Rory Waterman
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rorywaterman.bsky.social
Rory Waterman
@rorywaterman.bsky.social
Poet, writer, prof of modern literature, leader of AHRC Lincolnshire Folk Tales project (2024-5). New poetry collection COME HERE TO THIS GATE (Carcanet, 2024). Co-editor of New Walk Editions. Views yours; likes/RTs=marriage proposals. OTBC🔰/COYP
That's five full stars in Loganland.
November 25, 2025 at 2:58 PM
The putdown of the reviewer, and publisher's toothless legal threat to News International (ha!), was, I suspect, designed solely to preserve the brand and to put people off commenting in ways they didn't like. Doyle was inconvenient, and an inconvenient woman no less, so they all just ignored her.
November 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Thanks. And me too. I've reviewed a couple previously, one not positively for the TLS (though the book was by a poet I have sometimes otherwise liked), and had none of this. But that was a long time ago, that poet was not an influencer-type commodity, and there were no 'remarkable coincidences'
November 23, 2025 at 12:58 PM
So use archive.is.
archive.is
November 23, 2025 at 12:43 PM
A lot of people should be ashamed, having behaved disgracefully.

Congratulations, @poetsarahdoyle.bsky.social. This shows immense character:

www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

I also wrote about this, for PNR:

www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/rema...

But read Sarah's if you only have time for one.
I was the other poet in the Len Pennie row: here’s my story
Sarah Doyle’s poem Laika won high praise but when she queried similarities to it with the poem Good Girl she was caught up in a storm of accusation, denial and online vitriol
www.thetimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 11:42 AM
TOMORROW (20 November), online, 7pm: MARK FORD and SEAN O'BRIEN launch their New Walk Editions pamphlets. Sign up below.

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
November 19, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Posted yesterday, and just sent to me by a friend. ‘That dog nonce “reviewer” from The Times’. This person is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, apparently, and has won a Scottish Book Trust Award. I’m not sure what ‘TERF’ has to do with any of this. Well, nothing, obviously.
November 13, 2025 at 12:37 PM
20 November (one week today), online, 7pm: MARK FORD and SEAN O'BRIEN launch their New Walk Editions pamphlets. Sign up below.

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
November 13, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Oh, congratulations!
November 10, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Rory Waterman
Ilse Pedler won first prize in our 2025 Open Competition, judged by Rory Waterman, with her poem, “After the calving”.
October 20, 2025 at 6:38 PM
'I asked, seventies style, if he’d seen anything interesting. He looked me up and down: ‘Not really’, he answered. ‘I did see the Duchess of Cambridge’, he went on. ‘That was interesting.’ I searched his expression for an ironic glimmer. All I could find, if I’m not mistaken, was a hint of spite.'
November 10, 2025 at 12:35 PM
What's not to love about this?
November 10, 2025 at 12:33 PM
I'm reading in OXFORD, 12 Nov (Wednesday) at 6.30pm. Please come!

www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/natio...
Rory Waterman and N S Thompson | Southbank Centre
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
November 9, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Choosing poems for a reading in Oxford next week. This starts a sequence in my most recent collection (www.carcanet.co.uk/978180017396...).
I worried it was too syrupy, but concluded it provided balance to other parts of the sequence & could survive in context. Here it is OUT of context.
November 7, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Thank you, Claire.
November 7, 2025 at 9:22 PM
I had one anyway and it was very nice.
November 7, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Sarah Doyle: grace, grit, and some very good poems that deserve your attention for the right reasons.
I have found this whole episode incredibly distressing and isolating, so I'm grateful to see Rory Waterman's analysis shine a light on both the poetry and the poison. Whatever your views, we need a more courteous and humane public discourse, from and for all parties. Please.
My comment, for @pnreview.bsky.social, on the Len Pennie & Sarah Doyle affair - or Canongagegate, as I like to think of it. Honourable mentions: @naush.bsky.social, @thetimes.com.

