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Poems that won’t lie down and die, poems that may not have been seen for a while, that had something to say when they were written and are still saying it, in that fixed language poems enjoy. Keep Poems Alive International is one place to hear them again. Mavis Gulliver ventures on a bog path, but it’s words she is seeking. Rachel Bentham finds words for her sadness while looking out of a train window.

Catherine Graham uses her words to take us back into Newcastle’s history with a girl making clogs all week. It’s about connecting with aspects of her city that may be obscured through time, but inhabit the recognisable map of the city’s life.

Sometimes, poets link their work to that of other poets in the great tradition that poetry is. Here’s a remarkable example of this, in that it describes an early reading by Iain…