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Out-Spoken Press
@outspokenpress.bsky.social
5.4K followers 270 following 220 posts
Independent poetry publisher 📧[email protected]

https://linktr.ee/outspokenpress
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Out-Spoken Press @outspokenpress.bsky.social · Jan 20
GOOD MORNING HELLO to so many new faces 🙏

We’re Out-Spoken Press, we publish poetry & critical writing — you can see more about our recent titles below and we have exciting news on Editor @aanaxagorou.bsky.social’s 2025-26 list coming this week 👀
outspokenpress.bsky.social Out-Spoken Press @outspokenpress.bsky.social · Dec 13
Looking back at 2024:

[…] by Fady Joudah
Boiled Owls, Azad Ashim Sharma
Bark, Archive, Splinter, Jay Gao
Down, @chickenbex
Tongueless, Rojbîn Arjen Yiğit
I Sugar the Bones, Juana Adcock.

NEW bundle offer of all six 2024 titles for just £45 available now:

outspokenldn.com/shop/2024bundle
Thumbnail covers of 2024 books (on a blue circle on beige background) 2024 bundle offer: all six of our 2024 titles for just £45. Outspokenldn.com/press
outspokenpress.bsky.social
👁️ WINTER SALE 👁️
20% off Books till till midnight UK Sunday >>
Outspokenldn.com/shop
Winter Sale 20% off books - Out-Spoken Press Background image is a painting of Santa Lucia holding her eyes on a plate
December 6, 2025 at 8:27 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Welcome meeting for Gaza NextGen language project yesterday

All respect & gratitude to Programme Director Amani, co-admin Aliya and 🙏 to all the participating students & tutors ❤️‍🔥
December 6, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
outspokenpress.bsky.social
We’re excited to let you know about the new HYPERFOCUS thematically focused four-week online poetry courses launching January 2026.

Over four months, eight talented tutors will draw on four concentrated themes - Grief, Parents, Eros & Resistance.

outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus
Thematically-focused online poetry courses HYPER FOCUS Four months, four themes: grief - parents - eros - resistance NEW FOR 2026 Spanning four months, Jan-April 2026, with eight of the UK's best tutors, the courses will draw on four concentrated themes: GRIEF, PARENTS, EROS and RESISTANCE. outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus Each month, two leading poets will focus on a specific theme across four generative Tuesday evening workshops. Classes are designed for all levels, offering key insights and prompts into how we can write in and around each theme. You can either select a course that relates to you and your existing work, or register for the whole set.
November 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
pascalepetit.bsky.social
Delighted to be a tutor for this exciting new course from @outspokenpress.bsky.social
outspokenpress.bsky.social Out-Spoken Press @outspokenpress.bsky.social · 11d
January - Grief with @no1emily.bsky.social & @pascalepetit.bsky.social

February - Parents with @carolinebirduk.bsky.social & Jack Underwood

March: Eros with @kimaddonizio.bsky.social & Oluwaseun Olayiwola

April: Resistance with Joelle Taylor & @aanaxagorou.bsky.social
GRIEF Consider the different ways poems can help get between the feelings of grief and loss and look at how to ensure a poem remains artful while also true to its emotional life and sensibility. Both Emily Berry and Pascale Petit have written extensively on the theme of grief using metaphor, allegory and anecdote and will be guiding poets through a range of tips and prompts aimed at enhancing their skillset and thinking around the kind of poetry they want to write. 6-27 JANUARY 2026 TUTORS: PASCALE PETIT, EMILY BERRY WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK HYPERFOCUS grief: outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus HYPERFOCUS - parents How do you write about a problematic parents)? How best could you navigate a complex upbringing? How do you handle the sheer awe and panic of being a new parent? How do you write about the loss of a parent? In this second segment of Hyperfocus, join poets Caroline Bird and Jack Underwood as they look at ways we can write poems that draw from the multilayered experiences of having parents and being a parent. 3-24 FEBRUARY 2026 TUTORS: CAROLINE BIRD JACK UNDERWOOD WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK PARENTS outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus EROS Love, desire, lust, eros and longing are all part of March's Hyperfocus. Participants will be looking at what makes an erotic poem... erotic. How does one write erotica without sounding crass or twee, how can we express notions of longing or desire for another person and not make the poem feel like it's over-reaching or performative and if we are to write sex how much does that involve the body. How do sexuality, ability and gender impact the way we write into these themes? 3-24 MARCH 2026 TUTORS: KIM ADDONIZIO OLUWASEUN OLAYIWOLA WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK HYPERFOCUS eros outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus HYPERFCCUS resistance 7-28 APRIL 2026 TUTORS: JOELLE TAYLOR ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK Writing poems that talk truth to power or address the state of the nation can often be tricky to navigate. Either a poem is so direct it ends up feeling didactic or it's so subtle it doesn't have the push and bite it needs to make its case. Over the course of the four weeks participants will explore what it means to write a poem that is concerned with the world, injustice, oppression, trauma and witness. RESISTANCE outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus
November 26, 2025 at 3:53 PM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
We’re excited to let you know about the new HYPERFOCUS thematically focused four-week online poetry courses launching January 2026.

