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Poetry School Books of the Year 2017
What were your top five poetry books of the year? What about top one hundred? Despite a rumour to the contrary… this year has been an alarmingly thick one for poetry. Stupefyingly thick. Not simply coats-the-back-of-a-spoon thick, but thick-enough-to-stand-up-in-a-straw thick, cutting-off-oxygen-flow-thick, a year so thick with great poetry you could re-mortar Dame Mary Archer’s 1683 residence, The Old Vicarage…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Poetry School Christmas Sale – 25% Off Selected Courses!
Treat yourself or a friend with 25% off a selection of our Spring short courses in Manchester, Exeter, Bristol and London. Just use the code PUDDING at the checkout stage online to receive your discount! ❄ Digital Poetry with Maya Chowdhry (Manchester) – Was £90, Now £67.50 🎁 The Poetry of Rubbish with John Wedgwood…
Poetry School
‘Letting Your Avant-Garde Down’ – An Interview with Caleb Parkin
Ahead of his new course in Bristol, Letting Your Avant-Garde Down, we spoke to this year’s National Poetry Competition second prize winner Caleb Parkin. Ali Lewis: Hi Caleb! You’re running a new five-week course with us called Letting Your Avant-Garde Down. Can you tell us a bit about it? Caleb Parkin: The term ‘avant-garde’ is a…
Ali Lewis
‘The Emptiness of Things’
I pour you into notebooks, stacking them on my nightstand next to the clock, candle, matches– hoping the emptiness of things will rub off on you. Ripping out pages, I burn them one by one, only to discover you’ve settled in corners and on dishes and found your way into the spines of books. Across…
Jen Smat
‘The Park’
In matching green anoraks, rain or shine, they walk here every morning, she a little taller than he, leaning on his arm, three times clockwise round the park, keeping themselves to themselves, keeping to the path by the railings where once they saw a gang of young offenders plant daffodils; admire the clumps of…
Margot Myers
How I Did It: Michael Marks Award Special – Alyson Hallett on ‘crossing the sound’
Ahead of the Awards ceremony on Thursday 12th December, The Poetry School has asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets to discuss the writing process behind a poem from their award-nominated work. So far, Theophilus Kwek, Charlotte Wetton, Phoebe Stuckes and Omikemi Natacha Bryan have talked about their poems. In today’s final instalment –…
Alyson Hallett
How I Did It: Michael Marks Award Special – Omikemi Natacha Bryan on ‘Salt’
Ahead of the Awards ceremony on Thursday 12th December, The Poetry School has asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets to discuss the writing process behind a poem from their award-nominated work. So far, Theophilus Kwek, Charlotte Wetton, and Phoebe Stuckes have talked about their poems; today, Omikemi…
Omikemi Natacha Bryan
The Poetry of Rubbish: Interview with John Wedgwood Clarke
Next term, John Wedgwood Clarke will be teaching The Poetry of Rubbish, a five-session course in Exeter. Harriet David, an Oxford masters student who spent a week researching at The Poetry School, spoke to John about the course. Harriet: Hi John. You spent two years as poet in residence at two Yorkshire rubbish sites;…
Harriet David
‘Ice Storm’
Shuffling to the bus stop with the boyfriend who’d cut his visit short, cracked plastic wheels of his cheap suitcase juddering on the ice, I clutched at his coat sleeve and missed. Chin grazed, that deep-freeze smell up my nose, gloveless hands stinging. Close up: thousands of bubbles, suspended in ice. Beneath the cloudy layers,…
Nadia Arbach
How I Did It: Michael Marks Award Special – Phoebe Stuckes on ‘Mad Chicks Cool’
Ahead of the Awards ceremony on Thursday 12th December, The Poetry School has asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets to discuss the writing process behind a poem from their award-nominated work. So far, Theophilus Kwek and Charlotte Wetton have talked about their poems; today, Phoebe Stuckes shares the inspiration behind…
Phoebe Stuckes
On Writing Your Body, Outside In
What a strange thing it is to inhabit this gummy, flexible, porous, resilient, terrifying, exhilarating vessel from which we have no escape. Take a deep breath. Four seconds in (count them), and four seconds out (count them). What a different thing it is to purposefully concentrate on the one act we’ve done continuously since birth,…
Khairani Barokka
How I Did It: Michael Marks Award Special – Charlotte Wetton on ‘The Archivist’s House’
Ahead of the Awards ceremony on Thursday 12th December, The Poetry School has asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets to discuss the writing process behind a poem from their award-nominated work. Yesterday, Theophilus Kwek wrote about his poem, ‘The Crossing’; today, Charlotte Wetton talks us through her poem ‘The Archivist’s…
Charlotte Wetton
Review: ‘Bear’ by Chrissy Williams
