The Poetry Society

In their funny and thought-provoking conversation by telephone, celebrated American poet Mary Ruefle and Review editor Emily Berry discuss starting poems and first lines; working to commission and no longer facing the blank page; writing letters, writing prose, humour and sadness and not being afraid of the latter; pins, paper clips, swimming and getting comfortable with what we don't know... Poet...

In the latest Poetry Review podcast, Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry about loss, parenthood and the resource of language in her debut collection The Sun is Open. Published this September, the book works with archival material related to the life and death of McConnell's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their home in Belfast in 1984. “Language does the work if you let it,” she observ...

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 2020. The top 15 winners represent some of the very best young poets in the world. This podcast includes strong language and themes including racism. For more information about the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award please go to foyleyoungp...

In a searching, wide-ranging and often very funny exchange, Selima Hill talks to Review editor Emily Berry about being both a prolific writer and a private person, about secrecy and rebellion, embodiedness and encodedness. Her writing process is, she says, less about cutting (“which sounds so violent”) and rather like “lifting your hair – loosen, loosen, then tighten, tighten, tighten – spread it...

An audio recording of the Welsh translation of the National Poetry Competition 2020 winning poem 'The Fruit of the Spirit is Love (Galatians 5:22)' by Marvin Thompson. Welsh translation and audio recording performed by Grug Muse. You can read the text accompanying this recording at https://bit.ly/nationalpoetrycompetition

Join Review editor Emily Berry and poet and novelist Luke Kennard, for an exhilarating unravelling of the prophetic voice and its uses for poetry, the liberating restriction of the poem sequence, and prose poetry as “a space in which to be convolutedly honest” – with passing references to Baudelaire, Chekhov, Ted Hughes, James Tait, Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson, contemporary morality, and anger a...

Rachel Long, whose brilliant debut My Darling from the Lions (Picador) has been shortlisted for the Forward, Costa and Rathbones Folio prizes, talks to Review editor Emily Berry about dreams and the usefulness of the non-material world to poetry. They also discuss influences on Rachel’s writing including Selima Hill, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and the Bible, humour, ‘little-black-dress’ titles, trauma an...

'The Christmas Pine' by Julia Donaldson, commissioned by The Poetry Society for the 2020 Trafalgar Square Christmas tree, is performed by Reinfrancis Bondoc, Fabio Cucinotta and Poppy-Beau Pawsey, three children from St Mary of the Angels Primary School. This is part of our annual Look North More Often programme. Find out more at bit.ly/lnmo and happy holidays from everyone at The Poetry Society.

Review contributor Sandeep Parmar talks to Mary Jean Chan, guest co-editor with Will Harris of the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review. Sandeep reads her poem, ‘The Nineties’, and reflects on its origins – growing up in California at the time of the L.A. riots, which followed the arrest and beating of Rodney King, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the 1994 Northridge earthquake – and their relevanc...

Will Harris and Nick Makoha, prizewinning poets both, talk about Nick’s poems in the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review and how these poems exemplify his interest in song, story and myth, the parameters of self, reconfiguring the problem of the white lens, and how the act of writing poems produces unlooked-for discoveries. Nick gives electrifying readings of his poems ‘Codex 1’ and Codex 2, bo...

In Spring 2020, winning poets of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award recorded themselves reading their entries from lockdown in the UK, the USA and Canada. Listen to them in this podcast recorded from homes across the world as we approach the deadline for this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award - and remember that if you're between 11 and 17 years old, you can enter your own work for f...

Don Paterson talks to Colette Bryce, poet and guest editor of the winter 2019 issue of the Review, about the “dark comedy” of his forthcoming collection Zonal – the inspiration he took from watching old episodes of The Twilight Zone, the freedom of a long line and a looser, narrative form, and the possibilities of confessionalism. “I like the confessional tone,” Don says, “I don’t like that within...

Each year, the Mayor of Oslo, Norway gifts a Christmas tree to the United Kingdom, in commemoration of the two countries' co-operation in the Second World War. The tree then makes the journey to Trafalgar Square in London, where it's on display throughout the holiday season. And each year, The Poetry Society commissions a leading poet to write a poem to then decorate the tree - with a little help...

