Poetry in the News: 2007

7 Dec: 'Poetry in Schools, A survey of practice 2006/07' has just been published by OFSTED - the results have been covered by every major newspaper today, including the Guardian,  Times, and Telegraph. The Poetry Society recommends www.poetryclass.net as an answer to the concerns of how teachers can access excellent resources to work confidently with poetry.

20 Nov: The Costa Book Awards 2007 shortlist for poetry has been announced. The poets and collections nominated are: Ian Duhig, The Speed of Dark, John Fuller, The Space of Joy, Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover! and Jean Sprackland, Tilt. The winner will be announced on 3 January, and the overall book of the year on 22 January.

19 Nov: The poet Vernon Scannell passed away on 17 November, aged 85. His collections include A Mortal Pitch (1957), The Masks of Love (1960) and, significantly, Walking Wounded (1965); The Loving Game appeared in 1975 and very recent work in A Place to Live and Last Post. He also wrote eight novels and a number of biographies. 

12 Nov: The shortlist for the T.S.Eliot Prize 2007 has just been announced. Judges Peter Porter, Sujata Bhatt and W.N. Herbert chose ten collections from 100 new books. The list of authors comprises Ian Duhig, Alan Gillis, Sophie Hannah, Mimi Khalvati, Frances Leviston, Sarah Maguire, Edwin Morgan, Sean O’Brien, Poetry Review's Fiona Sampson, and Matthew Sweeney. The judges' final meeting takes place on 14 January 2008.

23 Oct: Poet and translator James Michie, whose collections include Possible Laughter (1959), New and Selected Poems (1983) and translations of Horace, Catullus, Martial, Ovid, Virgil and Euripides, has died aged 80. His worked had been included in anthologies edited by Larkin and Auden and his Collected Poems appeared in 1994.

23 Oct: Benjamin Zephaniah supports the fight to help kids read! A Primary school in Barking and Dagenham made use of a poet in their classrooms to support the battle against illiteracy and inspire learning, in a Channel 4 documentary. Zephaniah mentored primary students, building their self-esteem and confidence and helping them just to enjoy poetry! Read more or visit our Poets in Schools page to see how your school can benefit from working with a poet.

16 Oct: Buckingham Palace opened its doors to children for a Poetry Day, including a reception with The Queen. Involving schools located in London, around 200 pupils had been presented with images of objects from the Royal Collection as inspiration for poems to bring on the day. The Poetry Society arranged for 28 poets to be there: 14 established and 14 talented young poets. They led workshops focusing on the redrafting and performance of poems, which will be posted soon on the official Royal website. More about the day here.

4 Oct: Sean O'Brien has won the £10,000 Forward Prize for Poetry for his sixth collection The Drowned Book – and for the third time, having won it in 1995 and 2001 with Ghost Train and Downriver respectively. Daljit Nagra has won the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2007 (Look We Have Coming To Dover). Alice Oswald has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, in memory of Michael Donaghy for 'Dunt' (Poetry London).

4 Oct: National Poetry Day, today!  And the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award have been announced – follow this link to find out and read more about the competition.

1 Oct: The poet Bill Griffiths, whose collections include Cycles, A Tract Against the Giants, Future Exiles and The Mud Fort and who in the 1970s was manager of the Poetry Society's print shop, died last month on 13 September aged 59. His early poetry had first appeared in Poetry Review and his work included studies of dialect literature, history and politics.

20 Sept: Rise Slam Project Manager Joelle Taylor, at the Poetry Society, has just begun a ten-day tour of performances and workshops in Zimbabwe for the British Council and the Eastside Educational Trust. Read more in her blog on the Poetry Society website

18 Sept: The Iranian Academy of Art will be publishing a volume to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Islamic mystic poet Rumi. Rumi's 'Divan of Shams', illustrated by Iranian artists and compiled by Mehdi Hosseini, will appear in October and will include English and French translations.

5 Sept: The poet Pascale Petit has been announced as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Middlesex University for 2007–8. The Fellowship Scheme was begun in 1999 for professional writers of merit. Pascale teaches at Oxford University, Tate Modern, the Poetry School, the Arvon Foundation and Taliesin Trust and has won numerous writing awards.

22 August: An album of poetry and sketches by Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Constable among others, given by Robert Southey to his daughter, has been entered by Bristol Central Library to a British Library competition highlighting hidden treasures among UK library collections. A 10th-century collection of poetry has also been entered on behalf of Exeter Cathedral Library.

