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Poetry competition seeks poems against cruel sports but covers wide field

Award-winning poetry publishers Indigo Dreams have launched a Wild Poetry competition. They are looking for unpublished poems about “cruel sports in their various forms, including trophy and other hunting, shooting, and animal fighting”, but also more general poems about wildlife, the natural world, and the environment. The deadline is 30 September and first prize is £200. More details

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Competitions

Luke Wright heads a poetry festival fortnight in Tunbridge Wells

Luke Wright will be headlining Tunbridge Wells poetry festival, which will take place from 15-27 August. Organisers say there will be slam and open-mic opportunities throughout the festival fortnight, as well as a poetry reading in Ashdown Forest, and a host of writing workshops. More details

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Events

In An Ideal World I'd Not Be Murdered, Chaucer Cameron, Against The Grain Press

The epigraph says it all: To my dearest Helen & [                ]. This magnificent book, part memoir and part fiction of the author’s experiences in the sex industry, exists to give voice to those m...

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Review

Search for young polylingual poets to help develop skills

The deadline has been extended until midnight Monday 9 August to recruit eight young mixed-heritage people with an interest in polylingual poetry to develop their practice as poets or spoken word perf...

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Young Write Out Loud

The Earth is a Bookcase: Beth O'Brien, Black Pear Press

Writer, editor and reviewer Beth O’Brien is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Light Perception (2019) and I Left the Room Burning (2021), both published by Wild Pressed Books. Her late...

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Review

Deadline nears for Foyle Young Poets of the Year award

The 31 July deadline is nearing for entering the Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year award. It is free to enter and is open to poets aged 11-17 anywhere in the world.

 Meanwhile it has b...

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Young Write Out Loud

'Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me'

For many of us who live in landlocked states, an encounter with the tumult and power of the sea can be a bracing encounter with nature. Here, in a poem I came across in a clever new anthology called R...

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American Life in Poetry

Enduring appeal of print: long-running poetry magazines set out their stalls

Evidence of the staying power of print poetry magazines and some of its most respected and distinguished editors could be found in London on Saturday. Free Verse organisers Chrissy Williams and Joey C...

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Down memory lane

Poetry By Heart finalists perform on stage of Shakespeare’s Globe

On Sunday 18 and Monday 19 July over 300 students, parents, teachers and guests took part in the 2021 Poetry By Heart finalists’ celebration event at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. Children and young pe...

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Young Write Out Loud

Jacqueline Saphra to judge Winchester poetry prize

Jacqueline Saphra will be judging the £1,000 Winchester poetry prize. The deadline is 31 July. More details  

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Competitions

Mersey Poets reunited as Brian Patten joins Roger McGough on Poetry Please

Two poetry veterans and comrades linked up on Radio 4 when presenter Roger McGough welcomed his old friend Brian Patten, pictured, to Poetry Please on Sunday 25 July at 4.30pm.

Roger McGough and Br...

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News

Sign up for our latest poetry workshop - with Matt Abbott

After delivering a hat-trick of sold-out poetry masterclasses, we’re excited to present the second in our new series of poetry workshops. It’ll take place on Wednesday 28 July, featuring guest tutor M...

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Write Out Loud

Ready for lift-off! Retired teacher Jonathan Humble launches children’s poetry webzine The Dirigible Balloon

A former deputy headteacher and poet is launching a monthly online magazine devoted to children’s poetry and aimed at linking up with children in schools. Jonathan Humble's webzine The Dirigible Ballo...

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News

Poignant poem about wartime disaster that claimed 61 lives in Lancashire

A poem that originally appeared on Write Out Loud, about a forgotten tragedy that claimed the lives of 38 primary school pupils in Lancashire during the second world war, has been published in full in...

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Down memory lane

A new look for Write Out Loud - and an updated Gig Guide for in-person AND online events

You may well have noticed that we have updated the look of the Write Out Loud website. Not only that, we have updated our popular Gig Guide, so that you can now list online and in-person events as wel...

