From mining and shipyards to wind power and other renewable energy, the Northumberland port of Blyth is changing. One encouraging sign of its regeneration is the town’s new Market Pavilion, a cinema and arts building that hosted a wide-ranging poetry reading on Saturday night.

Northern Lines hear...

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Poems about bladderwrack, kelp, oysters, stones and coal dust found on a beach, and a skip full of seaweed have been published after a creative workshops project to raise awareness about coastal habit...

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When poet and publisher Tim Fellows looked out of his bedroom window as a boy, he saw the local colliery in his former mining area of north Derbyshire. Men on both sides of his family had been involve...

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Salford spoken word artist Kieren King is a leading slam performer who once said in an interview that he was inspired by the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clarke. He has co-run the spoken word night Ev...

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Matthew Paul has had poems published in a number of leading magazines, and already has one excellent collection, The Evening Entertainment, to his name. His second, The Last Corinthians, builds upon h...

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I am a retired Teacher of the Deaf by profession, and volunteer as a table tennis coach at Brighton Table Tennis Club, where I help train the national Down Syndrome squad. We have table tennis session...

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This new collection from Emma Purshouse marks something of a departure from her previous work. It is partly inspired by the American poet William Matthews and, in particular, his poem ‘Morningside Hei...

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I attend a number of poetry events - but it’s not often that I find myself at an actual poetry ‘event’. This reading of Basil Bunting’s acclaimed long poem ‘Briggflatts’, by the eminent poet Sean O’Br...

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The title of this anthology, published by Dempsey and Windle under their Vole imprint, is taken from Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” and the image on the...

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London-born poet Gillian Allnutt spent half her childhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. She read philosophy and English at Cambridge and lived for the next 17 years mostly in London. In 1988 she returned to...

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I’ve come across some slim volumes of poetry in my time, but this one is ridiculous. Release the Sausages! Poems for Keir Starmer boasts 20-odd pages, but apart from a preface from Andy Croft, all of ...

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Poetry doesn’t alter anything, right? As WH Auden more or less pronounced. In his foreword to Words on a NE Street, a remarkable anthology of 100 poems by 100 poets about the homeless, its instigator ...

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This was an eco-festival - with plenty of poetry - that put forward a positive view for the future of our world. Alnwick’s What a Wonderful World festival in Northumberland began on Thursday at Rothbu...

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Marilyn Longstaff lives in Darlington and is a member of Vane Women writing collective. In 2003, she received a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North, and her third poetry book Raiment (Smokes...

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The launch of Suzanna Fitzpatrick’s debut full collection Crippled in London on Tuesday evening came with a trigger warning. The book explores a childhood shadowed by a mother’s chronic illness, culmi...

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In her mid-20s, Len Pennie is already a poetry phenomenon. She became renowned on social media such as TikTok during lockdown for posting a "Scots word of the day" and poetry videos. Her debut collect...

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For two decades or more, the name Henry Normal was most often associated with an illustrious string of hit television comedies such as The Mrs Merton Show, The Royle Family, The Mighty Boosh and Gavin...

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I am an unashamed fan of Matthew Paul’s poetry – so to describe his second collection as long-awaited is no exaggeration, as far as I am concerned. I gladly undertook the train journey from Northumber...

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Poetry was the support act in Hexham on Saturday when novelist David Wiliams re-launched a novel he first published in 2012, to mark this year’s bicentenary of the Stockton & Darlington, the world’s f...

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Henry Normal is a stand-up comic supreme, who with fellow poet Brian Bilston, has been attracting bumper and appreciative audiences during the pair’s current tour.

He has maintained a prolific outp...

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Leah Larwood is an award-winning poet, a freelance writer and a gestalt psychotherapist. She has an MA in creative writing and her poems have won or been placed in a number of poetry competitions. One...

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When I retired from my newspaper job a dozen or so years ago, and was looking forward to pursuing my new life as a poet, of sorts, my colleagues gave me as one of my parting gifts a copy of the select...

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Victoria Gatehouse is a zoologist, award-winning poet and children’s writer. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC radio and published in several leading magazines. Her pamphlet The Mechanics of Love (...

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This collection of one hundred short poems is inspired by the life of Carmelite nun Thérèse of Lisieux, who died in 1897 aged just 24. In her elegant introduction to the poems, Sarah Law explains how ...

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Maggie Harris was born in Guyana and now lives in Broadstairs, Kent. She has won the Guyana Prize for Literature, was regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014, and won the Wales Poet...

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This first full-length collection by Cardiff-based poet Emily Cotterill follows on from her debut poetry pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants published by Smith / Doorstop in 2019 which was selected by...

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It was a foggy night on Teesside and a warm if slightly melancholy evening for the final farewell of Smokestack Books, which publisher Andy Croft closed for new titles last Christmas after 20 years. P...

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All good things must come to an end – or at least, a pause, in the case of Hexham’s very popular poetry event Words on the Wall. There was an impressive turnout for what masterly compere Joe Williams ...

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Sometimes slim volumes open up much bigger worlds and pack a punch beyond 30 pages of text. The title and the cover of Janus suggest a gaze, both forward and backward. The structure of the book, thoug...

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