Over four months, eight talented tutors will draw on four concentrated themes - Grief, Parents, Eros & Resistance.

outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus
Thematically-focused online poetry courses HYPER FOCUS Four months, four themes: grief - parents - eros - resistance NEW FOR 2026 Spanning four months, Jan-April 2026, with eight of the UK's best tutors, the courses will draw on four concentrated themes: GRIEF, PARENTS, EROS and RESISTANCE. outspokenldn.com/hyperfocus Each month, two leading poets will focus on a specific theme across four generative Tuesday evening workshops. Classes are designed for all levels, offering key insights and prompts into how we can write in and around each theme. You can either select a course that relates to you and your existing work, or register for the whole set.
November 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
salenagodden.bsky.social
🇯🇲🙌🏾 Thank you to all who joined us online last night to raise funds for Jamaica, beautiful gathering of poetry and music and community and connection, loved it, love you, @outspokenpress.bsky.social here’s to more of this good stuff soon! BIGlove Xx
salenagodden.bsky.social Salena Godden @salenagodden.bsky.social · 18d
What are you up to this evening? If you are staying home then sign up for this online gig all for a great cause, and the line up organised by @outspokenpress.bsky.social is epic: POETS READ FOR HURRICANE RELIEF FUNDRAISER. Please share and donate if you can! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-read...
Poets Read For Hurricane Melissa Relief Fundraiser
An online evening of poetry, raising funds for Food for the Poor and Support Jamaica to support those affected by Hurricane Melissa.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 20, 2025 at 10:34 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
You can still DONATE to help those in Jamaica affected by Hurricane Melissa’s devastation & WATCH the recording of last night

With a TON of amazing poetry, incredible hosting by Leone Ross & a beautiful atmosphere - but on a Karim Kamar one today, not sorry

melissafundraiser.eventbrite.co.uk
November 20, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
salenagodden.bsky.social
🇯🇲 Poets Read for Hurricane Melissa Relief Fundraiser:
November 19th. Organised by @outspokenpress.bsky.social hosted by Leone Ross with an introduction from Akala, such an amazing line up, please show solidarity, donate and share and repost! Thank you!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-read...
November 6, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
simonmaddrell.bsky.social
Delighted to share the cover and publisher blurb for my debut poetry collection – out Feb 12th but available for pre-order from @outspokenpress.bsky.social

