Culture Matters, sponsored by Unite, have awarded Bread and Roses Poetry Awards to Poetry Society Members Jenny Mitchell and Antony Owen. There’s a prize of £100 each and an anthology of the poems of around a further 20 entrants will be published later in the year. The judges, Andy Croft of Smokestack Books and Mary […]
Poetry Society Member Vic Pickup is the winner of Hedgehog Press’s second annual Cupid’s Arrow Love Poetry Competition for her poem ‘Him, building me a bookcase.’ As well as being a poet, Vic is a writer and reviewer based in Hampshire. Her writing has found its way into anthologies, magazines and webzines, earned her top […]
Poetry Society Members finished first, second and third in this year’s Segora Poetry Competition, judged by Martyn Crucefix. Jenny Mitchell was awarded first prize for ‘Encountering a Slave Girl Held’. Jenny was joint winner of the Geoff Stevens’ Memorial Poetry Prize 2019, and winner of the Fosseway Poetry Competition 2020. Her debut collection is Her […]
Poetry will become optional at GCSE next year, the exam regulator Ofqual announced today. This temporary measure has been introduced because of the Covid pandemic, after schools had expressed concerns about their abilities to cover the full range of subject areas within the GCSE English Literature curriculum. All students will still have to write about […]
CONGRATULATIONS to Poetry Society Members Pat Winslow and S Niroshini, second and third in this year’s Poetry London Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. The winner is Eleanor Penny, who has won multiple prizes with The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network. Pat won second prize for her poem ‘1971, Northaw’. She was the winner of The […]
CONGRATULATIONS to Poetry Society Member Sheila Aldous, winner of the 2020 Welsh Poetry Competition, judged by Sally Spedding. Sheila had two other poems Highly Commended too! Sheila is a North London girl with Devon in her soul. Living on the banks of the River Teign she is inspired by life generally, but also the natural […]
Poetry Society Member Tim Kiely is the co-winner of this year’s Indigo First Pamphlet Competition, alongside Lauren Colley. Tim is a criminal barrister and poet living in London. His work has appeared in South Bank Poetry, Lunar Poetry, The Morning Star, Spontaneous Poetics, and Ink, Sweat & Tears, as well as the Emma Press anthology […]
UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, and the Poetry School, have announced the longlist for the inaugural ecopoetry prize, The Laurel Prize – including Poetry Society Members Linda France, Matt Howard and Pascale Petit. The longlist for published collections of poetry was judged by Simon Armitage, Moniza Alvi and Robert Macfarlane. The prize awards will be […]
Poetry Society Member Lawrence Illsley has been chosen by Glyn Maxwell as one of three winners of the 2020 Live Canon Collection Competition and will be offered publication. Lawrence’s collection A Brief History of Trees was described as: “brilliantly arboreal in both form and matter, a psychologically acute odyssey through grief and history, with its […]
The 2020 Frogmore Poetry Prize has been awarded to Ron Scowcroft for his poem ‘Greylags in Fog’. He receives two hundred and fifty guineas and a two-year subscription to The Frogmore Papers. The judge this year was Maria Jastrzębska. Poetry Society Member Simon Maddrell was first runner-up for his poem ‘The Snow Leopard Bites Its […]
Ellora Sutton (left), winner of the Artlyst Art to Poetry Award adult prize and Elsie Hayward (right), winner of the youth prize Ellora Sutton and Elsie Hayward have been announced as the inaugural winners of the Artlyst Art to Poetry Award, a new international ekphrastic poetry competition, run by Artlyst in association with The Poetry […]
We are sorry to hear of the deaths of Poetry Society Members Sue Wrinch and Sylvia Herbert. From Isabel Rogers, on behalf of North Hampshire Stanza Group: “Sue Wrinch, Poetry Society Member, founder member of North Hampshire Stanza and organiser of Winchester’s Loose Muse monthly writing and performing event, died suddenly in July. “All of […]
Today is Ice Cream Day and to mark this occasion The Poetry Society has turned to National Poetry Competition judge and ice cream aficiniado Jonathan Edwards to offer up some of his thoughts on how to best appreciate ice cream and poetry, both separately and together, and to dispense a few pieces of sage competition advice […]
