The Poetry Society has reopened its Poetry Café and basement in Betterton Street, London for hire during daytime hours for the first time since Covid and lockdown.

But the news has had many poets mourning the ‘good old days’ when poetry events took place in the Poetry Café basement on most if not...

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Heather Cook will be the featured poet at Write Out Loud Woking at the Fiery Bird on Thursday 25 January. Heather will be reading from her debut, award-winning pamphlet Out of the Ordinary. Sharron Gr...

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Pam Ayres will be appearing at Morecambe poetry festival later this year, it has been announced. The festival, which has become known for its blend of top names and grassroots poetry, will be held in ...

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Monkey Poet - aka Matt Panesh, winner of many fringe awards and organiser of Morecambe poetry festival – will be headlining at Born Lippy, Newcastle’s mix of spoken word, comedy, hip-hop and open-mic,...

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Kathryn Gray will be judging the £1,000 Kent and Sussex open poetry competition. The deadline is 31 January. More details 

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'Lines in the sand' is the theme of Bournemouth Writing Festival's competition. Organisers are looking for poems of up to 30 lines, excluding the title. There is also a flash fiction category. The jud...

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Britain’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which takes place each year at the end of January, with many thousands taking part, is said to be the world’s largest garden wildlife survey. Even if we don’t agree on ...

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Jason Allen-Paisant has won this year's £25,000 TS Eliot prize for Self-Portrait As Othello, it was announced on Monday night at a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London. In Self-Portrait As Oth...

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In 1799 - the year that Napoleon gained power in France – the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, at the age of 21, discovered the physiological effect of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Being Davy, he wrote a ...

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Denise Saul will be judging the £500 international Wales Poetry Award for a single poem. The deadline is 5 February. More details 

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Members of Stockport Write Out Loud will be sharing their poems on Thursday 11 January at Stockport art gallery. Come and share your poems at this friendly open-floor poetry night set in a wonderfully...

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Kate Hook is the guest poet at Sale Write Out Loud at the Waterside arts centre, Sale, on Monday 15 January. Kate's first poetry book I Can Hear You Ironing is due out in March. Contact host Sarah Pri...

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Bright Stars – Celebrating the Anniversaries of the Romantics in Sussex – involves readings in Chichester on Saturday 20 January of poetry by John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron in his bic...

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The ever-popular Write Out Loud Wigan is at the Bailiff Bar at the Old Courts in Wigan on Thursday 11 January. Your host is Ian Whiteley. Sign up on the night from 7.30pm for an 8pm start. More detail...

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Write Out Loud Woking stages its first open-mic poetry night of 2024 on Zoom on Wednesday 10 January. It's compered by Greg Freeman, so email Greg for details gregfreem62@gmail.com if you'd like a fiv...

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Adrian Green is a former small press editor who has published two other full collections, Chorus and Coda and All that Jazz and Other Poems. He is a trustee of the Jazz Centre (UK), and ran a traditio...

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Poetry written by the 19th century chemist Sir Humphry Davy, inventor of the miners’ safety lamp, will be read and discussed at a workshop at Morpeth library in Northumberland on Thursday 11 January f...

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This has been a holiday season like no other in the long memories of some of the Write Out Loud team. Please forgive us if we were not filled with festive cheer. But you’ll appreciate that it’s diffic...

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