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‘Going Over’
Only a weary traveller would settle for such lonesome stones but the day we crossed the river we knew we’d found a home. Now I sleep between two waters, dreaming a red rock town where nine kind mothers feed me, none of them my own. And I see my mother coming but she is…
Linda Goulden
‘Just Like A Woman’
Of course I’d been to Paris before, but not without supervision. And if Dylan ever had a dry patch this was it, which meant the club was intimate, tickets cheap and the young among us shoved upfront, thrilled, skin on skin. Electric guitar, him in a lurex suit tootling at the piano a while. So…
Anna Kisby
‘Apple Pie in Pizzaland’ by Maura Dooley and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Today’s poem featured at the very first Aldeburgh Poetry Festival held back in 1989. It describes a meeting in a pizza restaurant where both individuals are painfully “apologising to one another” and fiddling with menus and cutlery, before a sudden flight of imagination sees the restaurant, along with the rest of the country, being magically…
BenRogers
‘If I lay on my back I saw nothing but naked women’ by Jacqueline Saphra and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Today’s poem is an extract from If I lay on my back I saw nothing but naked women, a sequence of prose poems by Jacqueline Saphra, illustrated with linocut prints by Mark Andrew Webber. Told from a child’s perspective, the poems recount quirky, sometimes unnerving, scenes of family life, featuring a cast of eccentric parents…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh Residency: Ben Rogers interviews… Jacqueline Saphra
An Interview with Jacqueline Saphra
“Say whatever you want, invent what you like, use your imagination – that’s what writers do, for god’s sake – if it strengthens the poem.”
BenRogers
Poetry in Aldeburgh Residency: Ben Rogers interviews… Holly Corfield Carr
An Interview with Holly Corfield Carr
As soon as we talk about ‘chance’ we’ve already stationed part of the writing process outside ourselves. We decide on names for this other part, like ‘found’ or ‘inspiration’ or something else, but we are always just writing back to what we have already recognised, writing back to ourselves, collaborating with the back of our heads.
BenRogers
Aft by Holly Corfield Carr and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Poem of the Day – AFT by Holly Corfield Carr Today’s poem was a site-specific piece commissioned by Spike Island (a centre for contemporary art and design based in Bristol) with Bristol Ferry. Written while listening to the sea shanties of a Bristol sailor recorded in 1950, Holly Corfield Carr created a poem whose couplets were…
Poetry School
‘Haint’ by Eve Ellis
Last night I heard the dogs again, this side of the crick. This morning another window’s smudged and her bitty footprint’s in the skift. Ma wipes her eyes and the glass, takes the broom out to snow-sweep. Pa’s painting the fence blue like a river she can’t cross. Tonight he’ll throw salt on the…
Eve
An Intimate Dinner with Raised Voices by Anna Selby and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Poetry in Aldeburgh Countdown – An Intimate Dinner with Raised Voices by Anna Selby Today’s poem is a disconcertingly noisy sonnet taken from Anna Selby’s pamphlet ‘The Burning’. In the poem, sounds are amplified in a way that they are not supposed to, the result of a house that “overreacts”, a cacophony from which there is no…
Poetry School
Phone call from… by Susan Utting and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Writing Prompt – Phone Eavesdrop by Ben Rogers There is of course an ethical issue to listening to other people’s conversations in secret. However, with the rise of mobile phones there is an associated increase in the number of conversations (or at least one side of them) that you can hear with little or no effort, sometimes…
BenRogers
Short Film & Short Film II by Julia Bird and a new writing prompt from Ben Rogers
Writing Prompt – High-Concept by Ben Rogers Write a poem that acts as the full synopsis of an imagined high-concept film. Indulge in far-fetched fiction and employ a narrative that utilises the type of big what if questions that regularly surface in a cinematic blockbuster, such as ‘what…
BenRogers
Poetry in Aldeburgh residency: Ben Rogers interviews… Julia Bird
An Interview with Julia Bird
“What motivates me to produce, promote or write anything is the idea that there will be people around to receive it meaningfully”
BenRogers
Borderliner by Hannah Lowe and Writing Prompt by Ben Rogers
Writing prompt – False Memory by Ben Rogers History can be a difficult thing to pin down, and the fallibility of memory can be one of the challenges in determining what actually happened when. Take a journey into the False Memory Archive, a collection of vividly recalled personal accounts of things that didn’t happen. You can read…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh residency: Ben Rogers interviews… Hannah Lowe
An Interview with Hannah Lowe
In the latest collection, Chan, I’ve tried to push form a bit more, writing in a new form I’ve called a “borderliner”, a conflation of a bold and non bold poem which can be read vertically and horizontally, but which fits into a block of text.
