Posts By: Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
National Writing Day: Poetry School Creative Director Julia Bird On Making a Living as a Poet
Last week, I was on leave from The Poetry School. I work here for three days a week, but the other 40% of my working life is filled with freelance projects. Of those freelance projects, most are run through my own company, Jaybird Live Literature, which specialises in putting poets on stage in – to…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
CAMPUS Pamphlet: ‘all that’s ever happened’
Make room on your digital bookshelves for the latest in our series of flicky PDF pamphlets, a series in which we celebrate the talents of the students taking place in our courses and projects. The New North Poets are a group of talented new writers who have come to the Poetry School via New Writing…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Paterson: A New Poetry Film, And A Competition
The Poetry School and Soda Pictures are delighted to announce a new poetry competition to mark the release of Paterson – a new film with poetry at its heart (in cinemas 25 November). Set in Paterson, New Jersey, Adam Driver (Girls / Star Wars) plays a small-town bus driver and poet. Every day, Paterson adheres…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Re-Mixed Borders
Re-Mixed Borders Poet? Lover of flowers and / or vegetables? Want some poet-in-residence training? Read on, we have an opportunity for you! Last year, the Poetry School and London Parks and Gardens Trust teamed up for a poet-in-residence training scheme centred on London’s Gardens. We called the scheme ‘Mixed Borders’. Julia Bird from the Poetry…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)The T S Eliot Prize – some deep reading
Tonight sees the announcement of the winner of the T S Eliot Prize, a poetry prize that draws speculation, chatter and discussion towards it like pins to a magnet. Yesterday, John Greening led a brilliant discussion event for us at Southbank Centre, cogently summing up all ten of the shortlisted collections and shepherding some great…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Digital Poet in Residence Opportunity
We’re pretty hot on the digital poetry residency at the Poetry School – CAMPUS has played host to nearly a dozen poets now, each of them bringing their own distinct take to what a writer with all the resources of the internet at the end of a mouse can do for an audience. We are…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)The Complete Works Poetry – call for submissions
An update from our friends at The Complete Works … The Complete Works Poetry (TCW 3) Deadline: February 14th, 2016 Are you a Black or Asian poet at the stage where you are committed to producing a full-length collection? Would you benefit from a tailored programme of support and career development? Funded by Arts Council England…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Primers Announcement!
The manuscripts are dog-eared and the Judges dog-tired, but we are now delighted to be able to make the final Judges’ announcement in our Primers publishing and mentoring scheme. From the origianal submissions of about 350 poets, the four writers who we are going to take forward to publication with Nine Arches Press are ……
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
A New Director for the Poetry School – Update
Keen observers of the Poetry School’s news reports will have noted that we have not yet announced a new Director for the organisation. Ollie Dawson, our previous Director, has now moved to his new job, and the route to find his successor is one we’re taking slowly and carefully. Board, staff and tutor representatives are…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff) Primers Shortlist Announced!
This July, we set up a virtual in-tray and invited submissions to a new publishing and mentoring programme in association with Nine Arches Press. Our Primers scheme will find three new poets whose work we’d like to foster, publish and promote. 2,316 poems later, Judges Jane Commane and Kathryn Maris are delighted to announce the…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)CAMPUS Pamphlets: ‘Mixed Borders’
This giant marrow of a flicky book is the latest in our series of CAMPUS pamphlets, and has sprung from the green fingers of our Mixed Borders poets. In early summer this year, we collaborated with the London Parks and Gardens Trust to put sixteen poets in sixteen of the gardens taking part in London…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Routes Poets Publish
This beautiful object is a pamphlet created by students from last year’s Routes into Poetry course, Tamar Yoseloff’s regular nuts and bolts craft class for beginners. The pamphlet contains work by Ruth Steadman, Jonathan Hart, Tom Clark, Jess Murrain, Clare Whittle, Leonardo Boix, Stef Bottinelli, Barbara Dillon, Anjila Sinha, Paul Lee-Maynard, Analia Padin and Jenni…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Master Your Manuscript
A special offer, a special offer! This poetry manuscript wrangling course is open to everyone, but for the under 30s, it’s half price. That’s because we know it’s Gregory submission time coming up, and we’d like to help out. Here are the course details … Winning Ways to Make the Shortlist Tutor: Saradha Soobrayen Day…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Finding a little STEAM space…
And another ‘Lo and Behold!’ project comes to fruition – this one’s a flicky book CAMPUS pamphlet recording the poetic conversations and collaborations between Caleb Parkin and his associates. Riled by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan’s commentary on the place of the arts in education, his group of artists and scientists started asking themselves – using…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)CAMPUS Pamphlets: ‘BLOOMSOUND’
‘Would you like another flicky book?’ Yes I said yes. Here you are then, this latest CAMPUS Pamphlet published on Bloomsday, the date that James Joyce’s Ulysses take place. Last year, Chris McCabe ran a 3 term course for us, spending the Autumn reading Ulysses, the Spring writing new poems in response and the Summer…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Review the 2015 Forward Prize Shortlists!
