The Poetry Society

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 2, comprising hours 2-4 of the event. You can listen to part 1 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 fundraising...

*Soundcloud listeners: please tag poets/readings/poems using the comments feature during playback - this will help us create an index people can use to navigate this podcast in all its enormity. Thanks!!!* 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 1, comprising...

To celebrate the poem's shortlisting for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, Mary Jean Chan reads 'The Window', which was first published as the 2nd prize winner in the 2017 National Poetry Competition. You can find the poem, and enter the National Poetry Competition for yourself, at http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/npc

Will Harris, Poetry Review contributor and the most recent winner of the Arts Foundation poetry fellowship, started writing poetry when it wasn't cool. Here, he talks to Review Editor Emily Berry about discovering dreams as inspiration, Emily Bronte, the meanings – problematic and otherwise – of 'white', video games and putting together his first full collection. He also reads from his wonderful s...

Recorded in his Cornwall home in the 1970s, W.S. Graham, "solitary pioneer at the edge of language", reads his celebrated poem 'The Constructed Space'. Graham's centenary was celebrated in 2018. Join us at bit.ly/wsgevent to hear more. Author photo © Estate of Michael Seward Snow, 2019. All rights reserved.

Recorded in his Cornwall home in the 1970s, W.S. Graham, "solitary pioneer at the edge of language", reads his poem 'I Leave This At Your Ear'. Graham's centenary was celebrated in 2018. Join us at bit.ly/wsgevent to hear more. Author photo © Estate of Michael Seward Snow, 2019. All rights reserved.

Acclaimed children's poet Joseph Coelho performs his new poem 'Look Into My Lights', with images dreamt up by London schoolchildren. This poem was commissioned by The Poetry Society for the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree 2018 and you can read the text online at: poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/look-into-my-lights The poem is displayed on a vibrant banner designed by James Brown around the tree u...

sam sax, American poet and queer Jewish icon, chats to Joelle Taylor about starting out performing in loud bars, reads his poem 'Haematology', and shares a brand new poem about the devastating California wildfires. Plus, the tough poetry questions are put to sam sax from some of the 2018 participants of SLAMbassadors, The Poetry Society's youth SLAM poetry showcase. We'll also hear poems from SLAM...

Listen in on influential US poet Chelsey Minnis, author of Poemland, Zirconia, Foxina, Bad Bad and the just-published Baby, I Don’t Care, in a highly entertaining interview with Poetry Review editor Emily Berry. Their conversation ranges across Chelsey’s obsession with Turner Classic Movies TV channel, the usefulness of screenplay structures, being influenced and being an influencer, reading and r...

“I have so many anecdotes and stories [about] how d/Deaf people are excluded from cultural events and how much harder they/we/I have had to work to access culture. I am trying to write into those disconnections and create new bridges.” Raymond Antrobus, Review contributor and winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, talks to Emily Berry about his forthcoming debut collection The Perseverance, his wor...

Congratulations to Will Harris, who reads here his poem 'SAY'. First published in The Poetry Review, Winter 2017, it has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem .

“I think shame is very unhelpful, that taboos can be very unhelpful – maybe we should try and be as brave as our poems.” Fiona Benson, author of the prize-winning collection Bright Travellers, talks to Review Editor Emily Berry, about her new collection Vertigo & Ghost, forthcoming from Cape in 2019. They consider questions of shame, permission and catharsis, the challenges of working with difficu...

Note: This podcast contains some strong language from the start. In this collaboration between The Poetry Society, Poet in the City and Out-Spoken, Joelle Taylor brings together of the biggest names on the British and American spoken word scenes about the intersection between their poetic craft, politics and activism. This podcast was recorded backstage at King's Place, London on 24 January 2018,...

In this bonus festive mini-podcast, poet, comedian, and hair-laden storyteller Rob Auton reads 'Letter From Father Christmas'. This reading is taken from a longer discussion with Joelle Taylor. You can find the full interview on The Poetry Society's Soundcloud, or by subscribing to The Poetry Society's podcast via your podcast app of choice. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk...

In our most festive podcast yet, Julian Stannard reads his poems ‘Boxing Day’, ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Pigs in Suffolk’, and talks about the strange theatre of the dining room: Italy, his mother, Christmas and trifle; bleak poems that end up being humorous; poets Giorgio Caproni, Ezra Pound, Christopher Reid and Selima Hill; of a sense of the absurd as a coping mechanism; and of Donald Davies’s idea of fe...

“Poetry is an inner armour available to anyone,” says the celebrated Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson in this latest in The Poetry Review podcast series. In conversation with Review Editor Emily Berry, Hutchinson talks about his influences (citing Donne, Eliot and George Seferis) and his poetics; about homesickness, travel and "returning responsibly". Hutchinson also reads his poems, ‘West Ride Out...

SLAMbassadors Artistic Director Joelle Taylor speaks to poet, comedian and all-around stagesmith Rob Auton about becoming one of the spoken word scene's most recognisable (and hairiest) faces, as one of the masterminds behind legendary live poetry night Bang Said The Gun. Plus, they discuss the complicated relationship between poet and audience, Rob's upcoming tour entitled 'The Hair Show', what i...

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

These are our words: Jen Campbell reviews the anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, edited by Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka, Daniel Sluman and published by Nine Arches, which examines the poetics of D/deaf and disabled cultures. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

‘You listen for the poem to say itself’ Emily Berry talks to Gillian Allnutt about meditation, fragmentation and the ‘hinterland’ of the poem. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk