Middle of the road poetry? Walking poet Lucy Furlong gets down to the grassroots
An eco-poet has found a new path to creativity – by writing about the nature to be found on a section of central reservation on a dual carriageway. Lucy Furlong’s chapbook Sward includes a look in great detail at the plants – and rubbish – in the middle of the A240 Kingston Road, from the Tolworth junction with the A3, to the nearby border between London and Surrey. One of her prose-poems in Swar...
31st January 2020
Jane Burn wins Wolverhampton literature festival's poetry competition
Jane Burn has won the £400 first prize in the Wolverhampton literature festival poetry competition, run in conjunction with Write Out Loud, and judged by West Midlands poet Roz Goddard. The competition once again proved to be immensely popular, attracting over 650 entries, with poets sending in work...
22nd January 2020
Saboteur awards launch cash plea after losing Arts Council funding for ceremony
The prestigious annual Saboteur Awards are appealing for funding help after losing their Arts Council grant for their 2020 awards ceremony. The indie lit awards, organised by Sabotage Reviews, have la...
21st January 2020
Skiffle pioneer and poet Hylda Sims dies at 87
Hylda Sims, a poet and musician who was one of the pioneers of skiffle, and in more recent years host of the Fourth Friday poetry and music nights at the Poetry Café in London, has died at the age of ...
16th January 2020
Roger Robinson wins £25,000 TS Eliot prize with 'A Portable Paradise'
The British-Trinidadian poet, writer, musician and performer Roger Robinson has won the £25,000 TS Eliot prize for his collection A Portable Paradise. The book tackles racism, violence and the Grenfel...
14th January 2020
'Every Child Counts': Tony Walsh's poem and video boosts children's hospital
Leading performance poet Tony Walsh has written a poem and made a fundraising video for Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital that has already been viewed over 100,000 times since it was released on 2 ...
7th January 2020
Love songs of TS Eliot: Emily 'would have killed the poet in me'
An extraordinary statement by the poet TS Eliot about his long-running relationship with an American woman that continued during his first marriage has been published almost 60 years after it was writ...
7th January 2020
Mary Jean Chan wins £5,000 Costa poetry award
The poet and lecturer Mary Jean Chan has won the £5,000 poetry category of the Costa book awards for her first collection, Flèche, which explores themes of multilingualism, queerness, psychoanalysis a...
7th January 2020
A CBE for Scotland's makar Jackie Kay in New Year honours list
Scotland’s makar – poet laureate - Jackie Kay has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year honours list. In 2006 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature. Jackie Kay was born to a Scottish ...
3rd January 2020
Write Out Loud says farewell and thank you to John Foggin
Almost a year ago we welcomed John Foggin and his first blog for Write Out Loud to our home page with an appropriate fanfare. It is only right that we should mark his final Great Fogginzo’s Wider Web ...
2nd January 2020