To celebrate The Reading Agency’s #ReadingTogetherDay, The Poetry Society has asked poets for some of their top recommendations of poetry books grown-ups can read with their children: National Poetry Competition commended poet Cheryl Moskowitz is herself a children’s book writer, having most recently published The Corona Collection – A Conversation, exploring children’s perspective on life […]
Poetry Society Member Tina Cole has won this year’s Yaffle Prize, winning £200 for ‘Nothing but the strength of names’. Here are the opening lines… Tina was born in the Black Country and now lives in rural Herefordshire. She likes to write about people and relationships good or bad. Her collection – I Almost Knew […]
Poetry Society Member Michael Grieve is on a shortlist of seven for the biennial £20,000 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, given by the Edwin Morgan Trust and judged by Kathleen Jamie and John Glenday. Michael lives in Fife where he works as a bookseller. He is a graduate of the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge, […]
All five recipients of this year’s Northern Writers’ Awards for Poetry are Poetry Society Members: Fokkina McDonnell, Polly Atkin, Suzannah V Evans, Jennifer Lee Tsai and Hannah Hodgson. Established in 2000 by New Writing North, the Northern Writers’ Awards supports work-in-progress by new, emerging and established writers across the North of England. The Awards support […]
Moyra Donaldson and Naomi Foyle have chosen Poetry Society Member Alan Weadick as the winner of the fourth Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award. Alan receives £1,000 and a 3-night stay at the wonderful writing and reading retreat ‘The River Mill’. The award, organised by the Belfast Book Festival, is aimed at writers working towards their first […]
The Poetry Society has released the second in this year’s series of National Poetry Competition writing resources, suitable for individual writing or group activity and discussion. July’s resource is written by US poet Eric Berlin, who won the 2015 National Poetry Competition with his poem ‘Night Errand’ – a poem set in an upstate New […]
For the second time, The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network teamed up with Modern Poetry in Translation to challenge young writers worldwide to try their hand at translating poetry. This summer, young poets are being asked to translate a Persian poem by Suhrab Sirat, an Afghan poet in exile. As part of this partnership YPN […]
Poetry Society Member Caleb Parkin has been announced as the new Bristol City Poet, following in the footsteps of Vanessa Kisuule and Miles Chambers. Caleb will hold the role from 2020-2022. Caleb is a poet, performer, facilitator and filmmaker with a particular passion for inclusive environmentalism; wellbeing; arts, culture and heritage; and LGBT+ pride. His […]
Congratulations to Poetry Society Member Kate Clanchy who has won this year’s Orwell Prize for Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools for several decades. “In this book, a brilliantly honest writer tackles a subject that ties so many people up in knots […]
We are delighted to announce that this year’s Patrons of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award are Matt Abbott and Theresa Lola! Matt is a poet, educator, and activist from Wakefield. His debut collection for children, A Hurricane in my Head, was published by Bloomsbury in summer 2019. In April 2020, he released […]
CONGRATULATIONS to Poetry Society Member Laura Scott who has won the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize for her debut collection So Many Rooms (Carcanet, 2019). This prestigious prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first full collection has been published in the preceding year, by a UK or Ireland-based publisher. The winning […]
With libraries beginning to re-open, The Poetry Society launches a series of virtual bookshelves with reading suggestions for young people. We’re also asking you to send in your own poetry recommendations for young readers. Find out more. above: shelfie by Foyle Young Poets Browse, borrow, request, renew – lovely words to me. A library […]
When searching for this year’s commission for our annual National Poetry Competition artwork, The Poetry Society immediately fell in love with Arna Miller’s menagerie of cute but strangely menacing animals, cast into vintage, circus-like artwork alongside beautiful lettering. You can see Arna’s artwork for this year’s competition above, and read our interview with the […]
It’s that time of year when, in normal circumstances, some 200,000 people would don their wellies and flower crowns, and head off to camp in a field for four days. Yes, it’s Glastonbury weekend! Although this year’s festival was cancelled, the BBC has stepped into the breach with a whole programme of highlights from past […]
