We are absolutely thrilled to bring you our annual report for 2024-25! In this digest, we summarize some of the amazing things we did and achieved from April 2024-April 2025, and the impact that had.
Take a look…
News & Events
Introducing: The Write Space!
This month, we’re thrilled to introduce The Write Space! Come along to the very first session on Friday 17 January at 1.30pm
What is it?
From 2025, Friday opening hours at the Library are making way for Write Space, a new pop-up place for you to work on your creative writing projects in the company of other local writers. For two hours every other Friday, come and write with us in a friendly low-key environment.
When and where is it?
1.30-3.30pm Every other Friday, January-March 2025 (and hopefully beyond!) at the event space at the Community Works, 21 Park End Street.
Who is it for?
Writing can be a lonely business and sometimes it can be hard to protect time for yourself to write when life weighs in. Write Space is for anyone writing creatively (poetry, fiction, drama, creative non-fiction…) who would value this space.
Write Space is facilitated by OPL volunteers.
How do I take part?
We’re asking everyone to pre-book during our pilot phase so we can plan well and make sure there’s plenty of space for all.
Find out more and save your spot by registering at: writespace.eventbrite.co.uk
Christmas closure times and new opening hours from 2025
We’ve got some news about our library opening hours! Starting January 2025, the library will no longer be open on Fridays for general browsing and borrowing. We’re consolidating our opening hours to better serve you and make the most of our volunteer capacity, so from January onwards, we will only be open on Saturdays. We will also be closed for the Christmas period from 15th December until 11 January.
Here’s what you need to know:
Last Friday & Saturday Opening Days: December 13th (Friday) & December 14th (Saturday)
Reopening Date: January 11th, 2025 (Saturday)
Thank you for your understanding and continued support. We look forward to seeing you on Saturdays in the new year, and wish all our borrowers a very happy and cosy festive period!
We need your help for Oxford Di-Verse Poetry Festival!
We are calling for volunteers to help out at Oxford Di-Verse Poetry Festival on 16 and 17 November!
Oxford Di-Verse Poetry Festival is a grassroots, cooperative festival is organized by Oxford Poetry Library, Butcher’s Dog Poetry Magazine, Reconnecting Rainbows Press, St. Columba’s United Reformed Church, and Exeter College. We will be curating two days of cross-cultural celebration and artistic creativity, to promote equality, diversity, inclusion and greater unity.
But we can only make it happen with your help! In exchange for free access to the festival, volunteers will help with:
- assisting with checking tickets
- setting up and packing down the spaces
- general stewarding and being on hand to support the smooth running of the events and workshops
- being helping hands throughout the weekend!
If you’d like to be a part of making this exciting initiative happen, we would love to hear from you! Please email oxfordpoetrylibrary@gmail.com with:
- your name
- your phone number
- your email address
And we will follow up with you with more details. We look forward to hearing from you!
Our Annual Report is here!
We are absolutely thrilled to bring you our annual report for 2023-24! In this digest, we share what we did and achieved from April 2023-April 2024, and the impact that had. Take a look…
TASTE competition exhibition: opening!
Oxford Poetry Library presents a display of poems on the sensory theme of TASTE at The Community Works, now ready to view from 27 August until the end of September 2024!
Curated by OPL volunteers, TASTE: a feast of poems is supported by Makespace Oxford and features the three winning and seven commended poems from the OPL’s poetry competition held earlier this year.
In total, there are twelve panels, with two focusing on the background to the competition, the role of the library and Oxford Hub, prize sponsors, a list of poems and poets and information about the three judges, Alan Buckley, Vanessa Lampert and Jenny Lewis.
The display is open to all, with visitors to Lula’s Ethiopian Cuisine (which shares The Community Works) and OPL’s many poetry events and workshops also able to benefit from this feast of poems.
TASTE – a feast of poems
Curated by OPL volunteers: Clara-Marie, Jacquie and Ollie
The Community Works
21 Park End Street
Oxford OX1 1HU
OPL is open from 12-3pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and for specific events and workshops.
