Poetry in the News 2008
31 July
The Times Literary Supplement has launched a poetry competition with a first prize of £2,000. Readers will vote for the winning poem from a selected shortlist. The closing date is 12 September.
7 July
Poet Dannie Abse has won the Wales Book of the Year Award for his memoir, The Presence (Hutchinson).
30 June
Gill Learner has won the Hamish Canham Poetry Prize 2008 for the best members' poem to be published in Poetry News.
30
June
The poet Elizabeth Bartlett has died aged 84. She published her first collection of poetry in her mid-fifties, and her most recent, Mrs Perkins and Oedipus (Bloodaxe), on her eightieth birthday. An obituary appears in The Telegraph.
24
June
John Burnside, David Harsent, John Greening and Sarah Maguire have been awarded Cholmondeley Awards, worth £2000 each, by the Society of Authors. In the same awards ceremony, Emily Berry, Rhiannon Hooson, James Midgley, Adam O’Riordan and Heather Phillipson received Eric Gregory Awards, given for a collection of poems by a poet under the age of 30.
20
June
The Edge of Love, a film about Dylan Thomas's relationship with two women, starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys (who plays Thomas), opens tomorrow.
16
June
A plaque dedicated to the poet Lotte Moos, who died in January this year, will be unveiled today at the house in which she used to live in Hackney, East London.
6
June
John Ashbery has won the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize for his collection, Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems (Harper-Collins/Ecco).
21 May
John Hegley presented the 2007 English Association's Fellows' Poetry Prizes to Tony Flynn (first prize), Kim Rooney (second prize) and Peter Cash and Simon Jackson (joint third prize).
19 May
Jane Weir has won first prize in the Wigtown Poetry Competition, Scotland's largest poetry prize.
15 May
The Poetry Book Society and Apples & Snakes launch Soundblast, an online shop for CDs from UK-based performance poets, today.
15 May
The poet Robert Greacen has died at the age of 87. His Collected Poems won the Irish Times literature prize for poetry in 1995. A New and Selected Poems was published in 2006. An obituary appeared in the Guardian.
12 May
Welsh poet and playwright Gillian Clarke is holding an online poetry workshop this month, hosted by the Guardian.
12 May
Yang Lian, who will be reading in the Poetry Society's Under the Influence series, is appearing with W N Herbert in the Yellow Mountain Poetry Festival - an evening of Chinese poetry in translation - at London's Royal Festival Hall on 7 June, 2008.
2 May
Novels by the award-winning poets John Burnside and Gee Williams are both on the shortlist for this year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
22 April
Poet Dannie Abse's memoir, The Presence (Hutchinson), is on the shortlist for the English Pen/Ackerley prize. The winner will be announced on 10 June.
21 Apr
The shortlist for the International Griffin Poetry Prize comprises John Ashbery, Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (HarperCollins Publishers/Ecco); David Harsent, Selected Poems 1969-2005 (Faber); Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press); Clayton Eshleman, translating from the Spanish by César Vallejo, The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition (University of California Press). The winner of the C$50,000 prize will be announced on 4 June 2008.
15 Apr
The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition 2008 is now open for entries! This year's judges are Frieda Hughes, Jack Mapanje and Brian Patten. Find out more.
8 Apr
We are extremely sad and sorry to report that poet, writer and dramatist E.A. Markham has died (on 23 March, in Paris). His memoir, Against the Grain, is due out soon from Peepal Tree Press and a Selected Poems was published by Salt in 2003. E.A. Markham was a judge for the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition 2007.
4 Apr
Sinead Morrissey appears on The Verb Friday 4 April at 21.45 on BBC Radio 3; she reads her award winning poem 'Through The Square Window' and talks about it with Ian McMillan.
31
Mar
Gillian Clarke will succeed Professor Gwyn Thomas as the National Poet of Wales.
28
Mar
Neetha Kunaratnam has won the 2007 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.
28
Mar
28
Mar
The spring issue of Poetry Review is out now.
The winning poems from the National Poetry Competition 2007 will be published in the Independent on Sunday on 30 March.
10
Mar
The latest broadsheet to launch a poetry series is The Telegraph, with 'English Poetry Masters', introduced by Sam Leith. The first poet to be featured is Geoffrey Chaucer.
8
Mar
In today's Guardian Sean O'Brien launches a series on 'Great Poets of the 20th Century' with a feature on contemporary attitudes towards the canon.
7
Mar
In today's Independent, Boyd Tonkin launches a 14-day series on 'The Great Poets' with an essay on contemporary poetry and the canon, and Andrew Motion, Bonnie Greer, Rowan Williams and Andy Burnham MP talk about the poems that changed their lives.
11 Feb
Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School has launched the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize, a major new poetry award. The deadline for entries is 1 August and the winner will receive £10,000.
11 Feb
The Times/Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation is now open for entries. The closing date is 23 May.
8 Feb
4 Feb
Daljit Nagra won the Arts Council/decibel award at last night's South Bank Show Awards for his first collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover (Faber). The title poem from the collection was published in Poetry Review.
15 Jan
Last night Sean O'Brien was announced as the winner of the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize. The Judges, Peter Porter, W.N. Herbert and Sujata Bhatt picked O'Brien's The Drowned Book from a very distinguished shortlist.
4 Jan
Jean Sprackland has won the poetry category of the Costa Book Awards with her third collection, Tilt (Cape).
3 Jan
Henri Chopin (1922 - 2007) passed away at his home in England. He was one of the pioneers of Sound Poetry, and will be sadly missed. Read and hear more about Chopin at Ubu web.
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