'This moment before the splash of lights'
Most of the school-age athletes I know or have known would have been embarrassed to show any vulnerability, and this fine poem by Al Ortolani, from his chapbook Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street, published by Rattle, really catches what I felt like, trying to do my best at what I was never any good at, even on my best day.
GAME PRAYER
by Al Ortolani
Maybe it’s the way boy...
30th April 2020
From Surrey to Sale, via Wales and Belfast: online open-mic accesses all areas
Hands up who’s missing live, “real” poetry open-mics? How many have taken part in their online equivalents? I dipped my toe in the water last night, joining the fun at Sale Write Out Loud’s second online open-mic, with guest poet Louise Fazackerley, and compered with warmth and bonhomie by Sale orga...
30th April 2020
Joy France in Manchester, 2013
Mention the word 'Joy' to any northern poet and they might well respond “Balls!”, but not for the reasons you'd suppose. ‘Balls’ just happens to be the title and subject matter for one of Joy France...
30th April 2020
Wigan Write Out Loud goes online tonight
Wigan Write Out Loud’s regular compere Ian Whiteley will be hosting an online open-mic poetry night on Thursday 30 April on Zoom. The online meeting is open from 7.45pm, and the start time will be 8.1...
30th April 2020
Pascale Petit wins Keats-Shelley poetry prize with 'Indian Paradise Flycatcher'
Pascale Petit has won the £1,000 Keats-Shelley poetry prize with her poem ‘Indian Paradise Flycatcher’, in response to the competition theme of Songbird, marking the composition 200 years ago of Percy...
29th April 2020
Merseyside poets invited to contribute to World in Lockdown 'patchwork' poem
Poets on Merseyside are being invited to contribute to a lengthy ‘patchwork’ poem that documents the lockdown mood in the region.
The World in Lockdown People's Poem is being curated by poet Barry ...
27th April 2020
JB Barrington in Manchester, 2014
I Swear I was There, this third evening of poetry/comedy/music created and hosted by Salford’s own JB Barrington (aka WordsEscapeMe) at the Nag’s Head in Manchester, was packed to the gunnels. And rig...
24th April 2020
Liz Berry to judge £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition
Liz Berry will be judging the £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition. The deadline is 16 July. More details
23rd April 2020
Rachel Mann to judge £500 Manchester Cathedral poetry competition
Priest, poet and broadcaster Rachel Mann will be judging the £500 Manchester Cathedral poetry prize. The deadline is 30 June. More details
23rd April 2020
Jo Shapcott to judge £1,000 Wells poetry competition
Jo Shapcott will be judging the Wells Festival of Literature £1,000 open poetry competition. The deadline is 30 June. More details
23rd April 2020
Beware of 'Zoom-bombers': online organisers urged to step up security
An online poetry organiser is urging others to beware of the growing problem of ‘Zoom-bomber’ trolls disrupting events. The Stay-at-Home! online Literary Festival is warning that organisers should ema...
22nd April 2020
Carol Ann Duffy launches poetry project in response to pandemic
The former poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has launched an international poetry project with other poets including Imtiaz Dharker, Roger McGough and Andrew McMillan,in response to the coronavirus pand...
22nd April 2020
'Alone, all alone': celebs offer daily online readings of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner
Celebrities including Lemn Sissay, Iggy Pop, Hilary Mantel, Jeremy Irons, Tilda Swinton and Marianne Faithfull will be reading daily from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' fo...
21st April 2020
These are the Hands: ed. by Deborah Alma and Dr Katie Amiel, Fair Acre Press
This anthology should be read at some time by all those who stand outside their homes on Thursday evenings clapping in support of NHS workers. Which is a lot of us. It wasn’t planned that way, but thi...
21st April 2020
Louise Fazackerley is online guest poet at Sale Write Out Loud tonight
Louise Fazackerley - shortlisted in the Saboteur awards for best spoken word performer - will be the online guest poet at Sale Write Out Loud on Tuesday 21 April. Email organiser Sarah Pritchard at sa...
21st April 2020
'Let's stand by the window and look out at the light on the field'
I had to drop out of a philosophy class in college because I'd begun to think about what I was thinking about and I was getting dizzy and sick. Here's a poem by Danusha Laméris about getting relief fr...
20th April 2020
Luke Wright in London, 2016
I first saw Luke Wright’s What I Learned From Johnny Bevan, which focuses on the broken dreams of the Tony Blair years, almost a year ago, at its debut performance on a Saturday lunchtime in Shropshir...
16th April 2020
Comedian and football fan Frank Skinner to launch poetry podcast
Comedian and poetry fan Frank Skinner is to launch a poetry podcast, and will be talking about poems “the way I talk about football. I’m passionate about both and believe there is a real space for som...
15th April 2020
Poetry School adapts face-to-face courses for Zoom
The Poetry School will be offering some of its summer term face-to-face courses via Zoom. It already offers regular online courses, and now three of its face-to-face ones have been “adjusted for Zoom”...
15th April 2020
Poets give thanks to transport workers in moving poem-video
Poetry is proving it has the power to comfort and to console in these times. The nation is turning to it as never before – on TV and radio, and in newspapers, too. Countless poems have been posted by ...