CAMPUS wants Reviews! The shortlists for the 2015 Forward Prizes have just been announced! Congratulations to all poets and publishers on the list – you can read all the details here: http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/about/ This year, the Poetry School will be working closely with the Forward Arts Foundation on a series of events and activities encouraging close engagement…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Mixed Borders: bedding in
A few more reports from our Mixed Borders garden poets. The different residencies are starting to take shape now, as people learn more about their gardens and the visitors who are likely to attend during the Open Gardens Squares Weekend on 13-14 June. Some gardens will have visitors numbering in the thousands, some just a…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)CAMPUS Pamphlet: ‘Interventions’ by Ian Duhig
A new publication for your digital shelves, arising from our Lo and Behold! scheme. We are delighted that Ian Duhig, who worked on a L&B-funded project with Wordquake, Sewerby Hall and Bridlington Poetry Festival, is publishing Interventions as a CAMPUS pamphlet with us. Ian created a series of poetry interventions at Sewerby Hall in response…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Mixed Borders: first shoots
The project progress / plant growing analogies are proving impossible to resist when titling these reports from our Mixed Borders project. There will only be more terrible gardening double talk to come, I do apologise in advance … Since we were all matched with our gardens, the members of Mixed Borders have been paying their…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Mixed Borders: planting the seeds
The Poetry School and the London Parks and Gardens Trust have hybridised! Between now and London Open Gardens Weekend (13-14 June 2015), seventeen poets (including two members of the Poetry School staff) will be running mini-residencies in some of the London gardens that take part in the annual LPGT scheme. There are city gardens and graveyards,…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Lo and Behold! – the first report
At the beginning of the year, we put out a call to poets and artists to surprise us with innovative poetry promoting ideas. Five of them did … and we were able to fund each of them with £750 to get their projects off the ground. Here’s how they’re getting on… Alistair Cartwright /…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Silent Spells: poems from our Manchester Museum project
Last year, the Poetry School dispatched a group of poets, led by Helen Mort, to the Manchester Museum and let them explore its endless curiosities – whale skeletons, hunched tigers and delicate paper birds – guided by the wisdom of Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes, who introduced some of the Museum’s rarest objects and…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff) CAMPUS Pamphlet: ‘Silent Spells’
Last year, the Poetry School dispatched a group of poets, led by Helen Mort, to the Manchester Museum and let them explore its endless curiosities – whale skeletons, hunched tigers and delicate paper birds – guided by the wisdom of Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes, who introduced some of the Museum’s rarest objects and…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff) Lo and Behold! It’s our new micro-commissions…
Last year, the Poetry School launched ‘Lo and Behold!’ – a fund to support innovative poetry creation and promotion projects. From more than 150 submissions, five projects have just been selected and are about to start work. ‘Lo and Behold!’ was designed to fund projects that explore new ways of creating or promoting poetry –…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
‘The Poetry of Money’
Check down the back of your sofa for coins, what do you find? Coppers, shrapnel, cents, francs and thrupenny bits? Your handful of change could be the basis for a handful of new poems – The Poetry of Money is a forthcoming workshop with Claire Crowther. Claire is the current poet in residence at the…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)