Additionally, the display can be viewed during the opening hours of Lula’s Ethiopian Cuisine, Tuesdays – Saturdays.
TASTE poetry competition: winners announcement
Following a wonderful evening of poetry at our TASTE competition celebration event on 10 May, we are thrilled to announce the final results of our first competition.
The First Prize goes to Smriti Verma for her poem My favourite thing to write about. Second Prize is awarded to Estelle Price for A last meal with my father and Third Prize winner is John Gallas, with ábhar blas (a matter of taste sonnet).
To read the winning poems and the judges’ comments, click here.
Commenting on the competition overall, the judges said “The poems that made it to our combined shortlist of twenty all managed to perform that essential trick of making a bridge between the personal and the universal, of communicating something that belongs to both the world of the poem’s speaker, and the world of its reader.
‘Our choice of first, second and third was unanimous….we spent time not only discussing each poem, but also – crucially – reading each poem out loud. It was through this deeply enjoyable process that we were able to establish clearly which poems startled us, engaged us, and above all moved us the most.”
Seven poems were commended by the judges, submitted by poets Leo Boix, Marka Rifat, Michael Brown, Mariah Whelan, Andrew George, Siobhan Ward, and Dulcie Shaw.
As a result of receiving so many high-quality entries, the judges also decided to add a list of impressive runners-up to the competition. Congratulations to each of of our winners, commended poets, and runners-up on their delicious interpretations of our theme, Taste.
Winning poems
First place: Smriti Verma for ‘My favourite thing to write about’
Second place: Estelle Price for ‘A last meal with my father’
Third place: John Gallas for ‘ábhar blas (a matter of taste sonnet)’
Commended poems
Leo Boix, ‘A Latin American Sonnet XCV’
Michael Brown, ‘Visiting Hour’
Andrew George, ‘The New Italian’
Marka Rifat, ‘Sweet harvest’
Dulcie Shaw, ‘Teenage Nostos’
Siobhan Ward, ‘Table Manners’
Mariah Whelan, ‘Hunger’
Runners-up
Hanne Busck-Nielsen, ‘Our table’
Charlotte Carnegie, ‘A spoonful of sugar’
Cat Cochrane, ‘Sensed’
Bronte Cooke, ‘If the Virgin Mary came for the bank holiday’
Deborah Finding, ‘isn’t it beautiful?’
Miles Gibson, ‘Missed Calls’
Sarah James/Leavesley, ‘rum and raisin’
Jennifer A. McGowan, ‘Her Own Making’
Rency Jumaoas Raquid, ‘The Snail’
Jack Richardson, ‘Dry Goods’
You can read the winning poems and the judges’ comments on the individual winning poems here.
We would of course like to say a huge thank you to our judges Alan Buckley, Vanessa Lampert and Jenny Lewis for dedicating their time, experience and sensitivity to reviewing over 200 poems we received for our first poetry competition. Many thanks also go to our prize sponsors Lula’s Ethiopian and Eritrean Restaurant, Oxford Poetry Library Patrons and Picturehouse Cinemas for helping us to reward our winners.
And thank you so much to all the fantastic poets who entered the competition, for the shortlisted poets who read their poems so brilliantly at our celebration evening and for those who couldn’t be there on the night but trusted the judges to read on their behalf.
What next?
The winning and commended poems are featured on the OPL website for all to read here and enjoy, and will also be displayed in the Poetry Library space over the summer – watch this space for details!
Taste Poetry Competition: Shortlist announcement
After receiving over 200 entries to our first ever competition, we are thrilled to announce the 20 shortlisted poems and poets selected by our judges Alan Buckley, Vanessa Lampert and Jenny Lewis.
In alphabetical order, they are as follows:
Leo Boix, ‘A Latin American Sonnet XCV’
Michael Brown, ‘Visiting Hour’
Hanne Busck-Nielsen, ‘Our table’
Charlotte Carnegie, ‘A spoonful of sugar’
Cat Cochrane, ‘Sensed’
Bronte Cooke, ‘If the Virgin Mary came for the bank holiday’
Deborah Finding, ‘isn’t it beautiful?’