Poems that transcend their moment and are renewed with fresh meaning in the wake of future events is an aim of the latest issue of The Poetry Review, edited by Emily Berry. The issue features new poems by Moniza Alvi, Isabelle Baafi, Jodie Hollander, Amaan Hyder, Tom Jenks, Rachel Long, D. Nurkse and Jack Underwood, […]
The Poetry Society is pleased to announce a duo of award winners, for two fantastic poems published across our publications in 2019. Congratulations to Phoebe Stuckes, who has won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for ‘Thus I became a heart-eater’. The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is for the best poem published in The Poetry Review by a […]
The four winners of the third Coast to Coast to Coast Individual Poet Journal Competition have been announced and each will receive Limited Edition hand-stitched journals – including Poetry Society Members Clare Best, Stephen Keeler and Maria McManus, alongside Sarah Salway. The journals will be created for launches in Liverpool in Spring 2021. There were […]
Glyn Maxwell has selected his winners of this year’s Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition. First prize goes to ‘Curling’ by Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan is the Editor of Poetry Wales and runs poetry feedback sessions – Poetry Surgeries – on behalf of The Poetry Society and you can book online sessions with him now. Second prize […]
Coinciding with the release of the Summer issue of The Poetry Review, The Poetry Society is running a Midsummer digital subscription promotion from Midsummer’s Day on 24 June running until 7 July. Use the code MIDSUMMER20 at the checkout on the Exact Editions website for 20% off a year’s digital subscription (normally £24.99, now £19.99) […]
For this year’s National Writing Day, The Poetry Society has asked Pascale Petit to delve into the National Poetry Competition archives, taking two poems from the competition’s history as the starting point for a brand new writing resource on eco-poetry. Whether poets are looking for prompts for group discussion on nature writing, or want a […]
22 June marks Windrush Day. To commemorate it and to celebrate the work of Caribbean poets, The Poetry Society will be sharing poems by poets of the Windrush generation from the Poems on the Underground collection on Twitter throughout the day. Poems on the Underground has been offering poetry to London’s tube travellers since 1986. […]
Inspired by Stonehenge’s plan to live-stream the Summer Solstice, The Poetry Society is gathering together a selection of sunshiny (and sunburnt) poems to accompany the northern hemisphere’s longest day. Check #poetrysolstice on The Poetry Society’s Twitter account on Sunday 21 June for some sun-themed poetry, and if you or young writers you know are inspired […]
Over the past few months, The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network has been working with Newcastle University, asking young poets to delve into and respond to the digital Bloodaxe Archive. We launched a series of four writing challenges, designed to lead young poets down new paths and to write in response to poems they found […]
Congratulations to everyone who received a Society of Authors award this year, including a healthy number of Poetry Society Members. Neil Rollinson and Inua Ellams each receive a Travelling Scholarship, enabling British creative writers to keep in touch with colleagues abroad. Roseanne Watt receives a £4,000 Somerset Maugham Award for published work by writers under […]
15-22 June is Refugee Week 2020. To mark it, The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network has launched a new poetry translation challenge in partnership with Modern Poetry in Translation. Young people up to the age of 25 are invited to co-translate a poem by Suhrab Sirat, a poet, writer and journalist in exile from Balkh […]
Congratulations to Valzhyna Mort who has been shortlisted in the Forward Prizes’ Best Single Poem Category for her poem ‘Nocturne for a Moving Train’, first published in The Poetry Review’s Autumn 2019 issue. The poem, which draws the personal, the political and the pastoral into the focus of a single cross-continental train journey, can be […]
‘On the eve of my 40th birthday I watch a news report about a pet alligator’ is the brilliant title by Poetry Society Member Jeanette Burton, chosen by Jonathan Edwards as the winner of this year’s Welshpool Poetry Competition. Jeanette wins £150 for her poem and had another, ‘It is difficult to write a poem […]
