The end of a residency

So it is now the end of my digital residency with the Poetry School and I am having trouble concluding. It was an exciting time for me to be involved, seeing CAMPUS grow in numbers, reading the fascinating blogposts by Julia Bird, Amy Key, Nia Davis, participating in the Live Q&A’s, pushing students of the Open Workshops group to experiment with their poems. It’s hard to conclude, because this is hardly an end, I will still be on CAMPUS and still partake in its activities.

However, in the interest of rounding things off, here are some new resolutions sparked by my residency:

1) I should spend more time writing poems, and less time organizing poetry events/projects. This is a tough one, as I love organizing things. However, doing the 100-poems-in-a-day challenge during my time here has unleashed some kind of inner writing-monster disrupting my best-laid-organizational-plans. The necessity to appease said monster and thus save the planet (probably), means that I should probably try and cut down on my activities…

2) Directly contradicting this, one of the branches of discussion that emerged from my poetic tourism blog was that there doesn’t seem to currently be an anthology of poetry about history (written by people who have not witnessed said history). Unless it’s poetry about WW1. I’m dreaming of such an anthology now, one that would highlight marginalised episodes from the past and not put so much focus on war. So many contemporary poets are writing intelligently about the past, it feels like something that would be fascinating to behold. I welcome any thoughts you have on the topic, from publishers that this might interest, to poets you think should be involved, to angles you’d like it to tackle. I’m toying with several ideas at the moment, including an Entente Cordiale type anthology (with English poets writing poems about French history and vice versa), or a whole series each one dedicated to a century. Hopefully Christmas will bring more thoughts to the table.

That’s it for me. What are your poetry resolutions for next year?

Claire Trévien is the Anglo-Breton author of the pamphlet Low-Tide Lottery (Salt), and The Shipwrecked House (Penned in the Margins), which is longlisted in this year’s Guardian First Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including the Forward Book of Poetry 2014 and Best British Poetry 2012. She edits Sabotage Reviews, co-edits Verse Kraken, and co-organizes Penning Perfumes.