Greetings to you all from Write Out Loud, whether you’re huddled inside in the warm, or basking outside in the sunshine! After a dangerous and fearful year out there, please forgive us for also looking back at 2025 as the year when we marked our 20th anniversary with a resoundingly successful poetry competition and anthology, and a smashing showcase event at Morecambe poetry festival in September. We kicked off 2025 with co-founder Julian Jordon’s thoughts on Write Out Loud’s 20 years as a poetry community hub, and then launched our poetry competition Echoes judged by the renowned Bloodaxe Books poetry editor Neil Astley. We received an astounding, record number of entries, which resulted in a top-quality anthology lovingly curated by Julian.  

It was a special year too Young Write Out Loud, with a number of successful events curated by our tireless Julia Clark, supported by brilliant live and online poet Louise Fazackerley, and Matt Abbott. It should also be remembered that none of this would be possible without the constant attention and vigilance of our behind-the-scenes technical star Paul Emberson.  

As always, Write Out Loud’s tireless bloggers continued to post their wonderful array of poems on our site – whether poignant, angry, or hilarious – and we hope we reflected some of these riches in our postings on our fascinating poetry advent calendar on Instagram, put together by Tom Alexander and Graham Sherwood. It’s the second year we’ve done this. If you haven’t done so already, take a moment to scroll through this rich selection of contributions from the Write Out Loud blogs.    

It was a year when poetry has proved more important than ever, in bearing witness, providing consolation, satirising or simply poking fun, and in celebrating the good in most of us. Our very best wishes for 2026 – and keep writing!    

 

Thank-you to our bloggers as Write Out Loud’s

poetry calendar counted down to Christmas!  

 

Last year we launched our first ever Write Out Loud poetry calendar with the promise of trying to inject a bit of fun, thought and reflection into the final dark and gloomy days of the year. We felt, like many, that in this troubled world we need poetry more than ever. And a year on, nothing has really changed and poetry continues to play as important a role as ever. Our regular bloggers have shared some great poems throughout the year, with over 50 regular users and more than 300 poems posted each month.

We have made one Instagram post a day, right up to Christmas Day. Thank you to our poetry bloggers and poets who contributed to this year’s advent calendar. Our final day of the advent calendar - Christmas Day - had some seasonal poems from members of the Write Out Loud team. 

We were also challenging people again this year - to write a reverse-word nonet around the theme of hope, joy, or what it feels like to be coming to the end of another year.

A reverse-word nonet has nine lines,starting with one syllable in the first line and descending to nine syllables on the final line. The end product - if you're able to format it! - looks quite like a Christmas tree. You can post your poems on the Write Out Loud blogs. We'll be sure to spot them! Here's one from Graham Sherwood - who manages the bloggers section of the website - to get you started.