Wrong decision. I fell in love with poetry for my GCSE’s. William Blake. The Metaphysics. Larkin. Etc. I was always annoyed though that we didn’t study female poets. But some poetry is better than none. twitter.com/skynews/status… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Grim to hear poetry can be dropped from English GCSE now. I found my old AQA anthology recently. It is absolutely covered in notes, tiny asides to myself. Reading Allen Ginsberg's 'A Bricklayer's Lunchhour' was a great salve to my young queer soul. Retweeted by The Poetry Society
“Poetry is very important, can you imagine the English language without Shakespeare?” Poet and writer, Benjamin Zephaniah on poetry no longer being compulsory for GCSE English. Get the latest news here: trib.al/Z1LRau8 Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Studying poetry at GCSE started a lifelong connection with one of the most fulfilling and important parts of my life. The poetry I encountered was partic important to me as a teenager finding my own voice & what the world meant to me. twitter.com/AliStibyHarris… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
GCSE poetry taught me how to analyse things which was useful at university and was one of the few things I actually took a liking to in school twitter.com/bbcnews/status… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
One of my GCSE students hated poetry. Couldnt understand it, didnt engage at all. I explained it in a way that made sense, not just the point of the poem but of poetry as a whole. Her face lit up when it finally clicked. Dont make it an option, dont undermine its value. Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Very sadly, poetry is going to become optional for GCSE students next year in response to the pandemic. I've spent the whole of the pandemic studying poetry for my MA. Poetry enchants and connects people. I hope we do not forget that. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-536484… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
This Is GCSE I've made optional The poetry That was on The curriculum And which I know You were probably Saving for students Forgive me It is ridiculous No Keats No Arnold Retweeted by The Poetry Society
A shame. The poetry I studied for GCSE has stayed with me longer and more vividly than the novels and even the Shakespeare. And definitely the quadratic equations and the osmosis experiments twitter.com/skynews/status… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Devastated to hear this as GCSE poetry was one of the only times I was introduced to other mixed race people in my high school education (or even beyond). While in a very white school in a very white area, those poems told me that there were other people like me out there twitter.com/thetimes/statu… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
‘...schools can decide not to teach poetry, which many teenagers find challenging.’ - the Times. Teenagers usually don’t find it challenging to write poetry. It is what they’re made to believe what poetry is: unattainable or boring & this seals the deal. bbc.com/news/education… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Poetry = main pre-modern literary form. You cannot understand literature if you do not understand poetry. Not everyone wants to be an academic or a writer but GCSE English Lit needs to give a common cultural grounding & a springboard for kids who may want to learn further. Retweeted by The Poetry Society
Terrible decision. Poetry is an integral part of literature. We are robbing children of beauty. twitter.com/thetimes/statu… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
If you’re a 2021 GCSE student I implore you do think twice before dropping poetry. Throughout high school it didn’t ever feel as though I had a specialty but I did have a passion in English and later my literature results showed that. Poetry will introduce you to a lot- Retweeted by The Poetry Society
It's a shame poetry will be reduced to an option only in schools GCSE exams.. Many kids will miss out on so many fantastic pieces of work like Heaney's 'Digging'. Retweeted by The Poetry Society
practical: IME students new to literature tend to engage poetry at higher level, cause it looks different.GCSE thus the last place it should disappear. But mainly..this is a decision to get rid of THE POETRY from literature!! Did no one at @ofqual think anything wrong in that'? Retweeted by The Poetry Society
‘Some of my worst wounds have healed into poems.’ Laura Goodison. We need poetry more than ever. bbc.co.uk/news/education… Retweeted by The Poetry Society
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