Feel free to share, to attack me with your little jelly pitchforks, or to ignore.

www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/rema...
November 7, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Thanks.
November 7, 2025 at 6:04 PM
We don't disagree - or, rather, I agree with Hulse as much as you seem to. I'm glad your review exists, & wish it hadn't then proven we inherit an invertebrate culture. I likely would've turned down the offer for the reasons expressed in my piece - & would've had no chance of finding what you found.
November 7, 2025 at 3:42 PM
*CanongaTegate, ffs.
November 7, 2025 at 3:26 PM
My comment, for @pnreview.bsky.social, on the Len Pennie & Sarah Doyle affair - or Canongagegate, as I like to think of it. Honourable mentions: @naush.bsky.social, @thetimes.com.

Feel free to share, to attack me with your little jelly pitchforks, or to ignore.

www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/rema...
PN Review Print and Online Poetry Magazine - Remarkable Coincidences - Rory Waterman - PN Review 286
One of the outstanding poetry journals of our time.
www.pnreview.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 2:43 PM
I'm leading a two-hour online workshop on writing sonnets (or, really, poems that meaningfully twist away from the expectations of the form) for The Poetry Business on Mon 12 January. Sign up below!

www.tickettailor.com/events/thepo...
Buy tickets – Online Workshop: “Sonnets: Playing Meaningfully with Expectations” with Rory Waterman – Zoom
Online Workshop: “Sonnets: Playing Meaningfully with Expectations” with Rory Waterman – Zoom, Mon 12 Jan 2026 - Sonnets: Playing Meaningfully with Expectations In this two-hour workshop, you'll unders...
www.tickettailor.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Attend the New Walk Editions online reading with Mark Ford and Sean O'Brien, 7pm on 20 November. It'll be excellent, I assure you.

us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: New Walk Editions launch: Sean O'Brien and Mark Ford. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
Join us for the launch of exceptional, surprising pamphlets by two of the finest and most highly acclaimed poets writing today. MARK FORD, The Morlocks: A Fantasia SEAN O'BRIEN, A la Carte The even...
us06web.zoom.us
November 4, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Rory Waterman
Tomorrow, please join Evan Jones online at 7pm for the launch of his new poetry collection Men of the Same Name!💻

The event will be hosted by Jim Johnstone and will feature reading and discussion.

Tickets cost £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book:🎟️
us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Men of the Same Name: Carcanet Online Launch. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
Please join us to celebrate the launch of Men of the Same Name by Evan Jones, hosted by Jim Johnstone. The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will show the text during readings so that you can read along. Men of the Same Name is satirical, elegiac and memorable, bringing together lost books, burned libraries, Goethe, the lives and deaths of Presocratic philosophers, Paris, statues of Niobe, patterns in history, war, displacement, the evils of ambition, and Pachynian tuna. What if, Jones asks, instead of using the ancient world as a metaphor for modern life, the poet uses modern life as a metaphor for the ancient world? Working in this way between allegory and reality, the book rethinks poetry’s changing relationships to politics and our historical moment. Registration for this online event will cost £2, redeemable against the cost of the book. You will receive the discount code and instructions for how to purchase the book in your confirmation email as well as during and after the event. Canadian poet Evan Jones [Ευριπίδης Ιωάννου] lives in Manchester. His first collection of poetry, Nothing Fell Today But Rain (2003), was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He co-edited Modern Canadian Poets (2010) and has since published Paralogues (2012) and Later Emperors (2020). His translation from the Modern Greek, The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems and Prose of C.P. Cavafy (2020), was a TLS Book of the Year. Jim Johnstone is a Canadian poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The King of Terrors (Coach House Books, 2023).
us02web.zoom.us
November 3, 2025 at 10:00 AM
MARK FORD and SEAN O'BRIEN launch their New Walk Editions pamphlets online, 20 November, 7pm UK time.
Book here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
October 25, 2025 at 6:08 PM