22 August: An album of poetry and sketches by Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Constable among others, given by Robert Southey to his daughter, has been entered by Bristol Central Library into a British Library competition highlighting hidden treasures among UK library collections. A 10th-century collection of poetry has also been entered on behalf of Exeter Cathedral Library.

15 August: A Memorial Reading and Concert has been announced, in memory of the poet John Heath-Stubbs, taking place at St James' Church Piccadilly on 29 September at 12 noon. He received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and his Collected Poems is published by Carcanet.

10 August: The shortlist for the Poetry Society's prestigious Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation has been announced.

2 August: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic has been appointed as the new US Poet Laureate. Born in Yugoslavia in 1938, Simic is the author of 18 books of poetry beginning with What the Grass Says (1967) and including The World Doesn't End (Pulitzer Prize, 1990); his Selected Poems: 1963-2003 won the Griffin Prize in 2005.

10 July: The poetry and prose magazine The Frogmore Papers will be releasing its 70th issue this September, in celebration of its 25th year. Independent and receiving no grant aid, the magazine has continued to publish the work of new writers. Issue no.70 will be launched at the Troubadour in London and at locations in Brighton.

5 July: Michael Rosen, the new Children's Laureate will be chairing the judging of a national poetry competition aimed at 7-11 year-olds. The Children's Poetry Bookshelf National Write-a-poem Competition will have the theme of 'Dreams',  linking it with National Poetry Day.

22 June: The poet, teacher and critic Mercer Simpson, whose collections comprise East Anglian Wordscapes (1993), Rain from a Clear-blue Sky (1994) and Early Departures, Late Arrivals (2006), has died aged 81 (11 June). He was prominent in Welsh literary life and contributed regularly to a number of journals and books.

17 June: As a result of a competition run by The Times, Poetry Society member Joanna Clark was the winner chosen to have a poem – called Phase – broadcast to and echoed from the surface of the Moon, received by the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. Joanna Clark works at Imperial College and her poetry received encouragement from the late Michael Donaghy. 

13 June: The winner of the CLPE Poetry Award has been announced today – Julie Johnstone (editor): The Thing That Mattered Most. Scottish Poems for Children. The award is presented annually, honouring excellence in children's poetry, and previous winners include Roger McGough, John Agard and Grace Nichols.

11 June: Poet, writer and radio presenter Michael Rosen has been appointed as the new children's laureate. Author of 140 books, prominent among them his books for children, he will be using his appointment to encourage greater focus on reading in schools and children's reading for pleasure.

7 June: Michael Hamburger, the poet, translator and critic has died, aged 83. Through his translations, he brought Hölderlin, Rilke and Brecht, among others, to an English-speaking audience. He published Flowering Cactus as his first collection, and much followed, with his Collected Poems appearing in 1984. He held a number of academic posts throughout his career, at UCL in London, Reading University, Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts and at California University

6 June: Derry born poet Colette Bryce, who now lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, was awarded first prize in the 2007 Cardiff International Poetry Competition and presented with a cheque for £5000 for her poem 'Self Portrait in a Broken Wing Mirror'.

6 June: The winners of the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize have been announced. Charles Wright's Scar Tissue and Don Mckay's Strike/Slip won the International and Canadian awards respectively. The prize of C$100,000, for first editions of poetry books published in 2006, is divided between them.

2 June: The Irish poet and philosopher John Moriarty, whose books include Dreamtime, Nostos and most recently Serious Sounds, has died aged 69. Formerly on the staff of the University of Manitoba, Canada, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of Ireland last year.

25 May: Faber have acquired the rights to Samuel Beckett's poetry and prose. Faber's poetry editor, Paul Keegan, has said that the publisher is "honoured" and that it will serve to give renewed attention to the author's words.

15 May: The shortlist for the CLPE Poetry Award has been announced. Those shortlisted are: Chrissie Gittins, Julie Johnstone, Tony Mitton, Gaby Morgan, Jackie Morris, John Siddique. The judges are Ian Macmillan and Fiona Waters chaired by Margaret Meek Spencer.

3 May: The third 2007 Rise Slam Quarterfinal event  podcast is now available on the Poetry Society website.

30 April: The second 2007 Rise Slam Quaterfinal event  podcast is now available on the Poetry Society website.

26 April: The first 2007 Rise Slam Quarterfinal event  podcast is now available on the Poetry Society website.

17 May: The New Zealand Laureate scheme, based on the existing Te Mata Laureate has been established, government funded and involving the digital archiving of each laureate's works and papers as part of a broader $8 million archving project.

