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About a year ago, I went along to a near-capacity crowded Usher Hall in Edinburgh to hear Natalie Merchant and her band play through much of her new album, Leave Your Sleep, in which she had set poems (mainly based…

I’ve read some good poetry in the last year from British and Irish writers, but there’s a whole world out there. I have also read terrific poetry collections written by poets from the USA, India, Poland, Germany, Australia and France…

Statistics compiled by VIDA, an organisation representing women in the literary arts, appear to show gross imbalance between men and women in leading literary magazines and newspapers. They publish far more poems by men than women, far more reviews of…

Any thoughts on the TS Eliot Prize? Who will win? Who should win? Do you think the whole thing is irrelevant and top-heavy with the usual publishers who invariably share out the places on these lists? Or would you argue…

Here's an interesting with Ryan Van Winkle conducted by the Scottish Book Trust. One commenter (anonymous, of course) got upset over Ryan’s answer to ‘What’s the best thing about being a poet?’ Ryan isn’t comfortable with calling himself a ‘poet’…

I am surprised by the passion in the poetry community about the word “shards”. Having heard from two reputable poets / teachers of creative writing whose opinions I value that “shards” is a no no, and having read on the…

So I said like ‘How many people have you slept with?’ And he said like one And I said like who And he said like YOU! And I said Oh. That’s the conversation I overheard on the train home, after…

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have been asked to programme two events at a poetry festival. You have an unlimited budget, but each event must contain only three poets. For the first event you can invite three living…

The way a poem begins clearly has consequences for mood, tone, register, voice, line length, pace, style, and so one. It may contain at least a hint of form or structure. The first couple of lines may work together or…