The Poetry Society

Tom Kuhn reads ‘Discovery about a Young Woman’ from his Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Bertolt Brecht’s collection Love Poems, published by Liveright. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize and selected poems please visit our website: http://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/popescu-prize/2015-2/ For more on Tom's research and translation project go to http://brecht.mml.ox.ac.uk/ or follow @writingbrecht on Twitter.

Susan Wicks reads ‘The Poem for Jacques’ from her Popescu Prize shortlisted translation of Valérie Rouzeau’s collection Talking Vrouz, published by Arc Publications. The Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize has been awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English. The judges this year are Olivia McCannon and Clare Pollard. The prize is supported in 2015 by the British Council. For more information on the 2015 Popescu Prize and selected poems please visit our website: http://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/popescu-prize/2015-2/

Helen Mort talks to Maurice Riordan about writing and the problem of observation; Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave and her poem ‘Scab’; writing on the run; neuroscience, Norman MacCaig, John Burnside and Paul Muldoon, and how writing her first novel is both similar to and different from writing poems. Helen is a five times winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year. Her first collection, Division Street (Chatto & Windus) was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and, in 2014, won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. She also reads her poem ‘Ablation’.

‘Awater’, written by Martinus Nijhoff in 1934, is considered the great Dutch modernist poem. Hailed by Brodsky as “the future of poetry”, it is still barely known outside the Netherlands. In it, the poet-narrator trails his mysterious neighbour – Awater – through the city night before abandoning the trail in a train station. Is the poem about the imagination, the unconscious mind, about bereavement, about the existential hollow in the wake of the First World War, about T.S. Eliot, about religion and the old world, about the future? With the help of David Colmer, Professor Wiljan van den Akker, poets Onno Kosters and Astrid Alben, and artist-writer Bette Adriaanse, Jane Draycott looks for answers to these questions. This audio piece is supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

US poet Paul Nemser was delighted to have been commended in the The Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition – "an opportunity to have one's work looked at [anonymously] by very, very good poets". He spoke to Mike Sims about being taught by Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Stanley Kunitz, the benefits of translating poetry and why competitions matter.

"I'm struck by the meaninglessness of words, how slippery they are and yet I also want to believe in them. I'm left stuck between the two." Zaffar Kunial talks to Maurice Riordan about all his successes in 2014: winning the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, his residency at the Wordsworth Trust (his first job as a 'poet') and publication in the Faber New Poets series. He also talks about writing for Hallmark Cards, bilingualism, identity and discovering his voice as a poet. He also reads his poem 'Fielder'.

Don Share, editor of Poetry, talks to Maurice Riordan, editor of The Poetry Review, about their magazines' latest exchange of American and British poems, and how writers and readers on both sides of the Atlantic benefit from wider exposure to the two traditions. They also discuss 'Prufrock' – first published in Poetry 150 years ago – Young Turks, Old Possums, an editor's luck and typos.

'Enough Sky' was commended in The Poetry Society's 2014 National Poetry Competition. From the judges: 'From the start, 'Enough Sky' impresses with its tight lyricism and careful adjectives. It is delightfully elusive and warrants repeated reading. A poem which crept up on me and won me over with its spell and its surprising phrases - 'urging tangerine starward', 'seeking gauze to pull away''. This is a poem which feels longer than it is because it packs in a lot - lush and distilled.'' - Roddy Lumsden. Image: Moonrise over Ghost Ranch © Steve O'Bryan www.wildbasinphotography.com

Orla was one of the winners of the Young Poets Network mini writing competition with the Reading Agency, to write a poem about reading. http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2015/03/17/writing-about-reading-the-latest-mini-competition/

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.

"Many writers write not because they're fluent or because they have any kind of ability in a language but for the exact opposite reason." Paul Muldoon talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about Heaney, Beckett and Joyce, and reads 'A Dent' from his new collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing (Faber).

US poet Kim Addonizio talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about riffing on the canon and traditional forms, her view that "emotional experience is the essence of any art" and how "the best humour is also dark and traffics with something else" – how she uses poetry as a process of discovery. She also reads her new poem 'White Flower, Red Flower'.

Rose was one of the winners of the Young Poets Network Edith Sitwell challenge. http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2014/03/24/edith-sitwell-eccentricity-and-sounds-new-writing-challenge/

Linda France, winner of the National Poetry Competition 2013, presented by the Poetry Society, talks about her why entering competitions is so worthwhile, which poems she enters and why, how the competition connects the world of poetry and why anonymity matters.

Simon Armitage talks about his writing home – his teenager's bedroom in Marsden, West Yorkshire, of taking poetry out into the world on long walks, on the radio and in the theatre – the "go anywhere artform" in Les Murray's phrase. He also talks about compiling his new Selected and reads his new poems 'Camera Obscura' and 'Paper Aeroplane'.

This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx

This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx

This poem was specially commissioned by the British Museum, London, in partnership with the Poetry Society. It was inspired by the exhibition, 'Germany Divided: Baselitz & his generation', at the British Museum, London, 2014. http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/germany_divided.aspx

Adlestrop - read by Lance Pierson by The Poetry Society

The Blackbirds Come by Kim Rooney by The Poetry Society