International Women’s Day – Tal al-Mollouhi

Last night, I was discussing with my poetry class whether or not a poem who called someone the ‘greatest woman poet that ever lived’ was condescending to women writers. Being male, and being the type of person that constantly leafs through poetry anthologies in 2nd hand book stores, I thought little of it. It’s quite [...]

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Round up of poetry news – 11/09/11

Apologies that has been quiet around here this week, quite odd to see poetry news followed by only more poetry news (we’re more than that, I promise). However, there has been a lot of poetry news going on this week – so please feel free to peruse. We have some exciting work coming up in [...]

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Round up of poetry news – 04/09/11

Following on from the real news of the week (the Selected Poems at the V&A Reading Rooms selling out and Martin Jackson’s new work), here is a round up of this week’s poetry news:  Carol Ann Duffy has written a new poem, which can be seen above, for the Edinburgh Book Festival. It was written [...]

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Round-up of poetry news – 21/08/11

  I thought that considering I see so much interesting poetry related news or features throughout the week, and never actually do anything with it, I thought that I would start collecting this information in a weekly round-up for everyone (and myself). Hope you enjoy!  The Guardian has reported that male poets are stripping off for a [...]

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Sam Riviere features in The Guardian Saturday poem

The Guardian’s Review and contemporary poetry have a fairly tenuous relationship, mainly because of the space given in the supplement to the art form. But what they can, and should be, commended for is their Saturday Poem at the penultimate page. Yesterday, Sam Riviere, a stalwart of SelectedPoems, had one of his pieces published in [...]

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Faber Autumn Catalogue – New Heaney & Muldoon, undiscovered Larkin letters and Eliot recordings and reprints of Pound & Sassoon

With the new Faber and Faber Autumn catalogue, there comes a many new interesting ventures from the Poetry Powerhouse Publishers. Included is a brand new collection by Seamus Heaney entitled Human Chain which will include:   Newly minted versions of anonymous early Irish lyrics, poems which stand at the crossroads of oral and written, and [...]

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The catastrophe of my personality – Frank O’Hara reads ‘Having a Coke with you’ and Mad Men

The other weekend I was talking with Sam Riviere who recommended, amongst other writers, Frank O’Hara (above: seated on the left). It was a name that I had been acquainted with when I was in Dartmoor with John Burnside, who spoke fondly of the New York school of poetry, especially John Ashbery (above: standing, far right), but [...]

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OOXXOO Poetry Release

This Sunday Sam Riviere, Jack Underwood, Pete Greenwood and myself will be reading at the launch of the OOXXOO Poetry release. The publication has been lovingly crafted by the folks over at OOXXOO, with illustrations by Faye McNulty inspired by P.V. Glob’s haunting “Bog People” book. Each issues includes a hand printed cover, as seen [...]

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Matthew Gregory

Last night I read my poetical wears at the ‘Read Dirty to Me’ night, where young writers gave readings of their most ‘erotic’ work. The range was huge, and it displayed a wealth of talent (for anyone interested, In particular, and I hope he doesn’t mind me saying so, was a poet that showed a [...]

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An update (with new work by Alex MacDonald & Laura Heritage)

The last month has been incredibly quiet on here, but busy in the world of mine orbiting around the site. Instead of soaking up the contemporary poetry scene, I decided to seek it out. I saw Jack Underwood and co. reading in the Betsy Trotwood centre, and I saw Sam Rivere, along with the other [...]

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