Fledge: Jonathan Humble, Maytree Press
Jonathan Humble lives in Cumbria, and is an observant cheerleader for the natural world. This meticulously crafted collection is suffused with a love of nature, and of birds in particular. A number of the poems are laced with humour; but there are distinct moments of melancholy, and pain, too.
There are also several poems about childhood, a subject that might well interest a primary school depu...
31st July 2020
Seven poets share Bread and Roses poetry awards
Seven poets have won this year’s Bread and Roses poetry awards, organised by arts website Culture Matters. The seven are: Jane Burn (‘Handbook for 2021’); Annie McCrae (‘A Stitch in Time’); Raymond Miller (‘Donkey Jacket’); Jenny Mitchell (‘Burden of Ownership’); Antony Owen (‘If Boris Johnson had ...
31st July 2020
Zoë Skoulding wins Wales Book of the Year poetry award
Zoë Skoulding has won the Wales Book of the Year poetry award with her collection Footnotes to Water, published by Seren, it was announced on Friday.
In Footnotes to Water Skoulding follows the my...
31st July 2020
Scottish Poetry Library to operate 'click and collect' service
The Scottish Poetry Library will begin operating with a reduced ‘click and collect service from 17 August. After browsing the SPL’s online catalogue, users can order a book they wish to borrow by emai...
31st July 2020
Congratulations! Here are the names and poems of all the poets in the anthology
Congratulations to the six shortlisted poets who will be appearing in the Write Out Loud Beyond the Storm competition anthology. They are, in alphabetical order: Deborah Ballantyne, Newly Qualified; ...
30th July 2020
Jackie Hagan, Manchester, 2015
The force of nature that is poet and writer Jackie Hagan performed her show Some People Have Too Many Legs at Manchester’s Contact theatre to an adoring crowd of family, friends and fans. She said it ...
30th July 2020
Salford University launches award in tribute to innovative poet and artist Leanne Bridgewater
A university has paid tribute to a former creative writing MA student and innovative poet who died at the age of 29 last year, by inaugurating an award in her honour.
Salford University has set up ...
28th July 2020
Pre-order a copy of our anthology for these strange, heartbreaking, inspiring times
You can now pre-order a copy of Write Out Loud's Beyond the Storm competition anthology of 100 poems about the pandemic and beyond. It will be a record of these strange, heartbreaking but also inspiri...
28th July 2020
'An older man whose gears, stiff with disuse, are leveraging his body'
SC Hahn is an American poet now living in Stockholm where, as you’ll see, it can be every bit as hard to get out of bed after an operation as it is here. You can hear the machinery creaking, can’t you...
27th July 2020
John McCullough wins £15,000 Hawthornden prize for literature
The vagaries of the literary awards process during lockdown have been illustrated after poet John McCullough revealed on Friday that he had won the 2020 £15,000 Hawthornden prize for literature.
Th...
24th July 2020
Lure: Alison Lock, Calder Valley Poetry
This collection of poems has been salvaged from the depths of a dramatic, near-fatal accident suffered by the poet Alison Lock three years ago, when she almost drowned and broke her back in seven plac...
24th July 2020
John Agard, Portsmouth, 2015
John Agard makes free with anachronisms – indeed, they are part of the joke. Arriving on stage in historic dress as Christopher Columbus, but with a shopping trolley, he extracts various items from it...
23rd July 2020
Four-year-old boy who dictates poems to mum wins publishing deal
A young poet has just landed a publishing deal – at the age of four. Nadim Shamma-Sourgen, who is still learning to read and write, dictates his poems to his mum. His poems include ‘My Lonely Garden’,...
23rd July 2020
People's Vote videos: we talk to Gabriella, Olivia and Kirsty from BBC's Casualty
Write Out Loud is grateful for the support of BBC Casualty producer Dafydd Llewellyn and actors Gabriella Leon, Kirsty Mitchell and Olivia D'Lima, all poetry lovers, in backing our competition to rais...
21st July 2020
Countdown to the People's Vote! Your chance to take part in the closing stage of Write Out Loud's poetry competition
It’s the next stage in Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm poetry competition - for poems about the coronavirus lockdown and beyond – as the countdown to the People’s Vote begins. Poets have already bee...
