Why Bother? Because I guess most of us are driven to write poetry by instinct rather than reason we rarely ask the question. But on days when doubts flood in the answer here is exquisite. #poetry #WritingCommunity

🚨Dream journal moment!🚨Beyond excited to have a poem in the new issue of North American Review alongside some absolutely rockstar poets and writers! Here’s to poetry, a little imagination, and the bizarre interplay of loss, lineage, and memory. @northamerreview.bsky.social

Sylvia Plath

One of the most basic human experiences is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve in this non-stop, 24/7 connected world. All the more reason then to remember the value of solitude. #WritingCommunity

Thrilled to announce that I have won the UNESCO international Bridges of Struga Award for a debut poetry book from Struga Poetry Evenings for my collection New Famous Phrases published by @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social. Thanks so much to all of the judges for their kind words about the book!

😍

Out today! Get it from our website or Secret Kingdoms or @lib-parenthesis.bsky.social in Madrid or online at Peecho @worldoceanday.bsky.social @unep.org @unepwcmc.bsky.social #worldoceanday #publicationday

The Madrid Review Issue 8 launches today! My poem Sea Glass Requiem is within & explores themes arising from #migration & #biculturalism. Also, I was thrilled to discover that Chasms my chapbook with @alienbuddhapress.bsky.social is a #RecommendedReads pick! Thank you @madridlitmag.bsky.social 🌊💙🌊

Wow. The news is relentless. Exhausting. Devastating. Sometimes sharing my little observations feels like trying to grow a flower in a tornado. But these tiny acts matter. I’m sure of it. Every piece of art, or act of kindness by real humans, to and for each other, matters. More than ever.

The modern world in old Ladybird. "The blacksmith's trade is an old one which does not change" (1954) Artist: Septimus Scott

The bogs, rivers, mountains, and shorelines are more than preservers of old myths, bones, and memories. They are energy banks and time sponges, and what is held within them seeks release. Manchán Magan, Listen to the Land Speak: A Journey into the Wisdom of What Lies Beneath Us #photography #writing

We're lucky to have it and you in the issue @carmellapoetry.bsky.social ❤️

That time of year. This sweaty thing, first published in @madridlitmag.bsky.social

So thrilled to be a part of this.

I’m reading online for the Transatlantic Poetry Series on 19 June at 7pm GMT. Tickets—free—available at the link to book. Would be lovely if you’d like to join me for poems on Hollywood, musicians, poets, desire, memory, and the middle life. ❤️

‘Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love from the speeding passage of time,’ Ada Limón attempting to stay just beyond the feeling of despair that increasingly threatens to engulf us all. #poetry #WritingCommunity

Anna Akhmatova, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer

“When you are a poet as he was, you have no confusions, you write / The words you are given to, you are possessed or protected by a vision.”

Thrilled to be on the BBC this Thurs 21/05 & Sat 23/05. A special thank you to Beth Linnell for selecting my poetry. I am reading a poem first published by Paul Short within his #UnwhisperedLegacy anthology where he raised over £300 for Médecins Sans Frontières.🕊️ #bbcessex #poemsforthesoul #voices

A sliver of sanity on Sunday (before the News).

Detecting notes of Frank Bidart's "Herbert White" in this unsettling poem by Ada Limón

Looking forward Beth Osmond’s Hatchery launch tonight👇Beth’s poetry is highly original, fusing the emotional and technical considerations of the neonatal environment to produce work that, while rooted in her immediate experience, moves towards more universal reflections on the fragility of existence

“One day, all we guard will be surrendered. “ Li-young Lee, on learning to accept and embrace the fragility and temporality of life, in his poem: To Hold #poetry #WritingCommunity

This artwork is "Harmony in Blue-Orange" by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, created in 1923.

loving-others-to-death— Michael Ryan

“love is, always, the flight back to where we are.” A poet who has left us so much. J. H. Prynne, 24 June 1936 - 22 June 2026

Rain, Portland Street crossing Oxford Road, Manchester, painting by Rob Pointon.

Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet. This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.

The @nationaltrust.org.uk only rarely ask their members to take political action, but when they do, it’s seismic. Please take the NT’s action, email your MP demanding the Government protect 30% of the UK for nature by 2030: campaigns.nationaltrust.org.uk/page/186395/... bsky.app/profile/nati...

Our latest anthology has the most beautifully relevant and hard hitting poetry today ✊💎 www.amazon.co.uk/Poems-Protes...

It begins

God this poem is haunting me again.

"A spectral picture, composed of shadows; a phantom picture, a picture which did not last for long and, therefore, struck his imagination far more powerfully than would have done a motionless picture hung for him to look at all day long." - Marcel Proust, JEAN SANTEIUL

If you listen to poetry podcasts, there is a new in-depth interview with me by @gregorykearns.bsky.social out today on The Poems We Made Along The Way. I talk about queer joy, neurodivergence and the techniques I used to begin poems in Crowd Voltage. (Available on most podcast platforms.)

“my old suspicion that health and love are brief irrelevancies,” On the burden of having to pretend, Linda Pastan. In a world led by charlatans cheered on by the gullible the notion of compulsory happiness has never been more tiresome. #poetry #WritingCommunity

I like these two . Thank you to Sarah Dixon for today's #FoxOfTheDay

Come to Manchester Central Library to meet Stairwell Books at the 2026 Northern Publishers' Fair! 📍 Manchester Central Library 📅 25th April 2026, 11am - 3.30pm 🎟️ Book now at fly-on-the-wall-press.eventcube.io #northerncreatives #northernpublishersfair #publishing

We'll be among the 60+ poetry publishers at Free Verse on Saturday 25 April (Knightsbridge, London): hope to see you there.

Sometimes Louise Glück’s poetry hits you like a punch in the stomach, only it stays with you longer. #poetry #WritingCommunity

A neurologist once made med students write down 3 things: somebody they love, something they look forward to, a skill they're proud of. Randomly she then tore up some of the bits of paper. That, she said, is what neurological diseases do. In a year of loss and cancellation, I think of this so much.

I've just extended the deadline for Mental Health Poetry to 30th May! Lots going on right now :) roughdiamondpoetry.com/submissions/

"And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow," W.B. Yeats #poetry #landscapephotography

Given over 21,000 entries I'm grateful and still staggered in equal measure to be among the poets longlisted in the @poetrysociety.org.uk National Poetry Competition. Congratulations to all and thanks to the organisers and judges for shining a light on poets we may otherwise miss. #poetrycommunity

"Poetry is words in their least lucrative order." (Recalled by Earle Birney)

This is sublime. Awoke with this poem and it might already be the best part of the entire day.

Billy Collins - Introduction To Poetry #poetry #writingcommunity

Happy #WorldPoetryDay Let's celebrate together, use the LOVEPOETRY code at the Nine Arches checkout for 25% off #poetry books when you spend £15+ What's missing from your shelves? ninearchespress.com/shop #ReadMorePoetry

“And, while death claims all things at the end, There were such precious times between,”

“The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.” —Albert Camus #writingcommunity