The Two Dylans: KG Miles and Jeff Towns, McNidder & Grace
This is a book about connections, some fleeting and tenuous, others less so, between Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas. Given that these two cultural icons never met each other (Dylan Thomas died in 1953), the idea for this book was always going to be a big challenge. The first chapter sets the scene by describing the moment when, 10 years later, Robert Zimmerman took the decision to change his name to B...
31st October 2022
Jane Commane to judge WoLF poetry competition
Jane Commane will be judging the £400 Wolverhampton literature festival (WoLF) poetry competition. The deadline is 31 December. More details
31st October 2022
'The mon tonight is closer to us'
Perhaps we are too close to the monumental moment in history to fully appreciate just how to approach it in poetry, but the poets are writing about this pandemic in the way that poets must — to find l...
31st October 2022
'Despite occasional interference ...': Simon Armitage's poem 'Transmission Report' celebrates 100 years of the BBC
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has published a poem to mark 100 years of the BBC. ‘Transmission Report’ was broadcast on the BBC’s The One Show, which was rebranded The 100 Hundred Show for a week...
30th October 2022
Halloween is deadline day for National Poetry Competition
The deadline is Halloween, 31 October, for this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition, organised by the Poetry Society. This year’s judges are Greta Stoddart, Jason Allen-Paisant and Michael Symmo...
30th October 2022
'My father's seat empty, placemat bare'
This is an elegant elegy to a father who has passed, captured in the rituals that families create as a way to remember, to honour and even to celebrate. The extra place set at table before a feast of ...
27th October 2022
Time Matters: Julie Anne Gilligan, Dempsey & Windle
Born and brought up in south-east London, Julie Anne Gilligan has lived in Essex for the past 35 years. Time Matters is her second collection of poems, following The Thickness of Blood (2012). She hol...
27th October 2022
Ultrasilence: John Darwin, Flapjack Press
John Darwin’s poetry is crafted and lyrical, and admirably economical: it doesn‘t hang about, cuts quickly to the chase. You can hear the music of not-fooled urban poetry in ‘Slim’: “By the shop of b...
14th October 2022
Five debut collections in 'unflinching, alive, haunted' TS Eliot prize shortlist
Organisers have announced the shortlist for the £25,000 TS Eliot prize, selected by judges Jean Sprackland (chair), Hannah Lowe and Roger Robinson. The list includes one previous winner, and five debu...
14th October 2022
'This sea: a Chevy engine revving high reminding me how everything’s design'
In 'Beachcomber Nocturne', Lupita Eyde-Tucker beautifully wrestles with the complex relationship that we sometimes have with nature, by first acknowledging that there is a strange colonising impulse b...
14th October 2022
Walking poet retraces steps for another look at City
A writer who published a poetry map of the nooks and passageways of the City of London has retraced her steps by issuing a second edition of the map, 11 years on. Eco-poet and walking artist Lucy Furl...
12th October 2022
Poet and volunteer teacher who learned lessons from refugees
Chichester poets will be welcoming a writer whose latest collection is based on her experiences as a volunteer teacher in an emergency asylum home in Berlin later this month. Clare Saponia is the head...
11th October 2022
Deborah Harvey to judge Indigo poetry prize
Deborah Harvey will be judging the £250 Indigo Dreams autumn poetry prize. The deadline is 30 October. More details
11th October 2022
It’s Honorary, Bab: Emma Purshouse, Offa’s Press
This book comes with a health warning. Wolverhampton’s legendary ‘man on the oss’, aka Prince Albert, is wearing a face mask and so is his horse. Both of them look alarmed. Perhaps they should be beca...
11th October 2022
Widow of Ted Hughes objects to fox sculpture planned for poet's birthplace in Mytholmroyd
The widow of former poet laureate Ted Hughes has objected to a new sculpture being built to commemorate him in his birthplace of Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, saying: “This project, the design of the...
9th October 2022
'We don't remember our birth, when a mother dies, it's gone'
Victoria Chang has an uncanny capacity to contain, in the compact machine of a well-honed poem, so much emotion and meaning. She explores such a core element of what connects us as human beings — the ...
9th October 2022
Long-established poetry magazine in drive for more subscribers
A poetry magazine that has been going for 30 years is aiming to increase its number of subscribers, and to avoid “less palatable options”. South magazine comes out twice a year, and is unsubsidised, n...
8th October 2022
The Presence and the Dream: edited by Serena Trowbridge and Sarah Doyle
The Pre-Raphaelites are a beloved part of this country’s cultural fabric. And so an anthology of a decade of the Pre-Raphaelite Society poetry prize is not such a niche product as it might first appea...
6th October 2022
'Don’t go down to the Railway Inn with anyone else but us!': Write Out Loud's poetry jam returns to Marsden jazz festival venue
Yes, the Write Out Loud Marsden Poetry Jam is back on again! After an absence of two years, the poetry jam is returning to its rightful home at the Railway Inn at 11 am on Sunday 9 October 2022, durin...
6th October 2022
Poetry-generating bicycle, poetry on the beach ... what's happening near you on National Poetry Day? The theme is the environment
Today, Thursday 6 October is National Poetry Day, with this year's theme the environment, and a host of poetry events taking place, according to the National Poetry Day website. Write Out Loud's Gig G...
6th October 2022
Searching for Black Britain: Roger Robinson and Johny Pitts at Manchester literature festival
Last year TS Eliot prize-winning poet Roger Robinson and acclaimed photographer Johny Pitts rented a Mini Cooper and followed the coast clockwise in search of Black Britain. Johny photographed black B...
3rd October 2022
Veteran radical poet Tom Pickard reads at Newcastle protest rally
Veteran radical Tyneside poet Tom Pickard took part in an Enough is Enough rally in Newcastle on Saturday, one of a number of demonstrations that took place in cities around the country at the weekend...
2nd October 2022
Write Out Loud Woking marks six years with anthology
A Write Out Loud open-mic poetry group has just published its first anthology. Finding Our Voices – The First Six Years has been masterminded by Rodney Wood, co-host of Write Out Loud Woking with Greg...
1st October 2022
