Blog
All of our Blog Posts
‘Ilex’ by Seán Hewitt – Resurgence Prize Winner
Distracting myself, waiting for news, I walked until I saw this white cluster of holly growing at the base of a tree, the stems yellowed, the angled clutch of leaves like a bleached coral, a pale antler, almost medieval, like a relic unearthing in the gloom of the wood. Later, still the baby would not…
Seán Hewitt
Primers Volume 3 Shortlist and Longlist Announced!
The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press are delighted to announce the shortlist and longlist for Primers Volume 3, a mentoring and publication scheme. After reading thousands of poems, judges Hannah Lowe and Jane Commane have selected ten manuscripts for the shortlist and nineteen manuscripts for the longlist. We’ll be publishing poems by all of…
Poetry School
Spring 2018 Course Quick Guide
Spring Term 2018 is now open for booking! We are delighted to open the booking period for the second term of our 20th anniversary year at the Poetry School. Feast your eyes on our forthcoming line-up of brilliant courses and workshops, and start planning your new year of poetry writing! Remember that new students get 15%…
Ali Lewis
Half-Ghazal (for Reneé)
“The word [Ghazal] is of Arabic origin and means ‘talking to women’ (women in purdah, with all that that implies)” – Mimi Khalvati in her Notes to The Meanest Flower I flinch inside as you corroborate my name, which is your name now. You spell it out over the phone to a call centre…
Edward Doegar
Review: ‘Swims’ by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s compelling ‘long poem taking many forms’ begins by defining the action ‘To Swim’: To give up. To disappear. To appear in Vanity Fair before breakfast. To afterwards destroy economy of Greece. A footnote tells us that the final sentence refers to Christine Lagard, Director of the IMF, describing her morning swim…
Andrew Jeffrey
‘His Bottom Lip’
Clitoral, like finding a small, hidden part of myself in someone else. Nerve-wet, fleshy – for a white guy, and stained between life-lines with red wine gone black. Only this I point with sharpest teeth. He weighs this up. Eyes roll over what this means, how and where it can lead, all the things it limits. …
Rachel Long
Neringa Dastoor: On the ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency
This one-month experimental poetry residency was a very healthy and refreshing process for me, an absolute treat in terms of professional development. Having no particular plan to start with was already very different to what I am used to when teaching BA students or running a creative workshop with the public. Workshops throughout the month…
Neringa Dastoor
‘The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx’ by Tara Bergin
It’s perhaps a sad indictment of the way in which history is recorded that many potential readers of this, Bergin’s second collection, might not have heard of the lamentable story of Karl Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor (1855-1898). The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx seems to step into the breach and breathe new, memorable ways into…
Richie McCaffery
Mixed Borders III – a new CAMPUS Pamphlet
The Mixed Borders project is now in its third year. With our partners at the London Parks and Gardens Trust, we placed thirty poets-in-residence in gardens all around London for Open Squares Weekend. As well as entertaining the public, our poets wrote a huge number of excellent poems, a selection of which we’re delighted to…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh: An Interview with Raymond Antrobus
Our new programmer Andrew Parkes caught up with poet Raymond Antrobus ahead his appearance at this year’s Poetry in Aldeburgh in one of a series of events curated by the Poetry School. Hi Ray, before we get into anything, I’d first like to extend hearty congratulations from all of us here for being awarded a Jerwood Compton…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Vacancy: Senior Project Coordinator
A great opportunity to join the Poetry School’s dynamic and growing team in a key role as the charity celebrates its 20th Anniversary. Job Description This is a fantastic opportunity to join the UK’s largest provider of poetry education at a time of dynamic growth, celebration and development as Senior Project Coordinator. Founded in 1997…
Poetry School
Семечки by Iris Colomb: Art from the Drawing Poetry Residency at the Centre for Recent Drawing
Throughout August, six poet-artists took part in our ‘Drawing Poetry’ residency with the Centre for Recent Drawing. John Sheehy, Claire Collison, Sria Chatterjee, Eleanor Penny, Neringa Dastoor and Iris Colomb spent a month in the studio at C4RD, developing hybrid and cross-genre drawing-poems. Throughout September and October, we’re showcasing their work. The third poet-artist whose work we are displaying is Iris Colomb. She discusses her work Семечки…
Iris Colomb
‘Ellengæst’
