All of us know people who wouldn't wear an article of clothing that had ever before been touched, let alone worn, by somebody else, and others who could care less. As I write this column I'm wearing a...
26th September 2019
Poetry Translation Centre launches Sarah Maguire prize
The Poetry Translation Centre has launched the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation to recognise and encourage quality translation of poetry into English. Sarah Maguire founded the PTC in 200...
26th September 2019
Write Out Loud Woking at the Lightbox tonight
Tom McColl is the featured poet at Write Out Loud Woking at the Lightbox gallery in Woking on Thursday 26 September. Sign up from 7.30pm for the open-mic. It all kicks off at 8pm, hosted by Greg Freem...
26th September 2019
Award-winning poet Ocean Vuong wins $625,000 'genius grant'
The poet Ocean Vuong, who came to the US with his family aged two as a refugee from Vietnam, has been awarded a grant of $625,000 (£504,000) by the MacArthur Foundation.
Vuong, who won the TS Eliot...
26th September 2019
Simon Armitage's 'Fugitives' poem celebrates access to countryside
The poet laureate Simon Armitage has written a poem called ‘Fugitives’ in a commission by the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Nati...
25th September 2019
Poet, translator and biographer Elaine Feinstein dies aged 88
The poet, biographer and translator Elaine Feinstein has died at the age of 88. Her publisher Carcanet said: “She was one of Carcanet's dearest and oldest friends, and she will be deeply missed.”
E...
24th September 2019
Blakefest in Bognor celebrates William Blake with music and poetry
Poets Andy Brown, Raine Geoghegan, Alan Morrison, Mandy Pannett, James Simpson, and Barry Smith will be taking part with musicians and folk singers in Blakefest, a one-day festival at Bognor Regis in ...
22nd September 2019
Poets add their voices to protests on Climate Strike day
There was poetry taking place all over the world today, at demonstrations involving people – and young people in particular - striking today (Friday 20 September) to draw attention to the climate cri...
20th September 2019
A Map Towards Fluency: Lisa Kelly, Carcanet
Walter Benjamin said that “Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and a textile one, where it is ...
19th September 2019
Write Out Loud at Marsden library tonight
The optional theme is Home at Marsden Write Out Loud on Wednesday 18 September at Marsden library, Peel Street, Marsden. Share your own poems, read your favourites or just listen. Everyone is welcome ...
19th September 2019
Poet Musa Okwonga hits out at fellow old Etonians Cameron and Johnson
A poet and old Etonian has hit out at attitudes among politicians who attended his alma mater. Writing in the Guardian, Musa Okwonga said: “Eton is proud of its political leaders. This can be seen fro...
19th September 2019
'Things always dwindling to just the two of us, a crumpled cigarette, a distant car'
Although this poem by Patrick Phillips, from American Poetry Review, is dedicated to a person we don't know, 'For Paul' conveys feelings we've all experienced. We don't need to know who "Paul" is. The...
17th September 2019
Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside tonight
North-west publisher Paul Neads of Flapjack Press will be the guest host at Write Out Loud Sale at the Waterside arts centre, Sale, on Tuesday 17 September. Guest poets are Melanie Rees and Sarra Cull...
17th September 2019
Exhibition celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti at National Poetry Library
An exhibition celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the American Beat poet, publisher, painter and activist who turned 100 earlier this year, is being staged at the National Poetry Library at London’s So...
16th September 2019
'He tapped once at the ash, which began to drift into that moment already behind us'
If at times your world seems flat and uninteresting, I recommend making a cardboard viewfinder with a postage-stamp sized window. Then look at what's around you through that. I think you'll be pleased...
15th September 2019
A loss you can't imagine: young men and suicide
1992. Only a few weeks after his twenty-first birthday, our son David died in a fall from the top floor of a high-rise block of flats behind the Merrion Centre in Leeds. I see it from the motorway eve...