www.outspokenldn.com/shop/rabbits
In Simon Maddrell’s wide and bracing world, childhood orbits the voice of a distant and sometimes dangerous parent. Memories of sex parties, dead friends and estranged lovers straddle the spaces between feeling and thought, loss and fatalism. lamping wild rabbits is a brave and expansive multiverse, exploring sexuality, queer desire, memory recall and testimony. With poems that pay homage to the late Derek Jarman, to verses which situate themselves in and around the Isle of Man, exploring Britain’s colonial presence through the subverted interplay of English and the Manx language. A poly-vocal and multifaceted debut which is unafraid to confront the shame and stigma of HIV, while never allowing the poems to lose shape or pace, altering the lens to bring the reader’s attention to birdsong and the queer body in nature. Maddrell has achieved a distinct and totally convincing sound through the literary geography of lamping wild rabbits, one that gives the impression it’s been everywhere and returned because it survived.
November 3, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
salenagodden.bsky.social
excuse the typo, here's that link again, thanks for your solidarity and help xx www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-read...
Poets Read For Hurricane Melissa Relief Fundraiser
An online evening of poetry, raising funds for Food for the Poor and Support Jamaica to support those affected by Hurricane Melissa.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
salenagodden.bsky.social
🇯🇲 Poets Read for Hurricane Melissa Relief Fundraiser: November 19th, 7-9pm UK and 2-4pm EST organised by @outspokenpress.bsky.social hosted by Leone Ross with and introduction from Akala, amazing line up, please join us and please donate and please share!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-read...
ocean and yellow poster, text reads: POETS READ FOR HURRICANE MELISSA RELIEF FUNDRAISER WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2025 INTRODUCTION BY AKALA ROGER ROBINSON / MALIKA BOOKER / KEITH JARRETT RICHARD GEORGES / SAFIYA SINCLAIR / ISABELLE BAAFI RAYMOND ANTROBUS / ANTHONY VAHNI CAPILDEO KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF / COURTTIA NEWLAND COURTNEY CONRAD / MUNI PILGRIM / DZIFA BENSON SHANNON SMITH-MEEKINGS / ANTHONY JOSEPH CASEY BAILEY / SALENA GODDEN KARIM KAMAR ON PIANO / HOSTED BY LEONE ROSS Raising funds to support the Jamaican Official Disaster Relief & Recovery Fund and Food for the Poor Jamaica's Hurricane Melissa Relief Fund. All donations will be split equally between these funds, and any additional organisations added. OUT SPOKEN PRESS ONLINE / DONATION TICKETS 7-9PM UK / 2-4PM EST melissafundraiser.eventbrite.co.uk
November 4, 2025 at 3:54 PM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
With the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, we’re hosting an online event to raise funds to help those affected

Please join us Weds 19 Nov 7pm UK/2pm EST to hear from stellar poets who’ll share their work & offer some insight into the situation on the ground

melissafundraiser.eventbrite.co.uk
POETS READ FOR HURRICANE MELISSA RELIEF FUNDRAISER WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2025 INTRODUCTION BY AKALA ROGER ROBINSON / MALIKA BOOKER / KEITH JARRETT RICHARD GEORGES / SAFIYA SINCLAIR / ISABELLE BAAFI RAYMOND ANTROBUS ANTHONY VAHNI CAPILDEO KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF / COURTTIA NEWLAND COURTNEY CONRAD / MUNI PILGRIM / DZIFA BENSON SHANNON SMITH-MEEKINGS / ANTHONY JOSEPH CASEY BAILEY / SALENA GODDEN KARIM KAMAR ON PIANO / HOSTED BY LEONE ROSS Raising funds to support the Jamaican Official Disaster Relief & Recovery Fund and Food for the Poor Jamaica's Hurricane Melissa Relief Fund. All donations will be split equally between these funds, and any additional organisations added. OUT SPOKEN PRESS ONLINE / DONATION TICKETS 7-9PM UK / 2-4PM EST melissafundraiser.eventbrite.co.uk
November 4, 2025 at 4:32 PM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
We’re delighted to share with you the cover for LAMPING WILD RABBITS, the debut collection by @simonmaddrell.bsky.social forthcoming 12 February 2026.

PRE-ORDERS are up now / outspokenldn.com/rabbits
Cover of lamping wild rabbits by Simon Maddrell: title in off white block condensed sans serif caps, over a sketched black rabbit, on blue In Simon Maddrell's wide and bracing world, childhood orbits the voice of a distant and sometimes dangerous parent. Memories of sex parties, dead friends and estranged lovers straddle the spaces between feeling and thought, loss and fatalism. lamping wild rabbits is a brave and expansive multiverse, exploring sexuality, queer desire, memory recall and testimony. With poems that pay homage to the late Derek Jarman, to verses which situate themselves in and around the Isle of Man, exploring Britain's colonial presence through the subverted interplay of English and the Manx language. A poly-vocal and multifaceted debut which is unafraid to confront the shame and stigma of HIV, while never allowing the poems to lose shape or pace, altering the lens to bring the reader's attention to birdsong and the queer body in nature. Maddrell has achieved a distinct and totally convincing sound through the literary geography of lamping wild rabbits, one that gives the impression it's been everywhere and returned because it survived.
November 3, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
byleaveswelive.bsky.social
The Scotsman's Poem of the Week

'Scene 4. Lisa Simpson Interrogates the Untranslatability of the Joke' by Juana Adcock.
October 28, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
londonreviewbookshop.co.uk
On Sunday, the Forward Prize winners will be revealed!

