The Poetry Society

Yong-Yu Huang reads 'Living as My Mother' | National Poetry Competition 2024 by The Poetry Society

Hannah Perrin King reads 'Inheritance' | National Poetry Competition 2024 by The Poetry Society

Sorrel Briggs reads 'Heaven Down' | National Poetry Competition 2024 by The Poetry Society

Matt Barnard reads 'Two Boys at Midnight' | National Poetry Competition 2024 by The Poetry Society

Fiona Larkin reads 'Absence has a grammar' | National Poetry Competition 2024 by The Poetry Society

Chen Chen Reads '2pm in provincetown—' at The Poetry Review Winter 2024 Launch by The Poetry Society

(EXCERPT) Susannah Dickey Reads 'Sex Horse' at The Poetry Review Winter 2024 Launch by The Poetry Society

Crispin Best Reads 'In This Economy' at The Poetry Review Winter 2024 Launch by The Poetry Society

Denise Saul Reads 'The White Room' at The Poetry Review Winter 2024 Launch by The Poetry Society

Jay Bernard Reads 'After Him' at The Poetry Review Winter 2024 Launch by The Poetry Society

Listen to the final five of this year's Young Critics reviews in podcast form. You can watch all ten reviews on our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/YoungCriticsReviews Tallulah Howarth pulls at the many threads of Rachel Mann’s ‘tapestry of alternative visions’, Eleanor Among the Saints, while Elliot Ruff uncovers the intertextual references of Gboyega Odubanjo’s Adam. Ahana Banerji discusses the...

Listen to the first five of this year's Young Critics reviews in podcast form. You can watch all ten reviews on our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/YoungCriticsReviews Priyanka Moorjani reviews Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus, guiding the viewer through the speaker’s ‘avalanche’ of emotions upon becoming a parent. Joe Wright considers the formal and poetic influences mapped throughout Hannah Copl...

Each year, The Poetry Society commissions a new children’s poem celebrating the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, which is a gift from the city of Oslo to London, as a thank you for helping the King of Norway in World War 2. This year, Valerie Bloom wrote a magical new poem is called ‘A Baby and A Tree’, which is on display around the base of the tree in Trafalgar Square over the 2024 festive pe...

This is a podcast created by The Poetry Society. This podcast features the Top 15 winning poems read by the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2024. The top 15 winners represent some of the very best young poets in the world. This podcast includes strong language and themes including assault. For more information about the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award please go to foyleyoung...

‘We’ve always been here. As long as there has been soldiers, there have been poets. And it’s a long sad, venerable tradition.’ (Peter Gizzi) A Poetry Review podcast between Richard Scott and Peter Gizzi to accompany the Poetry Review Summer 2022 issue. Richard co-edited the issue with Andre Bagoo. You can read more about their issue here: poetrysociety.org.uk/publications/v…2-summer-2022/ You can...

Each year, The Poetry Society commissions a new children’s poem celebrating the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, which is a gift from the city of Oslo to London, as a thank you for helping the King of Norway in World War 2. This year, Isabel Galleymore wrote a magical new poem is called ‘T is for tree’. It is on display around the base of the tree in Trafalgar Square until the 6th of January 20...

Guest editor of The Poetry Review Summer 2022, Andre Bagoo talks to his contributor Jameson Fitzpatrick. Andre co-edited the summer issue with Richard Scott. You can read more about their issue here: poetrysociety.org.uk/publications/vol-112-no-2-summer-2022/ You can buy the issue here: bit.ly/ThePoetryReview

This poem was written by Fred D'Aguiar and Sarah Howe in 2021 as part of the TIDE research project, as a collaboration between the University of Oxford, The Poetry Society and the National Portrait Gallery. It is written as a response to the painting in the National Portrait Gallery Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth with an unknown girl by Pierre Mignard, 1682. The TIDE project received f...

Ilya Kaminsky reads at the launch of The Poetry Review 109:2, Summer 2019, held at The Poetry Café, London. Ilya Kaminsky will be giving this year's Poetry Society Annual Lecture / Liverpool University Allott Lecture on Poetry in a Time of Crisis on Monday 15 May 7:30pm. You can book to attend the lecture online here: bit.ly/AnnualLectureOnline You can book to attend the lecture in person here: bi...

Kate Wakeling's new poem ‘and a tree’ was commissioned as part of The Poetry Society's annual Look North More Often programme and celebrates the 2022 Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. This is the 75th tree given to London from Oslo as thanks for keeping their king safe during World War Two, and is the 15th poem commissioned to celebrate this annual gift. In this podcast, 'and a tree' is performed b...

After the announcement of the death of Her Majesty the Queen on 8 September 2022, The Poetry Society invited Society President Roger McGough to write a response to the unfolding news. The Poetry Society is very grateful to him for writing a personal and immediate reflection the same evening, as he began to process this great change in our national life. The text of Roger McGough's poem God Rest th...

Dzifa Benson speaks to Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall. Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall are both alumni of the Obsidian Foundation writing retreat. Their poems were published in The Poetry Review, Winter 2021. The Obsidian Foundation is a writing retreat, a week-long retreat of selected Black poets of African descent. The Obsidian Foundation's goal is to create a comm...

Spend 30 engrossing minutes in the company of the award-winning US poet Shane McCrae and Review editor Emily Berry as they discuss Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ as the trigger, when he was just 15, of McCrae’s poetry career; John Keats and the Gothic; George Herbert; and McCrae's conversion from free verse to metrical verse. ‘I can only recommend that everyone abandon the way they’ve been writing...

Sinéad Morrissey's new poem ‘The Fourth King’ was commissioned as part of our annual Look North More Often programme and celebrates the 2021 Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. Here, it's performed by Isobel Chappell, Leon Ganje Day and Vasilis Vasiliou, three Year 6 children from St Saviour’s Church of England Primary School in Westminster. You can read the poem online, and on a banner designed by M...

Ben Rogers of The Poetry Society speaks to this year's National Poetry Competition judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long in a wide-ranging conversation that contemplates the perpetual dynamism of reading, where to find inspiration, poems as little creatures, the nature of poetic truth, and how and when to end a poem. The National Poetry Competition is open until 31 October, open t...