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Review: ‘Waitress in Fall’ by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, trans. Vala Thorodds
Waitress in Fall is a career-spanning collection of Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s work, comprising 30 years’ worth of poems, selected and translated by Vala Thorodds and published by Carcanet & Partus. These poems by Kristín†, taken from her seven collections and presented chronologically, follow the likes of Selima Hill and Eileen Myles in conveying the quieted desires,…
Maria Sledmere
Help Poetry School fund places for our talented students
Poetry School is dedicated to enabling everyone to take part in our courses. Some of our wonderful students need the help of our bursary scheme or concessions to participate. In order to ensure that we can support them in this way, we are aiming to raise funds committed to these poets… And you can help…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh Round-Up
Friday Aldeburgh is a lovely seaside town lined with little shops, bakeries and cafés. As one of the poets, I was lucky enough to stay at Elizabeth Court, the artists’ accommodation, which was entirely booked for the festival. How often do you run into poets in the corridor or meet them while making breakfast in…
Danne Jobin
Review: ‘I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE WENDING’ by Wayne Holloway-Smith
I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE WENDING (Test Centre) is a startingly imaginative non-linear collection of poems by Wayne Holloway-Smith. Published on unbound, unpaginated sheets in a box instead of a book, the page becomes a playground redrafting the boundaries of expectation. The curious title is taken from a misspelt line written by Holloway-Smith’s daughter, setting the…
Jade Cuttle
’25 minutes on the elliptical’
My body slowed in voluntary, wilful suspended animation / like thought / I am waiting / on the cross-trainer Window fly in front / you are dead / which is a kind of waiting Arms and legs snapping towards each other / like rows of teeth in a great big mouth Do…
Jasmine Chatfield
Come Back Early: Revisiting and Revising
This past year or so I’ve been moving house more than is usual. A combination of short-term jobs, travel, and parental flitting has meant that, since late last summer, I’ve had to recalibrate my thoughts about my possessions, my relationships with material objects and with (literal) baggage. Some former objets d’art, treasured through the years,…
Penny Boxall
Pub Chats: Seren
Pub Chats is back! After an extended hiatus, the Poetry School’s long-running series of interviews with indie publishers returns with a fresh round of innovative small presses. First to join us in our imaginary theatre pub somewhere in London’s docklands is Rosie Johns, Marketing and Communication Officer at Seren. Hello there! What are you drinking? Rosie: You…
Poetry School
Pub Chats: Holland Park Press
Pub Chats is back! After an extended hiatus, the Poetry School’s long-running series of interviews with indie publishers returns with a fresh round of innovative small presses. Joining us today in our imaginary theatre pub somewhere in London’s docklands is Bernadette Jansen op de Haar of Holland Park Press. Hello there! What are you drinking? Bernadette: A…
Poetry School
A Dweller on the Plains: the Poetry of Walking
I haven’t always loved walking. As a child, I saw it as an unnecessary distraction from reading. It was only when I lived in central London and could walk everywhere that I started to enjoy it as a mode of transport. I walked back home from events in the evening, noticing the vivid flashes of…
Rachel Piercey
Review: ‘Passport’ by Richie McCaffery
In his second collection, Passport, Richie McCaffery explores the realities faced by many international couples who live with the uncertainty of Brexit. The poems are taut with frustrated energy as the speaker, who it is clear from the poems is McCaffery himself, seeks a place to call home. McCaffery is British and his wife is from…
Maria Apichella
Review: ‘The Girl Who Forgets How To Walk’ by Kate Davis
A personal quest to re-learn how to walk through cherished, northern landscapes introduces a gifted new voice. Gathering fragments from memory, myth, archaeology and geology, Kate Davis’s debut is a nimble exploration of what it means not only to exist, but to persist. The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk feels to me incredibly timely….
Jake Morris-Campbell
Review: ‘support, support’ by Helen Charman
‘love other women / collaborate only with them’ writes Helen Charman in ‘Instructions for waking up in the morning’, the first poem of support, support (Offord Road Books). The pamphlet takes its title from Denise Riley’s ‘Affections Must Not’, and women’s voices – urgent, ebullient, sardonic – are important throughout. The opening poem acts as an…
Jenna Clake
Technicians of the Sacred: The Poem as a Magical Event
‘Magic is the very essence of it all. It’s spirit, the life force, that creative, inexplicable power which we all possess and seek to express in the world. How well we manage to do that is a totally individual matter.’ – Lucius Mattheisen In the contemplation of magical space, what emerges is just how…
Sascha Akhtar
New North Poets Mentoring Programme Open for Applications
The New North Poets mentoring programme is part of the Northern Writers’ Awards organised by New Writing North. The programme, devised and delivered by the Poetry School, and judged by Don Paterson, is open to poets who are yet to publish a full-length collection. Four winning poets will receive a structured package of support on the programme. This…
Poetry School
What Is a Poem?