In the run-up to the announcement, we’re exploring some of the books nominated in the Best Collection category: first up, Juana Adcock on how she wrote I SUGAR THE BONES: lrb.me/098c4c

@forwardprizes.bsky.social @outspokenpress.bsky.social
October 21, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
middleeasteye-rss.bsky.social
Israeli forces arrest four Palestinians in occupied West Bank Raids, one injured by gunfire - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-forces-arrest-four-palestinians-occupied-west-bank-raids-one
Israeli forces arrest four Palestinians in occupied West Bank Raids, one injured by gunfire
<article data-history-node-id="430306" about="https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-forces-arrest-four-palestinians-occupied-west-bank-raids-one" class="live-blog-update default clearfix"> <h2> <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-forces-arrest-four-palestinians-occupied-west-bank-raids-one" rel="bookmark"> <span class="field field-title">Israeli forces arrest four Palestinians in occupied West Bank Raids, one injured by gunfire</span> </a> </h2> <div class="content"> <div class="field field-field-text"><p style="margin-bottom:11px">Israeli forces carried out multiple raids across the occupied West Bank&nbsp;on Friday dawn, arresting four Palestinian youths in separate incidents in Nablus and Tulkarm.</p> <p>In Nablus, soldiers infiltrated al-Makhfiyya neighbourhood, followed by the entry of military vehicles. They raided a home and fired live bullets inside, injuring Ehab Abu Rayala in the leg before arresting him. A second young man was also detained during the operation, according to the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa).</p> <p>Meanwhile, in the town of Anabta, east of Tulkarm, Israeli forces arrested Ahmad Saif Fuqaha and Fares Ayman Najjar after storming their homes.</p> <p>These arrests come amid ongoing Israeli military operations and heightened tensions across the occupied West Bank.</p> </div> </div> </article>
www.middleeasteye.net
October 17, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
workshops4gaza.bsky.social
The genocide is not over. Ceasefire is not liberation. Keep giving. chuffed.org/project/help...

“Donations for mutual aid groups dropped by 50% since the ceasefire announcement. Most of the bombing stopped but the genocide continues and Palestinians in Gaza are in dire need of material support.”
Donations for mutual aid groups dropped by 50% since the ceasefire announcement. Most of the bombing stopped but the genocide continues and Palestinians in Gaza are in dire need of material support. Donate today: https://chuffed.org/project/help-us-deliver-vital-aid-to-gaza-families-in-need
October 17, 2025 at 5:14 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
🌟 Huge congratulations to Fady Joudah, recipient of the 2025 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, awarded by the Academy of American Poets, for the most outstanding poetry published in the United States in the previous year for [...]
Black and white head shot of poet Fady Joudah, a man with stubble and a bald head. Banner at bottom reads: Fady Joudah, 2025 Winner, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize announcing The 2025 Recipients of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the James Laughlin Award academy of american poets
October 17, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
noemipress.bsky.social
Submissions are still open for the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize! Get your manuscript in by Wednesday October 15th!
outspokenpress.bsky.social Out-Spoken Press @outspokenpress.bsky.social · Oct 13
👀 3 DAYS LEFT! Deadline for entries: end of this Wednesday 15 October 👀

$2000
US publication with @noemipress.bsky.social
UK publication with Out-Spoken Press

Full info & entries >> noemipress.submittable.com
October 13, 2025 at 5:05 PM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
‘An alarmingly accomplished debut. A long way now from traditional elegy […] off-kilter and riveting: one dare not look away.’ —Fiona Benson

✨ It's publication week for Madeleine Kruhly's To my father, now dead in room 318 ✨