21st July 2020
People's Vote videos: we talk to Noah, Rhiannon and Jacob from ALRA North
Emerging actors Noah Olaoye, Rhiannon Clements, and Jacob Butler are studying at or graduates from ALRA North drama school in Wigan. Write Out Loud is very grateful for their help in performing the sh...
21st July 2020
'I reach out also to my sister, bereft and alone'
Maine’s former poet laureate, Wesley McNair, is one of my favourite writers. Godine has just published a touching book-length memoir, in verse, entitled Dwellers in the House of the Lord. Though it’s ...
20th July 2020
Deadline nears for Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition
The Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition, for poets aged 11-17, is being judged this year by Maura Dooley and Keith Jarrett. The deadline is 31 July. More details
20th July 2020
'The real me just fades away, glance by glance, day by day'
When I look in a mirror, I try to compose my face so that it is at its best, but it’s a face that beyond my bathroom gets supplanted by all the more homely faces I carry out into the world. John Thorn...
20th July 2020
Negotiating Caponata: Carla Scarano D'Antonio, Dempsey & Windle
Carla Scarano D’Antonio grew up and studied in Rome, before moving to England and gaining an MA in creative writing at Lancaster University. She now lives in Surrey, contributing poetry and reviews to...
17th July 2020
Land of Three Rivers anthology launch, Gateshead, 2017
Music and poetry collaborated to produce an unforgettable night showcasing the north-east’s regional pride and identity at the Sage in Gateshead on Friday, where musicians, dancers and schoolchildren ...
16th July 2020
Bradford poetry group resumes meetings in pub
As lockdown rules ease, one poetry group has started holding live meetings again. Bradford’s Beehive Poets, who used to meet at the New Beehive Inn every Monday, went back there last week for the firs...
14th July 2020
Kate Clanchy's teaching memoir wins Orwell prize for political writing
The poet, writer and teacher Kate Clanchy has won the Orwell prize for political writing for her “moving and powerful” memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, about working as a teacher i...
12th July 2020
Magnetic Field: Simon Armitage, Faber
As a poet reviewing someone else’s poetry, I am acutely aware of how interpretation can be a massively subjective undertaking and as such, possibly at odds with the intentions and motivations driving ...
10th July 2020
Celebrated teacher launches anthology of lockdown poems by former pupils
A poet and teacher awarded an MBE for her services to literature, after working with migrant and refugee children as writer In residence at Oxford Spires Academy, has launched an anthology of poetry c...
9th July 2020
'We ride the electric horse without any reins': poet Shaun Fallows on disability and freedom
Shaun Fallows was born with cerebral palsy, and is a wheelchair user. Last year the Wigan-based poet appeared on a Channel 5 programme to talk about disability, and also published his first poetry col...
9th July 2020
Louise Fazackerley joins The Verb discussion on the poetry of violence
Leading spoken word poet Louise Fazackerley will be taking part in an exploration of the poetry of violence on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb on Friday at 10pm. Host Ian McMillan will also be joined by former...
9th July 2020
After Trump: an artistic and poetic reminder of America's Great Migration
A week after the shock of America’s supposed liberal values being trumped by bigly bigotry, the country’s apparently ingrained red neck having been thus exposed, I had the privilege of attending an e...
9th July 2020
Linton Kwesi Johnson wins PEN Pinter prize
The poet and reggae recording artist Linton Kwesi Johnson has been award the 2020 PEN Pinter prize. The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of ex...
7th July 2020
'Learning to kill with her toes'
How much pain and anger can a good poet pack into just a few words? A lot, in this 15-word haiku by Laura Foley from her 2019 collection of poems from Headmistress Press entitled Why I Never Finished ...
6th July 2020
Derek Owusu wins £10,000 prize for novel in verse
Derek Owusu has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott prize for his novel-in-verse That Reminds Me. The book is a semi-autobiographical tale of a British-Ghanaian boy called K. Owusu is a writer, poet and p...
6th July 2020
Poetry at the Parsonage, Haworth, 2016
A new kind of poetry festival – certainly one that I haven’t seen before – was born at the weekend, in the “creative hotspot” of the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
In the same setting...
2nd July 2020