An enormous bear with piercing yellow eyes fills the cover of Chrissy Williams’ first full-length collection; stare for long enough and its neutral expression seems to shift from challenging to friendly to curious to sad, and back. The bear appears again in the opening poem – ‘Bear of the Artist’ – cementing its symbolic significance…
Lucy Winrow
How I Did It: Michael Marks Award Special – Theophilus Kwek on ‘The Crossing’
Ahead of the Awards ceremony on Thursday 12th December, The Poetry School has asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets to discuss the writing process behind a poem from their award-nominated work. First in the series, Theophilus Kwek writes about his poem, ‘The Crossing’. Easter 2015. I am walking with…
Theophilus Kwek
Sarala Estruch, Romalyn Ante and Aviva Dautch Selected for Primers Vol 3
Congratulations to Romalyn Ante, Sarala Estruch and Aviva Dautch, who have been selected for this year’s Primers! Each poet will receive mentoring from Hannah Lowe, editorial support from Jane Commane, and publication in Primers Volume Three with Nine Arches Press! Nine Arches editor and Primers judge, Jane Commane said: “Huge congratulations to our three finalists, and…
Poetry School
Risking forms
One of the best things that a poem can do is that it can unsettle you. It may be a certain strangeness to do with its form or the voice, for instance, that keeps you thinking about what it says. Take, for instance, the creative decision Abigail Parry made, to begin her poem ‘Arterial’ (which…
Jennifer Wong
‘asana’
forward fold rolling down each vertebrae the top of the duvet until i’m a penknife or a nutcracker. swing elbows swing head. ensure the release. massage the belly by squeezing it on the thighs good for the guts. a gutsy move this one it makes the hamstrings shriek. a most decisive vulnerability. shift weight to…
Flo Reynolds
Review: ‘This Is Not a Rescue’ by Emily Blewitt
If Jane Austen was a modern Welsh poet, her name would be Emily Blewitt. This Is Not a Rescue (Seren) is an easy mix of dark and light, scooping its inspiration from the years between girlhood to marriage in Wales. These are old-fashioned yet ageless themes and Blewitt draws us in with her keen eye for…
Maria Apichella
The Shadow of Violence
One Friday night, when I was fifteen, I got into a fight. More accurately: I bravely stood-up for a loudmouth friend and then bravely lay in the grass, while five men kicked my head in. This was nothing unusual for my mid-teens (or indeed my mid-twenties). The only difference being that this time I limped-off…
Mark Pajak
Beyond the Self and Writing What You Don’t Know
‘Write what you know’ is the advice often given to new writers, and it’s true that our stories, or versions of the stories that haunt us, are the starting point for much of our writing. If you are not Karl Ove Knausgaard, however, you may tire of your life story and yearn to transcend the limits…
Shazea Quraishi ‘Half-empty’ by Romalyn Ante – Primers Shortlist 2017
‘The Philippines must be half-empty; you’re all here running the NHS’ – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Drug: Migrationazoline (available in full or half-empty bottles) Indications: ____– prophylaxis of parents who nag like masonry drills, ______saying they did not send you to college ______to be a health-centre volunteer ____– ulcers on the lips for eating…
romalyn ante ‘Baby’ by Amelia Loulli – Primers Shortlist 2017
Most people drown without _______making a noise or splashing. See me here Baby, watch me _______lying out plank, below the surface, all that stillness, all that _______peace, see how long I can breathe down here alone. You must _______trust me, I am your mother after all, don’t think about the firefighter who _______lies to the…
Amelia Loulli
‘A curious, messy business, fraught with failure’: Poetry and Science
Our lives are threaded through with science – from the way our cars convert petrol into energy to how food changes form when cooked at different temperatures (runny or hard-boiled eggs, anyone?). I mean, isn’t the Great British Bake Off really a science show involving a lot of cake? Scientists often use languages and vocabularies…
Tania Hershman
Review: ‘Joy’ by Sasha Dugdale
Sometimes you read a work that is so clearly deserving of the accolades it’s received that it restores your faith in things. Sasha Dugdale’s ‘Joy’ – the title-piece of this, her fourth collection from Carcanet – is such a work, having won the 2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and rightly so. A playwright…
Humphrey Astley ‘To The Wounded Among Us*’ by Sarala Estruch – Primers Shortlist 2017
But everyone is wounded a little. What are hearts but purple, pumping wounds? What are we but hearts travelling in skin suits? Today we are tired of listening. This morning we woke with our ears full, cochleae still reverberating with gunshot and the bombs we detonated yesterday in yet another failed coup to colonise…
Sarala Estruch