National Poetry Competition 2024

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 observes of this "fraught undertaking". Together they discuss poetry form and performance – typography, breath, sound and “the event of the poem” – and the poets and thinkers who have influenced McConnell’s thinking: Bob Scanlan of The Poets’ Theatre, Jay Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Denise Riley, Ciaran Carson, D.W. Winnicott and others. McConnell gives astonishing readings of her poems published in the Review: excerpts from ‘The Sun is Open’ and ‘Untitled / Villanelle’.

Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry

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... Poetry is to be experienced as a phenomenon on earth, Ruefle says, “[it] is not be understood… it’s a little scary but it’s a matter of letting go”. She gives wonderful readings of her poems in the Review summer 2021 issue: ‘Lament’, ‘Conflict’, ‘My Life as a Scholar’ and ‘Empathy of Cod’.

Mary Ruefle talks to Emily Berry

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 and see what happens if they write in a different way,’ he says. Fascinating on the ‘productive panic’ of building a collection, McCrae also gives wonderful readings of his poems published in the autumn 2021 issue of The Poetry Review: 'Explaining My Appearance in Certain Pictures', 'The Fungus Called Dead Man’s Fingers' and 'The Dead Negro in the Modernist Long Poem'.

Shane McCrae talks to Emily Berry

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 community of Black creative diversity where poets are fully self-expressed free from racism. Discover more on their website: obsidianfoundation.co.uk

Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall discuss their experience on the Obsidian Foundation writing retreat, what it means to write in vernacular and how poetry can speak on behalf of a community. They read their poems: 'How To Eat Frogs' (Clementine E. Burnley), 'The Gold Price' (Zakia Carpenter-Hall), 'She Found God In Herself and She Loved Her Fiercely' (Zakia Carpenter-Hall) and 'A Swiss Lace Front Wig' (Clementine E. Burnley).

Dzifa Benson speaks to Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall

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

Jameson Fitzpatrick talks to Andre Bagoo

‘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 buy the issue here: bit.ly/ThePoetryReview


Richard Scott’s first book is Soho (2018), he guested edited The Poetry Review with Andre Bagoo in Summer 2022.     Peter Gizzi’s recent books include, Now It’s Dark (Wesleyan, 2020), Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020), Archeophonics (Finalist for the National Book Award, Wesleyan, 2016) and In Defense of Nothing (Finalist for the LA Times Book Award, Wesleyan, 2014). His honours include fellowships from the Rex Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has twice been the recipient of the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. In 2018 Wesleyan published In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi. His most recent collection, Fierce Elegy, is available in the Wesleyan Poetry Series in the US, and will be published in the UK by Penguin in July 2024.
Music credit: 'A very minimalist improvisation' by Circus Marcus

Peter Gizzi & Richard Scott

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 foyleyoungpoets.org.uk. Read the top 15 winning poems from 2023 at bit.ly/Foyle2023.

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Top 15 Winners 2023

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 Copley’s Lapwing, while Sylvie Jane Lewis pays close attention to the epigraphs of Helen Farish’s The Penny Dropping and how they haunt the rest of the text. Eira Murphy situates Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy within the poet’s wider corpus and influences, asking ‘in what ways might we come to a world increasingly pushed to the horizon of its own collapse?’, and Orla Davey interrogates Gustav Parker Hibbett’s use of mythology in High Jump as Icarus Story.

Since 2022, the T. S. Eliot Prize (the most valuable prize for new poetry collections in the UK and Ireland) and Young Poets Network, The Poetry Society’s leading platform for poets aged up to 25, have run an exciting new collaboration to support the next generation of poetry reviewers: the Young Critics Scheme.

This year’s scheme follows a hugely successful first two years, in which two cohorts of Young Critics’ video reviews were seen over 60,000 times and shared online by readers, publishers, poets and critics. Several of the Young Critics have since been invited to review for leading magazines including The Poetry Review, Poetry London and Magma.

Find out more about The Poetry Society's programmes for young people: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/young-poets

Young Critics review the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist - part 1

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 Thursday, 12 February 2015 to a full audience.