In a conversation that will lighten spirits and fire up brain cells, Emily Berry talks to Mark Waldron in the latest Poetry Review podcast. They discuss children’s books, the theatre and performance, Beckett, Ashbery and “meant silliness”. “I like mixing up childhood and adulthood,” says Waldron, “things from childhood I want to resolve – or look at anyway.” His interest is in the separation betwe...

Stephen Sexton's debut collection If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin, 2019), navigates childhood, memory, grief and loss through the prism of classic 16-bit video game Super Mario World. Kirsten Irving is a poet and co-editor of Sidekick Books, which has published video game themed anthologies such as Coin Opera and Coin Opera 2. Sexton and Irving joined Oliver Fox in September 2019 to...

Mona Arshi, Imtiaz Dharker, Maura Dooley and John Hegley read poems of theirs all of which were published onto the walls of London's Tube carriages as part of the popular Poems on the Underground scheme. The four poets also read work by W.B. Yeats, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Robert Burns. You can order any of the Poems on the Underground posters for free (plus P+P) on The Poetry Soci...

Mona Arshi, one of three judges in the 2019 National Poetry Competition, joins Wayne Holloway-Smith, the winner of the 2018 National Poetry Competition, to talk to Oliver Fox about what makes a successful poem. They discuss two prize winning poems from the competition's history: 'Oiled Legs Have Their Own Subtext' by Momtaza Mehri (3rd Prize, 2017), and 'The Body in the Library' by Jane Yeh (comme...

In the latest Poetry Review podcast, Emily Berry talks to Ilya Kaminsky, author of the astonishing and internationally acclaimed collection Deaf Republic. Their conversation ranges across political poetry (only in English do people try to divide poetry that is political and not political, everywhere else poetry is political, says Kaminsky), of matching your method to show what it is you see as a w...

On Saturday 18 May 2019, The Poetry Society hosted an all day poetry fundraising extravaganza, including a 10 hour sponsored poetry reading from a line-up of 60 poets. This is part 5 of 5 - you can listen to the first 8 (!) hours of the reading in parts 1-4 on our SoundCloud or via your podcasting app of choice. See below for the timings of featured poets' sets, and remember that you can still don...

A live recording of the National Poetry Competition 40th Anniversary Readings at Kings Place, held on 20th March 2019 featuring, featuring Caleb Parkin, Geraldine Clarkson, Mary Jean Chan, Fran Lock, Liz Berry, Mark Pajak, Stephen Sexton, Sinéad Morrissey, Ian Duhig and Jo Shapcott. Supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation. You can enter the 2019 National Poe...

A live recording of the National Poetry Competition 40th Anniversary Readings at Kings Place, held on 20th March 2019 featuring, featuring Caleb Parkin, Geraldine Clarkson, Mary Jean Chan, Fran Lock, Liz Berry, Mark Pajak, Stephen Sexton, Sinéad Morrissey, Ian Duhig and Jo Shapcott. Supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation. You can enter the 2019 National Poe...

Rachel Long speaks to recent Foyle winners Em Power and Fiy Oladipo, and Chicago Youth Poet Laureates Kara Jackson, Natalie Rose Richardson and Patricia Frazier, about what it means to be a young poet, what UK and American poets can learn from one another, and much more. If you're a young person aged 11-17, remember that you can still enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award up to the 31 July...

On Saturday 18 May 2019, The Poetry Society hosted an all day poetry fundraising extravaganza, including a 10 hour sponsored poetry reading from a line-up of 60 poets. This is part 4, comprising hours 7-8 of the event. See below for the timings of featured poets' sets, and remember that you can still donate to the fundraising campaign via bit.ly/poemdonate. FEATURED POETS 00:30 : Leo Boix 11:00 :...

In a brilliant, wide-ranging discussion with Emily Berry, Editor of The Poetry Review, the celebrated poet Denise Riley talks about the art of composition – of indifferent mechanicals and of jigsaws pieced into sense from the edge pieces, confessional literature, lyric shame and strategies for repair. She also reads two poems just published in The Poetry Review: ‘How does anyone get over these thi...

On Saturday 18 May 2019, The Poetry Society hosted an all day poetry fundraising extravaganza, including a 10 hour sponsored poetry reading from a line-up of 60 poets. This is part 3, comprising hours 4-6 of the event. You can listen to parts 1 and 2 on Soundcloud or your podcasting app of choice. See below for the timings of featured poets' sets, and remember that you can still donate to the fund...