15th September 2019
Write Out Loud at Bolton Socialist Club tonight
It’s Bolton Write Out Loud on Sunday 15 September at Bolton Socialist Club. Entry is £1 plus raffle to this open-mic poetry night, compered by Jeffarama! and Gordon Zola. Arrive from 7.30pm for 8pm st...
15th September 2019
The joy of poetry: first love of sex manual's author
I’d bought my second-hand copy of Penguin’s Poetry of the Forties anthology several years before, probably in Hay-on-Wye, but had never got round to properly reading it. This year, faced with a trip i...
13th September 2019
Write Out Loud's Poetry Jam celebrates its 10th anniversary at Marsden jazz festival
Write Out Loud’s annual open-mic Poetry Jam at Marsden jazz festival will be celebrating its 10th anniversary at the festival next month, at a new venue. This year, on Sunday morning 13 October poets ...
13th September 2019
Humanagerie: ed. by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley, Eibonvale
The borderland between humans and animals has been a source of fascination for writers down the ages. Think of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, the lycanthropy of Ferdinand in Webster’s The Duchess of Mal...
12th September 2019
Break-out poetry at Wigan Write Out Loud at the Old Courts tonight
Corralling poets? Don’t feel penned in by the location … but has any open-mic venue a more arresting venue? Wigan Write Out Loud at the Old Courts arts centre on Thursday 12 September is in The Holdin...
12th September 2019
Pamphlets, collections, and a polished gem: Christy Ducker
Every time I go to an open mic or a poetry reading, like as not I’ll come home with at least one (or more) pamphlets (or chapbooks … more of that later). More likely than to come home with a new colle...
10th September 2019
Tony Walsh poem with Chris Riddell illustrations helps launch YouTube competition
A moving and inspirational poem by leading spoken word poet Tony Walsh, ‘Take This Pen’, with wonderful illustrations by artist Chris Riddell, is helping to promote a new YouTube competition to mark N...
9th September 2019
Write Out Loud at Stockport art gallery tonight
Stockport Write Out Loud meets at Stockport art gallery on Monday 9 September to share poems. Each month a collage poem is produced from contribution on the night, and you can read August’s here. Entr...
9th September 2019
Luke Wright, Louise Fazackerley and Kirsty Taylor kick off spoken word label's tour
Luke Wright, Louise Fazackerley and Kirsty Taylor will be performing at The Edge in Manchester on Friday 20 September and kicking off a nationwide tour organised by Leeds-based spoken word record labe...
7th September 2019
Bunty, I Miss You!: Heather Moulson, Dempsey & Windle
Heather Moulson is a spoken word poet like no other. Her poems of adolescent reminiscences catalogue the slights and affronts she received as a teenager, her reality behind the romantic tales of the g...
5th September 2019
'The rapid clatter giving place to the slow click'
We reprint poems by living Americans, about American life, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the many beautiful and moving poems written by American poets no longer with us. Robert Francis ...
2nd September 2019
Reading to raise funds to restore Hugh MacDiarmid's Brownsbank home
A poetry reading to raise funds to help restore Brownsbank, the home of Hugh MacDiarmid, will take place at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh on 11 September.
MacDiarmid has been described...
2nd September 2019
Bridges and troubled waters: Graínne Tobin (1)
I’ve reached a point where I can hardly bear to listen to or watch news programmes, when politicians lie effortlessly and without shame, and when total strangers spew bile at each other on what we cal...
1st September 2019
The past, and other countries: Gráinne Tobin (2)
It’s been hard to concentrate, these last few days. It’s hard to think about poetry when you’re consumed with rage and frustration in a world where truth is an endangered species, and the management o...
1st September 2019
Poets from Marsden and Batley meet on the bench today
Poets from Marsden and Batley will be reading together on Sunday 1 September outside Marsden Mechanics Hall in Marsden. The al fresco verse is part of a project organised by West Yorkshire’s Kirklees ...
1st September 2019