John Gallas, ‘abhar blas (a matter of taste sonnet)’
Andrew George, ‘The New Italian’
M C A Gibson, ‘Missed Calls’
Sarah James/Leavesley, ‘rum and raisin’
Jennifer A. McGowan, ‘Her Own Making’
Estelle Price, ‘A last meal with my father’
Rency Jumaoas Raquid, ‘The Snail’
Jack Richardson, ‘Dry Goods’
Marka Rifat, ‘Sweet harvest’
Dulcie Shaw, ‘Teenage Nostos’
Smriti Verma, ‘My favourite thing to write about’
Siobhan Ward, ‘Table Manners’
Mariah Whelan, ‘Hunger’
Congratulations to all those shortlisted and thank you so much to everyone who entered the competition.
The final results of the competition will be announced at our awards evening on Friday 10 May. All shortlisted poets are invited to read their poems and the judges will give their feedback on the competition and the winners. Our fantastic prizes sponsored by Lula’s Ethiopian and Eritrean Restaurant, Picturehouse Cinemas and OPL patrons will be presented on the night.
Join us to celebrate at an entertaining evening of delicious poems! All shortlisted poets are welcome to join us for free, but for everyone else, a limited number of tickets are available! Register your spot here!
Call for submissions for Drafting Table zine!
The Drafting Table crew are pleased to announce that we are making a zine featuring work from our poetry sessions! We will take submissions from our group attendees over the coming two months, and spend the winter compiling everything and having it printed ready for a spring launch 2024. We are particularly looking for work that has been brought to either the OPL or Gulp Fiction sessions and received feedback, and that has hopefully developed over time based on the insights of other attendees. Alternatively if you have written something as a response to a prompt at one of the sessions, and have taken the time to develop it into a full poem, this too would be ideal. We will also be reaching out for contributions from the esteemed and high-profile poets who have featured in our Gulp Fiction workshops, so hopefully you will be in good printed company! Please see below for guidelines and entry requirements:
- Deadline for submissions is October 2nd, 2023 at 12pm (noon).
- We can feature a max of one poem from each poet. You can submit up to three poems (in a single document), from which the editors will select one.
- For space reasons, poems must be 30 lines or fewer including line breaks.
- Poems must be your own and previously unpublished.
- There is no set theme. We encourage creative poetry that takes a risk, that shows craft, attention to detail and originality.
- Please type your submissions in a Google doc or Word file. No pdfs or scans of hand-written work please. (If you need to submit in other formats due to personal limitations please chat with a poetry library volunteer and we will try to be as flexible as possible.)
- Please submit your work to opldraftingtable@gmail.com with ‘SUBMISSION’ in the subject line. Include in the body of the email your full name or pen name, email address, and a short bio of up to 50 words.
- Your poem doesn’t have to be perfect! As editors we may request that a submission is re-drafted if we think it could use a little more work before it’s ready for publication.
- However, we cannot guarantee that every poet who submits will be included in this volume. This may be due to a number of factors, so please keep drafting your work and we will try to prioritise you for inclusion in the next volume.
- If you wish to withdraw your submission, or have any other queries, as always send an email to opldraftingtable@gmail.com.
Winter opening hours!
It’s been a magical year for us at Oxford Poetry Library, in our new home at The Community Works!
As 2022 draws to a close, here’s a note about our opening hours over the Christmas period… We will be open as usual on Friday 16 December and Saturday 17 December, and then CLOSED over Christmas. We will reopen to share poetry with you all from Friday 6 January 2023, and continuing our opening hours of 12pm-3pm on Fridays and Saturdays from then on.
We have TONS of really exciting events happening in January to get your 2023 off to a good start, so be sure to check out our listings here where we have workshops, events, and readings aplenty.
If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas present, why not give someone the gift of being an Oxford Poetry Library patron? For just the price of a cup of coffee every month, you can help us keep going strong through the new year. Find out more here.
We’ll see you in 2023!
