There are so many wonderful American poets who have not achieved the fame (or notoriety) sufficient to carry their names or poems across the pond. Here are five such diamonds in the rough, selected for their energy, tenacity, and all-around fine work, that are worth keeping an eye on in the coming year.

You're old, but your ever-changing looks say otherwise, you're gorgeous - one could say you're addicted to plastic surgery; I've always said it's a bad habit. Metallic was never your colour. You've never really listened to me.

If you like to think of your poems as horses (as I do), this is anyone's race.

What makes a good poem? How the hell can I write one? And even if I did - what's the point!? All valid questions, particularly on National Po...

The seasons have long been a source of inspiration for poets and writers and there are plenty of verses about what's currently going on outside your w...

With the imminent release of The Dictator, Baron Cohen's despot comedy this new blog post is a new poem, begun on a flight to Khartoum last October, t...

It's World Poetry Day today, and what better way to celebrate than with a little extra lyricism in our lives? The pace of life in 2012 can make si...

Farrago Poetry started life as The Farrago Collective Press in my final year at college. By 1993 the collective part was no more, everyone else had scattered following graduation, the focus had switched to performances and I was putting on shows at Chats Palace in Homerton

This month, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella withdrew themselves from the TS Eliot Prize shortlist. Their reasoning? The funding behind the TS Eliot prize now comes from Aurum, a hedge-fund investment company, rather than the recently withdrawn Arts Council Funding that used to keep the Poetry Book Society afloat.