15th April 2020
Bolton Write Out Loud goes online tonight
Bolton Write Out Loud will be the third Write Out Loud night to go online, on Wednesday 15 April at 7.30pm. Co-organiser Jeff Dawson is seeking a dozen readers to take part via the video conferencing ...
15th April 2020
A Second Whisper: Lynne Hjelmgaard, Seren
Poetry can surprise us in many different ways. Reading parts of this collection took me back just short of 50 years. When I was a student, I lived in a part of north London that was close to Golders G...
14th April 2020
Andrew McMillan to judge £1,000 Winchester prize
Andrew McMillan will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details
14th April 2020
Barnsley appoints Ian McMillan as Poet in Lockdown
The Bard of Barnsley, Ian McMillan, has a new post in his home town. Barnsley Museums has appointed the presenter of BBC Radio 3’s The Verb as its Poet in Lockdown, with the job of inspiring others to...
13th April 2020
No Far Shore: Anne-Marie Fyfe, Seren
The secondary heading of this literary-travel memoir - a combination of prose and poetry - is ‘Charting Unknown Waters’. And although Anne-Marie Fyfe had no thought of viruses when putting together th...
13th April 2020
Apples and Snakes to livestream spoken word shows
The spoken word performance organisation Apples and Snakes is launching a new initiative – Apples and Snakes @ Home – in this time of lockdown, with a series of hour-long livestreamed poetry and conve...
13th April 2020
'A pool of intermingled wings and bodies'
How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. Here’s a poem by Jared Carter from his new book, The Land Itself, from Monongahela Press. This is a fine example of how a talented poet ca...
13th April 2020
John Hegley in Manchester, 2012
The magnificently shabby surroundings of Gullivers in Oldham Street, Manchester, provided the backdrop for what turned out to be a hugely entertaining bill on Wednesday night. The last time I scaled ...
10th April 2020
'Every butterfly knows that the end is different from the beginning'
I'm writing this column on a summer day when a hungry crowd of Monarch butterfly caterpillars are eating the upper leaves of the milkweed just outside my door in Nebraska, and my wife and I are joyful...
10th April 2020
Popular poetry group launches anthology after being flooded with pandemic poems
Less than a month ago, poet Janine Booth set up a Facebook group for fellow poets wanting to write about the issues and experiences that people were facing during the coronavirus crisis – and was amaz...
10th April 2020
Poet and teacher Kate Clanchy on Orwell prize longlist
A book by poet and teacher Kate Clanchy has been included on the longlist of 12 for the Orwell prize for political writing. Clanchy’s book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me (Picador) is about...
9th April 2020
New NHS poetry anthology raises £2,500 for Covid-19 Emergency Fund
Profits from a poetry anthology about the NHS, These are the Hands, have raised £2,500 for the NHS Charities Together Covid 19 Emergency fund since the anthology's launch less than three weeks ago. Th...
9th April 2020
Four contemporary poets respond to Wordsworth in BBC Radio 4 programme
BBC Radio 4 marked the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth’s birthday with poems from four contemporary poets – Helen Mort, Kim Moore, Jacob Polley and Zaffar Kunial – in a programme called The Ne...
9th April 2020
Luke Wright live in his living room ... but not in front of the children!
Every night since the lockdown leading performance poet Luke Wright has been appearing on Twitter in his living room at 8pm – and last night was his 13th show. And what a treat for those confined to t...
7th April 2020
Royal Mail launches Romantic Poets stamps to mark Wordsworth anniversary
A set of stamps commemorating the Romantic Poets to mark the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth’s birth go on sale from today, Tuesday 7 April. As well as the quote from a Wordsworth poem, pictur...
7th April 2020
BBC radio programme You and Yours urges poetry-writing listeners to get in touch
The BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours says it wants to hear from anyone who has taken to writing poetry as a result of the pandemic. In an item last week the programme looked at why some people, inc...
6th April 2020
Pigeon Songs: Eoghan Walls, Seren
Born in Derry, Northern Ireland, Eoghan Walls has lived and taught in Germany, Rwanda and England, where he now lectures in creative writing at Lancaster University. He won an Eric Gregory award in 20...
6th April 2020
Michael Rosen's poem 'These are the Hands' read on Today programme as author remains 'poorly' in hospital
A poem by Michael Rosen, ‘These are the Hands’, that is the title poem of a timely new poetry anthology about the NHS, was read on BBC Radio 4’s morning Today programme on Thursday at around 8.30 am b...
5th April 2020
Stockport Write Out Loud holds first online meeting
Stockport Write Out Loud, which usually meets at Stockport art gallery, has held its first meeting online. The group, which normally meets once a month, is switching to bi-monthly meetings via the vid...
4th April 2020
ITV ends London news programme with a poem
ITV’s London News has been ending its half-hourly bulletin just before 6.30pm this week with a poem by a London poet. Here’s a video of one of the poets, Ollie Feather from south London, reading Hour ...
2nd April 2020
Roger McGough and Brian Patten, in Liverpool, 2017
So, there I was, back in the city were I once spent three gloriously happy, if challenging years working and living; a city with a certain notoriety; a creative, canny, cocksure yet caring community; ...
2nd April 2020
