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National Writing Day: Our Plans
To celebrate the first annual National Writing Day, The Poetry School will be publishing a series of articles on life as a working poet, staging a Twitter takeover, and providing a brilliant classroom writing activity. We’ll have insightful articles on the day from: Anthony Anaxogorou, poet, educator, and founder of Out-Spoken Press Emma Wright, director…
Poetry School
Mixed Borders: Who’s Where
We’re thrilled to be able to announce the details of our Mixed Borders poets and the gardens where they’ll be in residence for this year’s Open Garden Squares Weekend. Check out the list below for details as which poets will be in which garden, so you can plan your visits accordingly. Alesha Racine Alesha lives…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Mixed Borders 2017: Round-Up
Our Mixed Borders poets have been working hard in their resident gardens, tilling the imaginative soil to cultivate new poems and activities for the fast-approaching Open Garden Squares Weekend, on June 17-18. Here’s a quick peek over the garden fence, so you can see some of the ideas coming into bud: Nicola Jackson is making seed packet poems in…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
1215.today Poet-in-Residence Round Up: Week 4
It’s been another busy week for our 1215.today Poet-in-Residence, Remi Graves. On Monday, Remi explore a ‘positive vision for the future’, setting out the intention to investigate different relationships to “utopia” throughout the week. On Tuesday, Remi reminisced about dancing to Janelle Monae with sisters, discussing the empowerment & hope of lyrics and asking…
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
Review: ‘At Hajj’ by Amaan Hyder
Centred on the Greater Pilgrimage to Mecca – from which At Hajj (Penned in the Margins) derives its title – this collection abounds with interrupted narratives or side-lined stories from seldom heard-of, or listened-to, people. I’ve been busy thinking about the layout of a new collection as I read Amaan Hyder’s fascinating first collection that mingles…
Richie McCaffery
Review: ‘Ticker-tape’ by Rishi Dastidar
Reading Rishi Dastidar’s Ticker-tape (Nine Arches Press) gives essential insight into what it is to be alive in Britain today. Dastidar’s debut full length collection marries project management and social media, politics with good old fashioned unrequited love, and clearly shows a fresh, original and important voice. Facing the contents page is a flowchart guiding…
Christie Williamson
How I Did It – Primers Volume Two: Cynthia Miller on ‘Yellow’
At the Verve Poetry Festival headline on Saturday, Helen Mort, Kayo Chingonyi and Sarah Howe were on a panel discussing their poetry and themes of home and belonging. Sarah remarked that “poetry gave her a background”. I remember being in the audience and having an almost visceral reaction to that comment, with my whole body…
Cynthia Miller
Announcing The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that we have this year partnered with the Resurgence Prize to deliver the Resurgence Poetry Prize, now known as The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School. The Resurgence Prize with The Poetry School is the world’s first major award for ecopoetry. With a first prize of £5,000 for the…
Poetry School 1215.today Poet-in-Residence Round Up: Week 3
On Monday, our 1215.today poet-in-residence Remi Graves wrote about ‘Word and Image: exploring the interplay of poetry and art‘, and covered such varied ground as Theresa May’s tweets, the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and snapchat. On Tuesday, Remi looked at a new and striking artwork / poem by Jörg Piringer, and challenged her readers to “play…
Ali Lewis
‘The Zoo of Doo’
Wombat, do you do doo? I do do doo! And let me tell you something new; The doo I do is square! It’s true! When I do doo, I poop a cube! Do you do doo like I do doo? Bird, do you do doo? I do do doo! And let me tell you something…
Carla Jones
‘As Long As’
You can dye your hair violet or live in the trees, you can paint funny faces on each of your knees, you can bathe in a bath full of thick sticky slime, you can do what you like – as long as you’re kind. You can wear your pyjamas to dinner or tea, you can…
Laura Mucha
‘Johnny, who was too good and suffered the consequences’
Young Johnny was always a good little child, Not prone to be lazy or spiteful or wild, Occasionally naughty but generally nice, And yet, for his parents, this didn’t suffice. They didn’t want average. They wanted the best. They wanted their son to outshine all the rest, With model behaviour at all times of day,…
Claire
‘Caroline and the Scissors’
Caroline, Caz to me and you, was errant daughter number two. Diana, daughter number one, it seemed to Caz had all the fun – she’d scissors that could really cut, a doll that walked and wee-weed – but Caz was the sharper of the two and knew exactly what to do to put her sister…
