A huge thank-you to everyone that supported our fundraising appeal - you did us proud!
A heartfelt thank-you to all those who contributed - some more than once - to Write Out Loud's Crowdfunder appeal, which ended on 1 February. Although we didn't reach our target figure, we are more than grateful for what we have managed to raise in these tough times. We achieved a total just short of £4,500. Most if not all of that sum should qualifty for match funding by One Community, which coul...
28th February 2021
Callum James to judge D&W short collection and single poem competitions
Poet and bookseller Callum James will be judging the Brian Dempsey Memorial competition organised by publishers Dempsey & Windle, which offers chances to win a short collection prize, or a £200 single poem prize. The deadline is 15 March. More details
28th February 2021
Publisher seeks poems for anthology about video games of the 80s and 90s
Publisher Broken Sleep Books is looking for submissions for an anthology of poetry about video games of the 1980s and 90s. It will be edited by Aaron Kent and Matthew Haigh. Previously published poems...
28th February 2021
Poetry Book Fair, London, 2017
Free Verse’s Poetry Book Fair at Conway Hall in London would still draw the crowds, even if it was just about selling books – but it is always a lot more than that. The event, built up by organisers C...
26th February 2021
Festival launches Manchester Poetry Library's Polish collection
Following their highly successful 2018 Polish Poetry Festival, Radość Pisania, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School is having another on Saturday 27 February, this time to celebrate the...
24th February 2021
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Beat scene publisher of Ginsberg's Howl!, dies aged 101
One of the last members of the American Beat poetry scene, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, has died at his home at the age of 101. Ferlinghetti co-founded the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, and was tr...
24th February 2021
Open Windows, Open Doors: Vanessa Vie, New Departures
This debut collection of poetry and visual art by Vanessa Vie opens with an epigraph by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from which it takes its title, and a foreword by Michael Horovitz, veteran Beat poet and ...
24th February 2021
Replying to Keats: new poems from three contemporary poets on bicentenary
The Poetry Society has marked the bicentenary of the death of John Keats on 23 February by commissioning three contemporary poets – Ruth Padel, Will Harris and Rachael Boast –to respond to their favou...
22nd February 2021
No life without death, no death without life': laureate's tribute to Keats
The poet laureate Simon Armitage has written a new poem, ‘I speak as someone …’, to mark the bicentenary of the death of John Keats in Rome. The poem was published in the Times newspaper as part of an...
22nd February 2021
Pick Your Own: Amanda Bonnick, Black Pear Press
Worcestershire-based actor, director, producer and poet Amanda Bonnick holds a BA degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Warwick. As a theatre practitioner, she has produced a numbe...
22nd February 2021
StAnza poetry festival marks end of the Soviet Union
StAnza, Scotland's international poetry festival from 6-14 March will mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union as a political unit with a focus on languages from countries of the forme...
20th February 2021
The poetry of football (1): Dave Martin, bard of Torquay United
This all started with an irritable comment on Twitter from me, complaining about the bias of the home commentator during the livestream of the FA Trophy football match between Sutton United and Woking...
18th February 2021
Writ in water: radio play and poetry event to mark bicentenary of John Keats' death in Rome
The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is marking the start of two years of events celebrating the lives and works of poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley with a commissioned play, Writ in Water,...
17th February 2021
Alice and the North: Anne Caldwell, Valley Press
I’m no expert on the mysteries of prose poetry - but then, who is? Maybe Anne Caldwell, for one, for she edited a recent prose poetry anthology with Oz Hardwick that was published by Valley Press. .
...16th February 2021
Urdu poetry, London, 2016
It was an extraordinary moment, for me, at any rate. Early on during a talk about a famous South Asian poet his words were read out in Urdu – and many of the audience began joining in, knowing them wo...
15th February 2021
What Survives Is the Singing: Shanta Acharya, Indigo Dreams
In her long career as a scholar and writer, Shanta Acharya has published poetry, literary criticism and fiction as well as business and finance works. Her seventh collection explores the vulnerability...
15th February 2021
The poetry of football (2): website has been 'swapping shirts with Shakespeare' for over 20 years
The Football Poets website was set up in 2000, is still going strong, and now has close to 17,000 poems on its site. Write Out Loud talked to Crispin Thomas, a Forest Green Rovers/Chelsea fan who is p...
10th February 2021
Poems from Cardiff: edited by Amy Wack, Seren
Poems from Cardiff forms a part of Seren’s attractively produced pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of places in Wales. The other pamphlets in the series are titled Poems from Pembrokeshire; Poems...
9th February 2021
Passerine: Kirsten Luckins, Bad Betty Press
There’s no shortage of bold and innovative poetry coming from the UK right now, but you won’t read another collection like this one any time soon. Passerine is delicately defiant, powerfully intricate...
8th February 2021
Laura Taylor, London, 2018
Laura Taylor is a force of nature, worth abandoning a quiet life of retirement and taking the train to that London to hear. That London? Yes, Laura is a popular performance poet at festivals and clubs...
5th February 2021
Maggie teams up with Louise to lend rugby exercise expertise to Write Out Loud's cause
Write Out Loud’s Crowdfunder appeal took a different turn on the final day of our campaign. Rugby coach Maggie Hammond from Forest Hill in south-east London generously offered to share her regular Sun...
3rd February 2021
Celebrating the NHS with These Are the Hands anthology reading at Kendal poetry festival
A reading from the NHS anthology These Are the Hands will be one of the highlights of Kendal poetry festival, taking place online from 19-28 February. The anthology published by Fair Acre Press featur...
3rd February 2021
Don't fence us in! Poets prompt pupils at the Giant Poetry Party
A hint of what Write Out Loud – and especially Young Write Out Loud – want to do a lot more of in the future could be seen at the Giant Poetry Party for primary school pupils staged online by Lily Lan...
3rd February 2021
The Call of the Clerihew: ed. George Szirtes and Andy Jackson, Smokestack
A clerihew is defined on the cover of this anthology of 800 examples of them as “a childish anti-panagyric, a flat-footed, Hidibranistic, eponymous quatrain designed to cut everyone down to size”, and...
3rd February 2021
Bhanu Khapil wins £25,000 TS Eliot prize with collection about immigrants and hosts
Bhanu Kapil, a British-born writer whose work has been published in the US for two decades, has won the £25,000 TS Eliot Prize for How to Wash a Heart, her first full-length poetry collection to be pu...
2nd February 2021
Riverwise: Jack Smylie Wild, Parthian
Born in Aberystwyth but mostly raised on the edge of Dartmoor, poet, nature writer and award-winning baker Jack Smylie Wild has been moving between England and Wales for the last 30 years. In 2011 he ...
2nd February 2021
Seán Hewitt to judge £600 Poets and Players competition
Seán Hewitt will be judging the £600 Poets and Players competition. The deadline is 1 March. More details
1st February 2021
