The Poetry Business

Join us for an online poetry reading with Michael Schmidt and Michael Laskey, this Sunday evening at 7pm!

https://youtube.com/live/Ic8ml5BOjYs

Join the Poetry Business at Wordsworth Grasmere to celebrate the winners of the 2026 International Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Kim Moore. The winners Derval Tubridy and Tom Weir will be reading poems from their prize-winning pamphlets, alongside the competition runners-up David Hale and Ellie Grant.

Free tickets: https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/events/poetry-business-2026/

🎉 The winners of the 2026 New Poets Prize! 🎉
Chosen by our wonderful judge, Holly Hopkins

WINNERS:

🌟Zelda Cahill-Patten
for her pamphlet Scare

🌟Joe Wright
for his pamphlet HOWK

RUNNERS-UP:

🌟George Adams
for his pamphlet Cub

🌟Jacob Burgess Rollo
for his pamphlet Minor Sporting Achievements

Congratulations to all four poets, and a huge thank you to our judge Holly Hopkins!

Find out more about the Prize and the prizewinners: https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/competitions/new-poets-prize/

Coming up later this month: A very special online workshop with poet and comic book writer Chrissy Williams!

Making Poetry Comics
Monday 17 August, 7pm

What happens when you mix poetry with comics, and what lessons can we steal away for our own poetry writing? Find out in this fun workshop, where you will see some examples, from Kenneth Koch to Bianca Stone, and start making your own poetry comics (whether you can draw or not!). With poet and comic book writer Chrissy Williams. All you'll need is some blank paper and a pencil.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thepoetrybusiness/2194589

Chrissy Williams is an award-winning poet, editor and comic book writer based in the UK. Her writing has been commended by the Forward Prizes, shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards, and featured on BBC radio and television. Her full poetry collections are Bear (Bloodaxe, 2017) and Low (Bloodaxe, 2021). She is editor of the online poetry journal PERVERSE. Her poetry comics collaboration with Tom Humberstone Introduction to Charts won the Selkie Award for Best Narrative Comic. She and Tom co-edited Over the Line: An Introduction to Poetry comics (Sidekick Books, 2015) about which Alan Moore said: “I really can’t recommend this venture highly enough.”

🔎 Poetry Business Mystery Bundles: A lucky dip from 40 years of independent poetry publishing.

Pay-What-You-Feel (From £15)

We're putting together some surprise poetry packages to send out to our wonderful supporters.

Every bundle is different, so we can’t tell you exactly what you’ll find inside, but they have all been chosen with care to reflect the huge range of poets we’ve published in our 40-year history, and hopefully to introduce you to new poets that you’ll love too!

https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/mystery-bundle/

We’re offering bundles from £15, with the option to pay more if you’re able. We’ve set this minimum to help cover our costs, but the more people can give, the more it helps.

The Poetry Business has been publishing independent poetry for 40 years, and like most small literary organisations, we depend on the goodwill of our readers and supporters. Thank you to everyone who has helped to to continue doing what we do, now and in the past.

Each Fabulous Mystery Bundle contains:
– A mixture of three Poetry Business collections, pamphlets and anthologies, combining newer titles with classics from our 40-year publishing history.
– An archive issue of The North, filled with poems, criticism and articles.
– Some extra Poetry Business goodies!

Join Suzannah in a couple of weeks to tackle the big poetry-writing question!

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thepoetrybusiness/2194620

'Why Write Poetry?' with Suzannah Evans
Mon 3 Aug, 7:00 PM BST

In this session we’ll read and write poems in order to explore what poetry means to us, why we might want to write it, and how we gather inspiration. We’ll share poems that we love and and write our own manifestos and missions for what we want to create, for ourselves and for the wider world.

Suzannah Evans' work combines climate anxiety and eco-poetry with dark humour and irreverence, and has been described as 'doom-pop poetry with an apocalyptic edge.' She has published two books with Nine Arches Press, the most recent of which is Space Baby, and her pamphlet Green is published by Little Betty. She is currently an RLF fellow at Sheffield University.

Two brilliant new workshops with Rachel Long and Heidi Williamson coming up next week!

Sign up here: https://buytickets.at/thepoetrybusiness

Mon 13 July, 7pm
The Harlem Renaissance with Rachel Long

What happens when poetry becomes a revolution? When language refuses silence? When art insists on dignity, joy, and defiance? This workshop explores the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance — the extraordinary cultural movement of the 1920s and 30s that reshaped American literature and redefined Black artistic expression.

Participants will experiment with blues structures, formal verse, and contemporary responses to Renaissance themes. We’ll consider how this movement continues to influence poets today, and how its spirit of artistic boldness can energise your own work.

Wed 15 July, 11am
'Who's on the stage of the poem and why?' with Heidi Williamson

Even if there isn't a declared ‘I’, we know 'someone' is speaking in a poem – and some poems have multiple characters in them, including the reader.

In this generative workshop, we'll take a step back and look at the poem's stage on which characters, elements, images and statements step forward to take their turns in the limelight.

Inspired by poems from Michael Donaghy, Leo Boix, Ada Limón, Isabelle Baafi, Linda France, Edwin Morgan, Ilya Kaminsky and more, we’ll consider who and what we present to the reader and what surprise guests turn up for ourselves.

In a couple of weeks' time we will be rounding off June with highly original and inspiring online workshops from Chrissy Williams and Jackie Wills!

Sign up here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thepoetrybusiness

Mon 29 June, 7pm
Writing Poems Inspired by Music and Song with Chrissy Williams

If ekphrasis is (usually) a textual response to a visual piece of art, how does that change when the piece of art is a song? Do we respond differently to Pulp than to Puccini? To Bonnie Prince Billy or Bonnie Tyler or Beethoven? We'll be looking at work by poets like Frank O Hara, Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Bob Cobbing, then create our own new poems in response to musical prompts.

Tues 30 June, 11am
Cloth: the records we stitch, lines we tack, with Jackie Wills

In this workshops, we’ll look at poems by Tjawangwa Dema and Michael Longley plus others using the imagery of sewing to explore the personal and political, to record history, commemorate, mourn.

Two excellent new online poetry workshops coming up next week!
(NB: In a break from our usual schedule, we have a Thursday morning workshop)

Sign up here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thepoetrybusiness

Monday 22 June, 7pm
Straight Talk, Deep Water with Vanessa Lampert

In this workshop we will look at poems by Ross Gay, Liz Berry and Martha Sprackland for their qualities of speaking in a direct unguarded voice with immediate accessibility whilst also carrying emotional and imaginative depth. Expect to write from lived experience to reveal how by using tiny shifts of tone and subtle restraint, much can be said without saying everything.
Vanessa Lampert's collection Say It With Me was published by Seren in 2023.

Thursday 25 June, 11am
Writing Poems with Kim Moore

Join our expert poetry tutor Kim Moore as she helps you put pen to paper in a 90 minute session filled with tailored writing exercises and discussion.
Kim Moore's second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023.

📢 Late addition to our programme! 📢

The wonderful Kim Moore joins us in just a couple of weeks for another inspiring Writing Poems workshop.
Sign up here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thepoetrybusiness/2257866

Writing Poems with Kim Moore
Thursday 25 June, 11am - Zoom workshop

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling (Seren Books, 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me was published by Smith|Doorstop in May 2022. A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.