Carole Bromley 1215.today Residency Round-Up: Week 2
Our 1215.today poet-in-residence Remi Graves kicked off the week talking about ‘subversion’ – in poetry and art – and the (not-so-noble) history of Magna Carta. On Tuesday, Remi ‘Haiku-ised’ the famous Clause 40, and on Wednesday she explored the art of Yinka Shonibare, which “subverts his role as an outsider as a Nigerian-British and disabled artist,…
Ali Lewis 1215.today Poet-in-Residence Remi Graves: Residency Round-Up. Week One
Our new Poetry School 1215.today digital poet-in-residence Remi Graves has had an amazingly productive first week, posting six (!) articles, including playlists and poems. Here’s a taster of what she’s been up to: 14/05: Asking Our New Poet-in-Residence the Questions That Really Matter: “What was the first poem you had a real connection with? “Elizabeth Bishop’s…
Ali Lewis
Our Summer School Programme 2017
Cold weather getting you down? Tired of needing your umbrella every day? Sick of woolly jumpers? Well fear not! Our Summer School is just the ticket for those winter blues. Drums please! We’ve asked some of our favourite poets to run a series of half-day workshops at the end of July, focusing on their passion projects and trying out some…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Review: ‘Savage’ by Rebecca Tamás
It’s fitting that the first word in Savage (Clinic) is ‘please’, thus priming the reader for the pamphlet’s themes of vulnerability and need. Indeed, much of Rebecca Tamás’ technique hinges on a kind of self-psychoanalysis, an exploration of the individual’s sacred/profane duality as revealed by ‘love that’s virulent, ugly, nutshell tight, / love that throws out…
Humphrey Astley
Re: Review: ‘White Hills’ by Chloe Stopa-Hunt
What is it that makes poetry special, different, or unique? What makes a poet important? The answer must lie somewhere beyond form or subject – beyond, that is to say, anything I am able to mention here. The poems in White Hills (Clinic) have been described as ‘weirdly beautiful’, possessed of a ‘strange grandeur’. These…
Jeremy Wikeley
Open Workshop: ‘Freedom in Confinement’ with Remi Graves
Excavate and explore the theme of confinement in order to find new freedoms in writing about the self, with our 1215today Digital Poet in Residence, Remi Graves. Used in its modern context, confinement refers to a state of being limited or constricted. It’s rarer, and older definition however relates to ‘the condition of being in…
Poetry School
‘Lament for Didcot A’
I will lament your cooling towers, those pale hyperboloids monumental as a temple for giants. I will lament their demolition, each falling to its knees in slow motion like a man hamstrung in battle who dies in the dust keening for glory that will never be sung. I will lament the dragon of your superheater…
Joanna Ingham
Review: ‘Fossil’ by Maya Chowdhry
In Fossil (Peepal Tree Press) Maya Chowdhry brings beauty to eco-politics, taking us on a journey across the globe and beyond, experimenting with scale, time and voice to inquire into and imagine the condition of the non-human world. I found that the emotional power of this collection of thirty free verse poems accumulated as I…
Kay Syrad
Primers Vol 2 London Launch – 20 June
We’re incredibly excited to be holding a London launch for our Primers Vol. 2 poets to celebrate their work and the publication of the book by Nine Arches Press. We’d love for you to join us at Waterstones Piccadilly on Tuesday 20 June from 7pm, where the three poets Ben Bransfield, Cynthia Miller and Marvin Thompson will be reading from their work….
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
Review: ‘Alarum’ by Wayne Holloway-Smith
Whilst reviewing Wayne Holloway-Smith’s debut Alarum (Bloodaxe Books), I found myself reading sections aloud to friends in the pub, partly because Alarum is enviably good, but also because I couldn’t quite get my head around it. Hilarious and witty, it’s also terrifically sad, but wears its tragedy so lightly at first it’s hard to notice. ‘Doo-wop’,…
John Challis
‘Portrait of my unborn children’
Number one enjoys lemongrass soup as she sails the Yangtze alone. Number two saves lives on the streets of this city with his soft, warm mouth. Number three never saw the bike turning right on the day we found bees. Number four was left behind and always wondered who she belonged to. Number five found…
Jeanette Burton
‘To My Mother Who Never Touched a Drop’
When I meet her in Hourican’s Bar I will bring the picture resurrected from the derelict farmhouse, last summer. My great Uncle Phil will offer me a glass. I’ll reluctantly sip the bitter-black and lick the froth from my lip. For once my mother will sit in silence – but not out of spite. When…
Maggie Sawkins