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Write Out Loud

Write Out Loud poet’s tribute to abused England penalty takers is posted on Marcus Rashford mural

A poem posted on Write Out Loud about the online racist abuse suffered by England players after the Euros final penalty shoot-out has been read in front of a mural celebrating Marcus Rashford in Manch...

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News

Pig's Ear, Dog's Dinner: Paul Cookson, Flapjack

As a reviewer, your heart inevitably sinks when you read a sub-title, ‘A Covid-19 Poetry Diary, Vol 3’. It seems only yesterday that I was leafing through a book by Paul Cookson, which I now know to b...

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Review

'I went to the hospital to hear my heart beat in her various chambers'

There is nothing quite like the relief of good news from the doctors. Of course, it is a reminder of the bad news we eventually expect, the faith that the word “cure” demands of us. I have always enjo...

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American Life in Poetry

Campaigners reach £134,000 target for sculpture to mark WB Yeats in England with day to spare

Campaigners seeking to reach a £134,000 target to erect a monument for a poet who was brought up in England and won the Nobel prize have achieved their goal with a day to spare. Ireland’s WB Yeats spe...

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News

Cultural campaigner and poetic free spirit Michael Horovitz dies aged 86

A veteran poet of energy and spirit who determinedly kept the flame of the 1960s burning for another 50 years and beyond has died at the age of 86. In 1965 Michael Horovitz helped to persuade Allen Gi...

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Obituary

Yay!: Robert Garnham, Burning Eye

An acclaimed performer of comedy poetry, Robert Garnham reads his poems at fringes and festivals. His work is double-edged, humorous and entertaining but also profoundly connected to the human conditi...

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Review

Festival's Poet on the High St prepares to pop up in Winchester

Winchester poetry festival’s Poet on the High St (aka performance poet Jonny Fluffypunk) will be popping up at Winchester’s Projects Café in Middle Brook Street on 23 July from 10.30am-2pm, and at Pie...

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Events

If You Want Thunder: Ruth Valentine, Smokestack

Ruth Valentine is a writer of poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction. A number of her previous poetry collections – Downpour, On the Saltmarsh, and The Tide Table – suggest an interest in water...

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Review

'I want to kiss them as I hurt to be kissed'

Sasha Pimentel’s poem is a splendid example of the poetic device called the conceit, which refers to an extended metaphor, and of course, the image here is the violin. Yet the title of the poem is tak...

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American Life in Poetry

Poetry Review in the 1980s: the golden years?

I always peruse the poetry sections of secondhand bookshops more in hope than expectation. And even at the renowned Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, housed in a beautiful former railway statio...

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Platform

Blakefest, Bognor Regis, 2019

The visionary poet and painter William Blake only lived in the Sussex village of Felpham for a couple of years - just enough time to begin writing Jerusalem and to be cleared at Chichester assizes of ...

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We'll meet again

‘I was too ill to write as normal, but the poems kept flowing’: Alwyn Marriage on her long battle with Covid, and the loss of a loved one

Alwyn Marriage is a much-published poet and novelist, and publisher, who last year found herself facing the “jaws of hell”. Her latest poetry collection Pandora’s Pandemic tells how she and her husban...

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Interview

'The truth is I love watching you trot away from me'

It is reassuring to know that other dog owners struggle with the strange way in which we project our humanity on animals and ignore the implications of such an “unnatural” act. Nikki Wallschlaeger’s n...

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American Life in Poetry

Anthony Anaxagorou to judge Ledbury poetry competition

Anthony Anaxagorou will be judging the £1,000 Ledbury poetry festival competition. The deadline is 15 July. More details

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Competitions

Plath letters and photo album to be auctioned by Sotheby's

A number of Sylvia Plath’s letters and personal items – including her wedding ring, a captioned photo album and her drawings of Ted Hughes – are to be sold at Sotheby’s.

Dr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’...

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News

Poetry project for the canals makes waves

Milnsbridge on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is being put on the poetic map, in the form of poetry carved on lock gates, in the latest addition to the Locklines project run by the Canal and River Trus...

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Down memory lane

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