The Poetry Society

The prize-wining American poet Jane Yeh, author of Marabou and The Ninjas (both Carcanet) talks to Sarah Howe, co-editor of the winter issue of The Poetry Review. They discuss Yeh’s use of dramatic monologue and the often fantastical personas she adopts (ninjas, rabbits, androids) to hilarious effect. “I think of Oscar Wilde’s phrase, ‘the truth of masks’ – how when you wear a mask it reveals your...

Jacob Polley reads his poem 'Applejack' from his latest Jackself, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2016. The poem was first published in The Poetry Review, 106:3, autumn 2016, co-edited by Kayo Chingonyi and Maurice Riordan. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

Jacob Polley, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2016, talks to Kayo Chingonyi, co-editor of the autumn issue of The Poetry Review, about his Eliot prize-winning collection, Jackself. “The self is at the root of all my work, but maybe my work springs from the tension between self-expression and concealment, of running the self through a magic lantern and seeing what comes out the other side,” Polley s...

Writing in The Poetry Review, Paul Batchelor described the publication of The Poems of Basil Bunting (Faber), edited by Don Share, as “a major event”. “It is to be hoped,” he continued, “that this excellent edition will mark a turning point in Bunting’s fortunes among English readers, for he has yet to receive his due.” To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk Don Share and Paul Bat...

SLAMbassadors Artistic Director Joelle Taylor speaks to poet Sabrina Mahfouz in this Poetry Society podcast, to discuss How You Might Know Me, Sabrina's new poetic exploration of women who work in the sex industry. They also speak on the surprising ways that fashion, immigrant and queer cultures intersect, the battle for cultural recognition fought by today's spoken word artists, and more. Sabrina...

Joelle Taylor chats to spoken word artist Salena Godden about the UK's spoken word poetry scene, past present and future, as well as her experience with the recent BBC iPlayer documentary 'We Belong Here'. Salena also reads and discusses her poem 'Titanic', tells us the best and worst gig she's ever been to, and more. To connect with more poetry, visit poetrysociety.org.uk

Jen Hadfield was commissioned by The Poetry Society and the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, to write her poem, ‘The Lantern Fly’, inspired by an exhibition of paintings by the German artist and entomologist Maria Merian. She talks to Judith Palmer about the “jewelline, sparkling” natural world of her home on Shetland, and how Merian’s pioneering spirit and paintings inspired a poem in which de...

Listen to Jen Hadfied's entrancing reading of her new poem, 'The Lantern Fly', commissioned by The Poetry Society and the Royal Collection Trust, and inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian's painting of a lantern fly. The exhibition of Merian's paintings, Maria Merian's Butterflies, was first shown at The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, and continues at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace,...

Emily Berry, who will jointly edit the summer 2016 issue of The Poetry Review, talks to Maurice Riordan about taste, humour and subverting conventional power relationships. They discuss her Forward Prize-winning debut collection, Dear Boy, and shift in tone and subject matter of her upcoming collection Stranger, Baby. Emily also reads her poem ‘Aqua’.

Frank Ormsby was Editor of The Honest Ulsterman during one of the most illustrious phases of Irish poetry. He talks about the involvement of poets such as Heaney, Longley, Carson and Muldoon, and his own long career as a writer. His poems – modest, humorous, deeply felt and generally slow to appear – have latterly been written in a “mad excitement” he remains suspicious of – “the belated release o...

Iain Galbraith reads ‘December 1914’ from his Popescu Prize winning translation of Jan Wagner’s collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize is awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The...

Ian Galbraith reads ‘December 1914’ in the original German and from his Popescu Prize winning translation of Jan Wagner’s collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize is awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCan...

Anne Stokes reads ‘Earth’ from her Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Sarah Kirsch’s collection Ice Roses: Selected Poems, published by Carcanet. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is suppor...

David Constantine reads ‘When I Left You, Afterwards…’ from his Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Bertolt Brecht’s collection Love Poems, published by Liveright. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. Th...

Tom Kuhn reads ‘Discovery about a Young Woman’ from his Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Bertolt Brecht’s collection Love Poems, published by Liveright. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize...

Susan Wicks reads ‘The Poem for Jacques’ from her Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Valérie Rouzeau’s collection Talking Vrouz, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The p...

Helen Mort talks to Maurice Riordan about writing and the problem of observation; Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave and her poem ‘Scab’; writing on the run; neuroscience, Norman MacCaig, John Burnside and Paul Muldoon, and how writing her first novel is both similar to and different from writing poems. Helen is a five times winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year. Her first collection, Division S...

‘Awater’, written by Martinus Nijhoff in 1934, is considered the great Dutch modernist poem. Hailed by Brodsky as “the future of poetry”, it is still barely known outside the Netherlands. In it, the poet-narrator trails his mysterious neighbour – Awater – through the city night before abandoning the trail in a train station. Is the poem about the imagination, the unconscious mind, about bereavemen...

US poet Paul Nemser was delighted to have been commended in the The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition – "an opportunity to have one's work looked at [anonymously] by very, very good poets". He spoke to Mike Sims about being taught by Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Stanley Kunitz, the benefits of translating poetry and why competitions matter.

"I'm struck by the meaninglessness of words, how slippery they are and yet I also want to believe in them. I'm left stuck between the two." Zaffar Kunial talks to Maurice Riordan about all his successes in 2014: winning the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, his residency at the Wordsworth Trust (his first job as a 'poet') and publication in the Faber New Poets series. He also talks about writing for Hallmar...

Don Share, editor of Poetry, talks to Maurice Riordan, editor of The Poetry Review, about their magazines' latest exchange of American and British poems, and how writers and readers on both sides of the Atlantic benefit from wider exposure to the two traditions. They also discuss 'Prufrock' – first published in Poetry 150 years ago – Young Turks, Old Possums, an editor's luck and typos.

'Enough Sky' was commended in The Poetry Society's 2014 National Poetry Competition. From the judges: 'From the start, 'Enough Sky' impresses with its tight lyricism and careful adjectives. It is delightfully elusive and warrants repeated reading. A poem which crept up on me and won me over with its spell and its surprising phrases - 'urging tangerine starward', 'seeking gauze to pull away''. This...

Orla was one of the winners of the Young Poets Network mini writing competition with the Reading Agency, to write a poem about reading. http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2015/03/17/writing-about-reading-the-latest-mini-competition/

Working in collaboration with Royal Collection Trust, The Poetry Society commissioned Forward Prize winning poet Kei Miller to create a new poem. Place Name – Oracabessa, skilfully unites the themes of Gold and Journeys and follows the form of Miller's award winning collection 'The Cartographer tries to map his way to Zion'. The poem was premiered at an evening event in The Queen's Gallery on Thur...

"Many writers write not because they're fluent or because they have any kind of ability in a language but for the exact opposite reason." Paul Muldoon talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about Heaney, Beckett and Joyce, and reads 'A Dent' from his new collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (Faber).