Does a poem have to rhyme in order to be a poem? Does it have to have line breaks? Does it have to be about metaphysics or can it be about tin openers – can it be about both? Is a poem still a poem when it is ‘deliberately opaque’? What about if it’s been…
Chrissy Williams
Review: ‘American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin’ by Terrance Hayes
Tradition and fashion aside, what Terrance Hayes does with 14 lines, over and over, is what seems necessary: the focusing and finessing of a complex voice – by turns melancholy, crass, urbane, incensed – into a mode that keeps his train-of-thought moving while calling at every stop. Rhythm and momentum in poetry are not the…
Humphrey Astley
The Double-image of Poetry and Photography
Creative mediums are not indefinable. They have essential elements that mean they are not something else at root. But their practise is not best served by recourse to the ‘it is whatever you want it to be’ line of thinking. I mean, that’s fine, of course – people can think what they like – but…
sjfowler
What is Science Fiction Poetry?
Poetry often confines itself to the ‘real’ world, the world of nature or the city, relationships or the inner life. It is a counterpart to the novels of literary fiction which deal with these themes. But what about the themes covered by so-called genre fiction, speculation about the future, or life beyond the Earth? There…
Callie Gardner
Someone Else’s Shoes: Poetic Monologue
Poetry is escape. The bloke at the desk there, not moving at all, not even seeing us as we step into his room now, but staring into space, tapping perhaps his pen against his teeth, or leaning now to squint closely at a sheet of paper, alive with these squiggly, wriggly marks which contain all…
Jonathan Edwards
Danne Jobin Interviews Pascale Petit
Danne Jobin interviews Pascale Petit, winner of the 2018 RSL Ondaatje Prize and co-founder of the Poetry School, about rainforests, mothers and fathers, and trauma. Pascale Petit reads alongside co-founders Mimi Khalvati and Jane Duran at the celebratory event ‘21 Years of the Poetry School‘ at Poetry in Aldeburgh on Sunday 4th November. Danne Jobin: You…
Danne Jobin
Danne Jobin Interviews Richard Scott
Danne Jobin speaks with poet Richard Scott, author of Soho (Faber), about gay shame, the body, and openness. Danne Jobin and Richard Scott will read together at the Queer Studio event at Poetry in Aldeburgh on Saturday 3rd November, 17:30. Danne Jobin: David Halperin and Valerie Traub’s concept of gay shame has heavily influenced your work….
Danne Jobin
Course Quick Guide — Spring 2019
Face-to-Face Courses London Workshops: One and two day intensive classes The Light Room: Poetry & Photography’s Intersections with SJ Fowler Explore the light and dark of poems to develop new ways of seeing Come Back Early: Revisiting and Revising with Penny Boxall Find ways of turning a fresh pair of eyes on what we do….
Poetry School
Kostya Tsolákis Interviews Chrissy Williams
Ahead of her reading at Poetry in Aldeburgh (2nd – 4th November, book here!), Kostya Tsolákis talks to poet, tutor and comics editor Chrissy Williams. Kostya Tsolákis: You’ll be taking part in a couple of events at Poetry in Aldeburgh this year, reading with Suzannah Evans, Matt Howard and Josephine Corcoran. You’ll also…
Kostya Tsolákis
How I Did It: Eric Gregory Award — Victoria Adukwei Bulley on ‘What it Means’
Welcome to our Eric Gregory Award 2018 ‘How I Did It’ series. We asked the winners of this year’s awards to explain the process behind one of their award-winning poems. In this piece, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, author of Girl B, talks about ‘What it Means’. The Eric Gregory Awards will close for entries on the 31st of October,…
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Review: ‘The Republic of Motherhood’ by Liz Berry
The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto and Windus) is a pamphlet of poems about motherhood. And it’s by Liz Berry, which means that it is brilliant. The poems in this pamphlet celebrate and sing every aspect of early motherhood, in all of its tendernesses and darker sufferings. One thing I was struck by was a really effective balance…
Jonathan Edwards