Out on Thurs > outspokenldn.com/shop/room318
‘An alarmingly accomplished debut. A long way now from traditional elegy, Kruhly’s poems speak of nourishment and squalor, palliative care and dirty linen, tenderness and harm. Their unnerving domestic noire is both off-kilter and riveting: one dare not look away.’ —Fiona Benson Cover of To my father, now dead in room 318 by Madeleine Kruhly. An anatomical heart in black on a textured beige background
October 13, 2025 at 8:40 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
👀 3 DAYS LEFT! Deadline for entries: end of this Wednesday 15 October 👀

$2000
US publication with @noemipress.bsky.social
UK publication with Out-Spoken Press

Full info & entries >> noemipress.submittable.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:09 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Big news. Big. Huge. 🌝

Delighted that Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2025

🙏 to the judging panel & congratulations to all shortlisted poets. We hope this recognition can bring her work to more UK readers 🙏
TS Eliot Prize 2025 shortlisted collections: Gillian Allnutt Lode Bloodaxe Books Isabelle Baafi Chaotic Good Faber & Faber Catherine-Esther Cowie Heirloom Carcanet Press Paul Farley When it Rained for a Million Years Picador Poetry Vona Groarke Infinity Pool The Gallery Press Sarah Howe Foretokens Chatto Poetry Nick Makoha The New Carthaginians Penguin Books Tom Paulin Namanlagh Faber & Faber Natalie Shapero Stay Dead Out-Spoken Press Karen Solie Wellwater Picador Poetry Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2025 - Natalie Shapero, Stay Dead
October 6, 2025 at 9:20 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
HUGE congratulations to Natalie Shapero on the shortlisting of STAY DEAD for this year’s @tseliotprize.bsky.social !!!

🏜️📺💙
tseliotprize.bsky.social T. S. Eliot Prize @tseliotprize.bsky.social · Oct 6
We are thrilled to be able to reveal this year's T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist!
Our judges have chosen ten books "of great range, suggestiveness and power; from Entebbe to Manitoba... there is something here for everyone."

Find out more now: tseliot.com/prize/news/
October 6, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Out-Spoken Press
tseliotprize.bsky.social
We are thrilled to be able to reveal this year's T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist!
Our judges have chosen ten books "of great range, suggestiveness and power; from Entebbe to Manitoba... there is something here for everyone."

Find out more now: tseliot.com/prize/news/
October 6, 2025 at 8:06 AM
outspokenpress.bsky.social
Review of our September title, STAY DEAD by Natalie Shapero, in LARB

“Shapero’s mordant humor and intellectual agility throw a challenge to the reader: In contemporary life, are we dead or alive? Could we be both, or in between?”

>> lareviewofbooks.org/article/coug...
Los Angeles LA ReviewofBoks RB Cough Up the Pill David Schurman Wallace reviews Natalie Shapero's new collection "Stay Dead." By David Schurman Wallace • September 9, 2025 POETRY 08:30 Los Angeles In all of her books, Shapero's strength comes through her thinking on the page. Without being rote, she is careful to develop the thread of an idea from each sentence to the next. Reading her work, it becomes clear how comfortable some contemporary poets have become with "leaps" that are more like abysses, relying on the reader to assume that there is a hidden connection that may not really exist. In Stay Dead, the connections tend to stay tight, working the starting idea of the poem for more material, and are less likely to digress into unusual pockets of fact or language that made some of her earlier work lighter, if still rich. Humor remains, but the speech is starker-life or death, or death and then life again. Varied and surprising as they are, there is something bracing about the negativity of the poems in Stay Dead. They are uncompromising in their refusal of easy answers, the little lift that comes from appealing to love (or some other "basic human emotion") at the end of the poem. An intriguing suggestion comes in one of the epigraphs between sections, courtesy of Monet: "I FIND MYSELF DISGUSTED BY MY PROFESSION." Fatigued by experience, fatigued by the speaking voice, the desire to lose oneself can also register as a dissent against poetry's platitudes, which might make a career if you're lucky, but which don't seem to live up to the world's despair. lareviewofbooks.org
October 3, 2025 at 6:31 AM