Free Verse is an all-day bazaar, market, library, meeting place, performance venue, information resource and more. Celebrating the vitality of contemporary poetry in the UK, publishers and organisations both large and small, both experimental and traditional, display and sell their work direct to the public. Free Verse is managed by The Poetry Society for the […]
A chance to hear visiting US-poet Heather Christle, author of four poetry collections (Heliopause, What Is Amazing, The Difficult Farm, and The Trees The Trees, which won the 2012 Believer Poetry Award), who hails from a small Ohio village, where she is writing a book of prose about crying. Heather will be joined by Jack Underwood, author of Faber […]
Henry Normal. Photo: Jim Holden. ‘The Alan Bennett of poetry’ – The Scotsman ‘Dovetails bittersweet poetry with a sublimely observant wit’ – The Guardian Last time Henry Normal read at The Poetry Cafe, tickets sold out in a flash. It was a fantastic evening of jokes, stories and poems, so we are very pleased to welcome him […]
‘Blackbird’s gone – until next year’s bonanza. He left a simple cup nest full of dried twigs, hairs – courtyard detritus barely hanging on a wisteria climber that never flowers’ (from ‘Cycles’ by Leo Boix) Come and join us for a night of brilliant Latin American poetry – two poets and a translator Diego Alegría […]
Welcome to In Town Tonight, the reading series where The Poetry Society invites a visiting poet to perform alongside a guest writer of their choice. Leah Umansky chose Ruth Padel to be her reading partner tonight – both are authors of new books, and share an interest in the stories that inform us and the stories we […]
Join award-winning performance poet Megan Beech as part of our month-long collaboration with Apple at their Regent’s St store throughout July. In this session, you’ll explore how the spoken word can be used to tackle social issues and what impact we can have by raising our voices. Then you’ll get hands-on with iPad Pro and […]
Join poet Will Harris as part of our month-long collaboration with Apple Regent’s St. You discover where he finds inspiration, and explore the structure of his writing. You’ll discuss how poetry can focus on a single moment and how it resonates with you. Then you’ll put his techniques into practice with iPad Pro and Apple […]
(L-R) Raymond Antrobus (photo: Caleb Femi); Liz Berry; Martina Evans (photo: Joanne O’Brien) – Please note: we have brought forward the start time of this event to 7pm – Join us at a celebration of the Summer issue of The Poetry Review in The Poetry Café. Our readers will be contributors Raymond Antrobus, Liz Berry […]
As part of our month-long collaboration with Apple throughout July, join poet and drag queen Dean Atta to explore how metaphors are used to bring us closer to the truth. You’ll discover how Atta uses his personal metaphor, The Black Flamingo, as inspiration for his drag persona. Then you’ll find your own persona to put […]
A special 40th anniversary readings event featuring the 2017 winners Dom Bury, Mary Jean Chan and Momtaza Mehri reading alongside two poetry greats from the competition’s heritage Jo Shapcott (twice winner in 1985 and 1991) and Pascale Petit (judge of the 2017 competition). Plus short discussion and Q&A. The Ledbury Poetry Festival is this year […]
We’re delighted to be working alongside The British Museum on a series of new commissions inspired by its exhibition Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (running 26 April – 29 July 2018, #rodinexhibition). Keith Jarrett, Laura Scott and Richard Scott have been regular visitors to the exhibition in search of ideas, textures and histories […]
The Poetry Society is delighted to present a special reading celebrating legendary writers’ collective Malika’s Kitchen, featuring visiting Chicago-based poet Peter Kahn, who was recently commended in the 2017 National Poetry Competition with the poem ‘Till It’s Gone‘, a ‘Golden Shovel’ poem after Joni Mitchell. Peter is the founder of Malika’s Kitchen’s Chicago branch. Peter will be […]
The first in a series of poetry events curated by The Poetry Society at the new Miller Harris ‘Poet’ store in Westfield London. This reading will feature poets Rachel Long, founder of Octavia – Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour at London’s Southbank Centre, and Flora de Falbe, twice winner of the Foyle Young Poets of […]