BenRogers
Poetry and Visual Art October 2016 Schedule
Poetry and Visual Art: Book here. Saturday 15th October 10:30am: Marian Goodman Gallery, 5-8 Lower John St, London W1F 9DY Giuseppe Penone: Fui, Sarò, Non Sono (I was, I will be, I am not). Informal talk on the exhibition from William Annesley, Gallery Assistant at Marian Goodman. 11: 45am: Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row,…
Poetry School
‘Say it with a poem’: 9 poems with a message for National Poetry Day
To celebrate National Poetry Day 2016, we asked nine of our brilliant Poetry School tutors for poems with a message to share with the world. And here they all are! To see full details of each of the poems, click here.
Ali Lewis
‘The Adulteress’ by Kathryn Maris for National Poetry Day 2016
Happy National Poetry Day 2016! Today’s the annual mass celebration of poetry and all things poetical. The theme for this year is ‘Messages: Say it with a Poem‘, so we asked a generous handful of our Poetry School tutors for a poem with a message to share with the world. The final poem of our National Poetry Day countdown is…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh – National Poetry Day
Poem of the Day To celebrate National Poetry Day 2016 and its theme of messages, here is an extract from a classic WH Auden poem that forms one of his collaborations with Benjamin Britten, the famous English composer and Aldeburgh resident. Here, Auden’s verse acts as a closing commentary to a short film documentary on…
BenRogers
Poetry in Aldeburgh Countdown – Poem of the Day & Writing Prompt
Poem of the Day This is the first poem in a sequence of prose poems by Tamar Yoseloff that originally accompanied drawings by the artist David Harker in the limited edition pamphlet ‘Nowheres’. Each image is a depiction of an unpopulated in-between space that appears unremarkable and which are, in the poet’s words, “not destinations”…
BenRogers
Poetry in Aldeburgh Countdown – An Interview with Tamar Yoseloff
An Interview with Tamar Yoseloff
“I fell in love with it right from the start, that bleak winter seascape. I’ve been going back ever since.”
BenRogers
Interview with Ben Rogers, Poet-in-Residence at Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival
Hi Ben! You recently had a recce trip to Aldeburgh in advance of your residency. How’s it all looking there at the moment? Before the recce trip I hadn’t visited Aldeburgh for many a year and then it was a swift visit at sundown to wolf fish and chips on the beach sitting near…
Poetry School
“Battle of the Somme” Centenary – Collaboration Opportunity with Simon Barraclough
Attention all – we have a new opportunity to announce! From 2014-18, a huge range of cultural activities are taking place across the UK to mark the centenary of the First World War. The focus of 2016’s commemorations is the Battle of the Somme – or the film of the same name that was released…
Poetry School
‘Apples’ by Dante Micheaux for National Poetry Day 2016
On October 6th, it’s National Poetry Day 2016, the annual mass celebration of poetry and all things poetical. The theme for this year is ‘Messages: Say it with a Poem‘, so we’ve asked a generous handful of our Poetry School tutors for a poem with a message to share with the world. National Poetry Day is just a…
Poetry School
‘Save The Date’ by Holly Hopkins for National Poetry Day 2016
On October 6th, it’s National Poetry Day 2016, the annual mass celebration of poetry and all things poetical. The theme for this year is ‘Messages: Say it with a Poem‘, so we’ve asked a generous handful of our Poetry School tutors for a poem with a message to share with the world. It’s Day Five of our poem-a-day countdown…
Poetry School
‘Blue’ by Julia Bird for National Poetry Day 2016
On October 6th, it’s National Poetry Day 2016, the annual mass celebration of poetry and all things poetical. The theme for this year is ‘Messages: Say it with a Poem‘, so we’ve asked a generous handful of our Poetry School tutors for a poem with a message to share with the world. We’re posting one poem every day…
Poetry School