Kei Miller reads 'Place Name: Oracabessa'

Lesley Sharpe reads 'Eyewitness' | National Poetry Competition 2024

Chris Beckett reads 'The broom upside down' | National Poetry Competition 2024

Lee Knapper reads 'Plums' | National Poetry Competition 2024

Sorrel Briggs reads 'Heaven Down' | National Poetry Competition 2024

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

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

Inua Ellams reads 'Reminisce of tongues' at The Poetry Review Spring 2025 launch

Polylingual Poetry: a panel on how poetry containing more than one language, and poetry in translation, is speaking to new audiences and welcoming new poets, with National Poetry Competition winner Fiona Larkin (Pindrop Press), Ghazal Mosadeq (Pamenar Press) and Leo Boix (Poetry Translation Centre) in the Library at Free Verse Poetry Book & Magazine Fair 2025.

The Poetry Society’s Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair celebrates the vitality of poetry in the UK – it’s an unrivalled opportunity to browse and buy the very best in contemporary poetry, and to meet publishers, organisations and poets.

Polylingual Poetry with Ghazal Mosadeq, Fiona Larkin, and Leo Boix

Taking the Temperature is a panel where brand-new and seasoned editors and publishers will discuss how independent poetry publishing is changing, with Tristram Fane Saunders (GRAVY and The Little Review), Niall Munro (ignitionpress), Jess Chandler (Prototype) and Amy Acre (Bad Betty) in the Library at Free Verse Poetry Book & Magazine Fair 2025.

The Poetry Society’s Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair celebrates the vitality of poetry in the UK – it’s an unrivalled opportunity to browse and buy the very best in contemporary poetry, and to meet publishers, organisations and poets.  

Taking the Temperature with Jess Chandler, Niall Munro, Amy Acre, and Tristram Fane Saunders

Jacob Polley reads 'Dust' at The Poetry Review Summer 2025 launch

Bonnie Hancell reads 'Generations of Destroyers' at The Poetry Review Summer 2025 launch

Kaveh Akbar reads 'Love Poem with Lines from Jesus and Muhammad' at The Poetry Review Summer 2025 launch

Martha Sprackland reads 'The Small Picture' at The Poetry Review Summer 2025 launch

Mark Pajak reads 'Trick' and 'Plait' | Then & Now

John Wedgwood Clarke: Then & Now

Vicki Feaver: Then and Now

Freya Bantiff: Then and Now

Marvin Thompson: Then and Now

Mark Fiddes: Then & Now

Katie Griffiths: Then & Now

Mary Jean Chan on 'Play'

Fawzia Muradali Kane: Then & Now

Each year for our Look North More Often project, 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, Coral Rumble wrote a wonderful new poem is called ‘Glow’, which is on display around the base of the tree in Trafalgar Square over the 2025 festive period. The poem was premiered at the lighting up ceremony of the tree in front of the mayors of Oslo, London and Westminster, plus thousands of spectators, by three children from a local primary school, Burdett Coutts & Townshend Primary School. Their names are Nuraa, Nirvaan and Andrew and in this podcast, you’ll get to hear them read the poem, as well as talk about their experience discovering, writing and performing poetry. You can also find a plethora of free festive KS2 teaching resources and poems on The Poetry Society website at bit.ly/lnmo. Happy holidays from everyone at The Poetry Society!

'Glow' by Coral Rumble: The Look North More Often Project 2025

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 relevance now, following the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst for change. In an exhilarating conversation Sandeep and Mary Jean discuss race and contemporary literature, the lyric 'I' and, post-Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, the fluidities and opportunities of the second-person ‘you’, and changing the critical context of BAME writing with the Ledbury Emerging Critics scheme, which Sandeep co-founded with Sarah Howe.

Sandeep Parmar talks to Mary Jean Chan

The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote "a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry". Since then, it has grown into one of Britain's most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has more than 4000 members worldwide and publishes the leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review.

With innovative education and commissioning programmes and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. 

"The Poetry Society is the heart and hands of poetry in the UK – a centre which pours out energy to all parts of the poetry-body, and a dexterous set of operations which arrange and organise poetry's various manifestations. It has a long distinguished history, and has never been so vital, or so vitalizing as it is now." Sir Andrew Motion

The Poetry Society

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