Today, 22 June 2018, marks 70 years since migrants from the Caribbean disembarked Windrush at Tilbury Docks, Essex. To commemorate this landmark anniversary, the summer set of Poems on the Underground has a Windrush theme, featuring poets from and around the Caribbean: James Berry, Andrew Salkey, Jean Binta Breeze, Lorna Goodison, Kwame Dawes and Grace Nichols. […]
Join us for the launch of Voices from the Row, featuring art and poetry from prisoners on death row in San Quentin in the US. In the words of one of the prisoners, “This exhibition of work shows that poetry and art has the power to not only exist in a place akin to hell, […]
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has now had to be cancelled; all tickets purchased will be refunded by the How To Academy In association with the How To Academy, The Poetry Society presents Alice Oswald, widely regarded as one of the finest living British poets in collaboration with William Tillyer, one of Britain’s […]
Welcome to In Town Tonight, the reading series where The Poetry Society invites a visiting poet to perform alongside a local guest writer of their choice. Hera Lindsay Bird chose Joe Dunthorne to be her cross-continental partner for tonight’s event, in what will be a dynamic meeting of poetic minds. Hera Lindsay Bird is a writer from Wellington. Her debut […]
The Poetry Society presents an opportunity to hear visiting LA-poet Elaine Kahn at the Poetry Café. Elaine is a writer, musician and artist, author of Women in Public (City Lights, 2015) as well as several poetry chapbooks. She is an instructor of creative writing at Poetry Field School. Elaine will read alongside Ariana Reines, American poet, […]
In association with the Victoria & Albert Museum, as part of the V&A Performance Festival 2018 Whether you’re a daredevil horseback rider or a long-faced clown, you’ll be welcome to join sequin spangled artist-poet Sophie Herxheimer at her painted big top to make a spectacular circus of poems and pictures. Take home a flight of […]
This dynamic workshop with visual artist Zoe Benbow and poet Sarah Corbett will lead you through a series of meditations, writing and drawing exercises designed to release creativity and engage the imagination in order to create new worlds in image and text. You will walk through imaginary landscapes, map a journey and work with fragments […]
The Poetry Society is taking on Free Verse, home to the Poetry Book Fair and the Poetry Magazine Fair, and will run the 2018 Free Verse Fair on Saturday 22 September at Senate House, University of London. Free Verse is a market that celebrates the vitality of contemporary poetry publishing in the UK, showcasing a wide […]
Maximise your looking at Poetry Cafe exhibition You are an ocean and I am a living thing with a writing workshop. Thom Kofoed’s exhibition explores how women have taken a radical approach to language, storytelling and poetic expression through music, visual art, comedy, writing and dance, and the workshop will celebrate female poets from all artistic disciplines. With […]
Ted Hughes Award judges Gillian Allnutt, Lemn Sissay and Sally Beamish have chosen Jay Bernard’s 2017 performance piece Surge: Side A (Speaking Volumes), as the latest winner of The Poetry Society’s prestigious prize. The winner of the 2017 award was announced on 28 March 2018, at a reception at the Savile Club, London, where Carol Ann […]
Judges Hannah Lowe, Andrew McMillan and Pascale Petit praise the winning poem’s “mnemonic force” and describe it as a “neutron star of a poem compressed inside the restraining machinery of a sestina” Out of more than 13,000 poems entered for this year’s award, Dom Bury’s poem ‘The Opened Field’ has been chosen as the winner […]
In Town Tonight – The Poetry Society’s open invitation to visiting overseas poets to read at our venue in the heart of London, The Poetry Café. We are very proud to present a headline reading from Iranian-American poet and scholar Kaveh Akbar, in his very first European visit. Last year, his debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf […]
Hear Wendy Cope read poems from Anecdotal Evidence, her first collection of new poetry since 2011’s acclaimed Family Values, at this special Faber Members event, in association with The Poetry Society. In this new collection, Wendy Cope celebrates ‘the half-forgotten stories of our lives’ with compassion, wisdom and wit. She continues to be the most generous of authors, […]
Join us at a celebration of the Winter issue of The Poetry Review in The Poetry Café. Our readers will be contributors Ian Humphreys, Holly Pester, Mark Waldron and, in an exclusive filmed reading, Hisham Bustani introduced by Review Editor Emily Berry. About the readers Ian Humphreys won the Hamish Canham Prize 2016 and is […]