23 April: The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, announced each year on 23 April, has this year been awarded to the poet and journalist James Fenton. Fenton was formerly professor of poetry at Oxford University (1994-9) and his collections include The Memory of War and Children in Exile as well as the book An Introduction to English Poetry. He has also worked as a political journalist, drama and literary critic, war and foreign correspondent, and columnist.

19 April:  The Poetry Archive has announced that it has established a partnership with the Poetry Foundation, based in Chicago. 100 American poets will be represented by recordings now available to the Archive from the Foundation to add to their collection. A 1935 recording of T.S. Eliot reading The Waste Land has been added to mark this announcement.

11 April: The British Library is releasing a number of rare BBC recordings of W.H. Auden, made between 1936 and 1973, some of which are being published for the first time. The 2-CD set, with an introductory essay by Andrew Motion, is available from the British Library.

5 April:  Guardian Unlimited Books' poetry workshop is being hosted this month by Carol Rumens. She will be focussing on the triolet.

3 April: The international shortlist for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize comprises Paul Farley's Tramp in Flames (Picador), Rodney Jones's Salvation Blues (Houghton Mifflin), Frederick Seidel's Ooga Booga (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), and Charles Wright's Scar Tissue (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). Winners will be announced on 6 June.

27 March: Winners of the Northern Writers' Awards have been announced. Andy Croft has been given a Time to Write Award enabling him to finish two books including The Ghost Writer, a comic novel in verse. Angela Readman and Elizabeth Whyman have both received Northern Promise Awards to develop their new collections of poetry. The Andrew Waterhouse Award has been given to Christy Ducker to move her collection Footing towards publication 

25 March: The winner of the National Poetry Competition 2006 will be published in the Independent on Sunday - media partners for the National Poetry Competition. You will also be able to read the second and third place winners.

23 March: Poetry Review Editor Fiona Sampson is talking about Scandinavian Poetry on BBC Radio 3's The Verb this evening at 21.45 and for the next two weeks.

22 March: Sean O'Brien has won the 2007 Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award.

21 March: World Poetry Day is being celebrated today.

15 March: Dannie Abse, Philip Gross, Tony Brown and Tony Conran are on the shortlist for the 2007 Roland Mathias Prize.

5 March: We're very sorry to bring you the news that poet and tutor Julia Casterton died on 24 February. Her first collection, The Doves of Finisterre (Rialto) won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. She also published the writing handbooks, Creative Writing – A Practical Guide and Writing Poetry – A Practical Guide (2005).
 
1 March: World Book Day is being celebrated today.

21 February: This week marks the centenary of  W. H. Auden's birth.

19 January: We're very sorry to bring you the news that performance poet Diké Omeje died on 13 January after a battle with cancer. He toured extensively and was a regular performer at Speakeasy in Manchester. His books include Crafting the Practice (Crocus Books) and The Mind Field (Cheersta publications).

18 January: An exhibition entitled The Possibility of Poetry opens tomorrow at the British Library. It explores the influence Migrant magazine (edited by Gael Turnbull)  had on twentieth century poetry.

15 January: Seamus Heaney has won the TS Eliot prize 2006 for his collection, District and Circle (Faber). The judges were Sean O'Brien, Sophie Hannah and Gwyneth Lewis

13 January: In the Guardian, Gillian Beer writes about rhyme in poetry, rap and advertising, in advance of her lecture on 16 January. 

11 January: In an exhibition entitled William Blake: Under the Influence, the British Library has put on display William Blake's notebook alongside the manuscripts of a range of writers who have been inspired by his work, including Philip Pullman, Tracy Chevalier and Patti Smith. 
 
10 January: John Haynes has won the poetry category of the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Awards) for his book-length poem, Letter to Patience (Seren). The judges were Elaine Feinstein, Jeremy Noel-Tod and Deryn Rees-Jones.

9 January: Alice Oswald has won the 2006 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for her third collection, Woods Etc. (Faber). The judges were Neil Corcoran, Lavinia Greenlaw and Ciaran Carson.

5 January: Tamara Fulcher won the 2006 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for her poem, 'Choirsinger', published in Poetry Review, winter 2005/6 (95:4). The judge was David Harsent.

4 January: Keats House, where John Keats lived from 1818-1820, has received a grant of £424,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This will be used for restoration work and to enable more of the Keats House Museum archive to be displayed.