It’s karaoke in The Globe on Morning Lane: throatfuls of song of heady beer & beery heads pushing the pubglow — this hallowed circumference of yellowed light — out to its furthest limits ………………………………… into the beyondwhich where boys with blades and orcish grins kick cans down streets where daughters of Cain text naked anxieties …
Emma Simon
By Heart in C Minor: On the ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency
Throughout August, six poet-artists took part in our ‘Drawing Poetry’ residency with the Centre for Recent Drawing. Sria Chatterjee, John Sheehy, Eleanor Penny, Claire Collison, Neringa Dastoor, and Iris Colomb spent a month in the studio at C4RD and attended workshops with poets Holly Corfield Carr and Chris McCabe, and artist Jamie John James Jenkinson, as well as…
Claire Collison
‘The Book of Tides’ by Angela Readman
The Book of Tides is a triumph of femininity, transformation and transience. Daring and unsettling, Readman’s poems subvert the status quo, blurring the boundaries between myth and reality with a visceral feel that draws you in from the very beginning. These are poems that beg to be read out loud, crammed with short, sharp words…
Rachel Carney
How I Did It: Forward First Collection Special – Ocean Vuong on ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’
The Poetry School asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the process behind their award-nominated work. Over the weeks leading up to the award ceremony on 21st September, we’ve published ‘How I Did It’ articles by Maria Apichella, Nick Makoha, Eric Langley, and Richard Georges. In this final instalment, on the day of…
Ocean Vuong
‘Three Things Transported Together’
He loves me, he loves me not. The me part of this 8.5 million dollar flower industry. Me all gerber- a-faced and eau de toilette – crushed – Betha plucking Ecuadorian Rose or dainty-nosed Sierra dipping into Bucket Orchid – it’s all for me. Flowers, corpses and sushi in the belly of a plane. Big…
Nicole Burdick
How I Did It: Forward First Collection Special: Richard Georges on ‘Griot’
We’ve asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the process behind their award-nominated work. Over the weeks leading up to the award ceremony on 21st September, look out for ‘How I Did It’ articles from Maria Apichella, Nick Makoha, Eric Langley, Richard Georges and Ocean Vuong. This week, Richard Georges discusses…
Richard Georges
Review: ‘Fourth Person Singular’ by Nuar Alsadir
To fragment a text is to make it more object-like – gnomic, you could say, in the sense of knowing something that’s beyond both writer and reader, and so capable of being read back (more richly and ambiguously) into the world. For Nuar Alsadir, whose Fourth Person Singular is composed of fragments, sketches, and micro-essays,…
Will Harris
Artwork by John Sheehy from our ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency at Centre for Recent Drawing
Throughout August, six poet-artists took part in our ‘Drawing Poetry’ residency with the Centre for Recent Drawing. Sria Chatterjee, John Sheehy, Eleanor Penny, Claire Collison, Neringa Dastoor, and Iris Colomb spent a month in the studio at C4RD and attended workshops with poets Holly Corfield Carr and Chris McCabe, and artist Jamie John James Jenkinson,…
Ali Lewis
How I Did It: Forward First Collection Special – Eric Langley on ‘Glanced’
We’ve asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the process behind their award-nominated work. Over the weeks leading up to the award ceremony on 21st September, look out for ‘How I Did It’ articles from Maria Apichella, Nick Makoha, Richard Georges and Ocean Vuong. This week, Eric Langley discusses his…
Eric Langley
How I Did It: Forward First Collection Special – Nick Makoha on ‘Kingdom of Gravity’
We’ve asked the five poets shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the process behind their award-nominated work. Over the weeks leading up to the award ceremony on 21st September, look out for ‘How I Did It’ articles from Maria Apichella, Richard Georges, Eric Langley and Ocean Vuong. But this week it’s Nick…
Nick Makoha
‘Gaia – Entangled’
She has the grit-heart for her kind – the drive of a plant, ant or virus to rule earth, the place a flood, a famine have in time, the dirt a forest sucks to live forever, the treasure of floating mitochondria, centrioles, basal bodies, spirochete bacteria, each in its own small history, swimming to fill…
Kevin Conroy
Review: ‘Proprietary’ by Randall Mann
‘If scent were white // noise,’ suggests the title-piece of Randall Mann’s Proprietary, ‘doughnuts would be that scent.’ One barely has a chance to get one’s lips around the powdery dough of these white-noise doughnuts, this cultural soma, before the speaker informs us that ‘The factory won’t sell at any price. / The building next…
Humphrey Astley
Free Workshop with Irit Sela
Irit Sela offers a systematic reading method that lets the text itself reveal how it works, how it can come to life, bringing us face to face with the true meaning of each word and how those words fit the ‘score’ of the piece. By looking at the text from different angles and practicing each…
Poetry School