11 December 2017 to 3 February 2018 Sidekick Books presents Headbooks!, a winter exhibition of visual poems from the first two titles in the wildly experimental Headbooks series. Each book is an interactive, collaborative compendium combining the aesthetics of guidebook, catalogue and poetry anthology, melding the factual with the fantastical, the lyrical with the visual, […]
The Poetry Society is delighted to join forces with the Poetry Book Society to celebrate the PBS Winter Selections. Join us to launch a special edition of the PBS Winter 2017 Bulletin with a stellar performance from five internationally acclaimed poets: PBS Choice Sasha Dugdale, PBS Recommendations Paul Deaton, Tim Dooley, Ahren Warner and PBS […]
Thursday 7 December 2017, 5:45 pm – 7:30 pm It’s that time of year again! In one of London’s favourite traditions, The Poetry Society and the Royal Norwegian Embassy are once more encircling the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree in poetry, to celebrate the City of Oslo’s annual gift to London with generous support from The Northbank and Fox Rodney. (Find out more about the […]
The Poetry Society is delighted to host a special event in collaboration with Carcanet Press with Pulitzer-Prize winning American poet Jorie Graham. Jorie will read from her work (including her latest collection Fast), discuss her work in conversation with T.S.Eliot prize-winning poet Sarah Howe, and sign books afterwards. Jorie Graham Jorie Graham was born in […]
(picture: Billie Charity-Prescott for Canal & River Trust) Luke Kennard’s Canal Laureate poems are full of bargeman’s songs, industrial history, towpath gadflies and watery dazzle. His time as Laureate is nearly done, so now’s the time to join him with a celebratory journey’s end reading. ‘In the roar of 80,000 gallons to a lock / […]
Testing the lights and trying the mic in the newly refurbished Poetry Café comes John Hegley with a projected exhibition of dogs, birds and tortoises, and poetic words on Wordsworth, Keats and Mary Magdalene’s handbag. Mainly in English, but some singing in French and paper-folding. Tickets to this special event include a signed copy of […]
no staples in the rhymes we took and sung upon a tenter-hook we played and paid and made a book. There was tearing wearing sharing, folding then everyone holding a book. Drawing, and drawing out the creative, with poet John Hegley. An opportunity to make and encounter poetry of the highest quality. Create a small book […]
Tuesday 17th October 2:00pm at the Royal Festival Hall, London Join The Poetry Society to celebrate 19 years of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award with a starry clutch of poets who share their work and, in keeping with London Literature Festival’s theme of ‘World on the Brink’, offer advice to young poets […]
Adaptation, interpretation or illustration – how to convert a poetic image to a filmic one? Filmmakers translating the latest National Poetry Competition-winning poems into visual form answer the question with a swirling charcoal animation, a tableau of Lego men and a choreography of dancers and fallen leaves. Filmpoem makers James William Norton, Helmie Stil and […]
Poetry @ 3 is USUALLY first Thursday of each month – apart from October (2nd Thursday) – an open mic for poets who like to come out and play during the day. Hosted by the Poetry Society’s Paul McGrane. No booking required, just turn up. Sign up between 2.30 and 3 to read. FREE. […]
T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet Jen Hadfield is on a flying visit to London, and we’re very pleased that she’s able to spend a morning in Thursday 12th October at The Poetry Society offering some one-to-one Poetry Surgery sessions. This is a wonderful opportunity to discuss your work with Jen, who will offer a relaxed but […]
Hosted by the Poetry Society’s own Paul McGrane, a daytime session for anyone who wants to give a poem an airing. Bring your poems on the National Poetry Day theme of Freedom – or just bring your lovely poems! No booking required, just sign up between 2.30 and 3pm to read. FREE. Make a day […]
61 poets in an all-day non-stop poetry reading to raise funds for the Poetry Café. Each poet will read for eight minutes, entry is by donation, and you can come and go as you please. There’ll also be a tombola – your chance to win a fabulous prize! Sponsor a Poet Our poets are donating their […]