Blog
All of our Blog Posts
Open Workshop: ‘Reduce/Reuse/Recycle’
According to T.S. Eliot, mature poets steal where immature poets borrow. Stealing, here, doesn’t mean copying: rather, it means turning what you take from another writer ‘into something better, or at least something different’. It’s an appealing idea, but does it work? In this Open Workshop with Adam Crothers, we will think about how to…
Poetry School
‘The Have the Want and the Next’
This week I’ve talked about how, by and large, we in the UK are free to express ourselves as we wish, within certain broad boundaries defined by hate speech legislation, defamation law and so on. Wonderful though this may be for many of us, some UK citizens are actually denied this right. They are people…
Shey Hargreaves
Tales from the frontline: a conversation with Shey Hargreaves
An Interview with Shey Hargreaves
Halfway through her four-week digital poetry residency with 1215today, we talked to writer Shey Hargreaves about her work, why even bad jobs are about more than just paying the bills, and her frontline experience of recent cuts to healthcare in this country. Note: this interview was originally published on the 1215today website. Hi Shey, can…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘A Hymn to the Ordinary’
Zsa Zsa Gabor’s very fond of a door especially in oak or a light sycamore – her sister-in-law loves a long corridor and a friend of her father has a thing for his floor – it was Dior before but it’s not anymore – we should try to be more like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Don’t…
Kate Davis
Pub Chats: Two Rivers Press
An Interview with Two Rivers Press
In the latest of our series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, set in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth, we spoke to Peter Robinson of Two Rivers Press…
Poetry School
Poetry, freedom, censorship: 1215.today round-up
Hello. My name is Shey Hargreaves. I’m a writer and storyteller from East Anglia in the UK and for four weeks I’ll be blogging as Digital Poet in Residence for the Poetry School and 1215.today. (It’s the residency that’s digital, not me. I’m real. Really.) 1215.today is a ‘virtual house of culture’ built to host…
Shey Hargreaves
Pub Chats: Longbarrow Press
An Interview with Longbarrow Press
In the latest of our series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, set in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth, we shared a pint with Brian Lewis of Longbarrow Press… Hello there! What are you drinking? Brian: A pint of Easy Rider (courtesy of Sheffield’s Kelham Island brewery). How long has Longbarrow Press been running? Brian: We launched…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘Three exercises in style (after Raymond Queneau)’, ‘Acronymic poem (after Schuldt)’, and ‘Snowball’
‘THREE EXERCISES IN STYLE (AFTER RAYMOND QUENEAU)’ ‘ACRONYMIC POEM (AFTER SCHULDT)’ ‘SNOWBALL’ COMMENT Kate Wakeling is a writer and ethnomusicologist based in Oxford. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Rialto, Butcher’s Dog and The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt). These texts were written on Steven J. Fowler’s Maintenant!…
Kate Wakeling
‘Readers of Faces: Poetry as Portraiture’
“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.” – Adrian Mitchell I like people. I like reading about them. I like talking to them and getting to know them. I like writing about them. It might just be age, but these days I can’t think of anything worse than meditating on my…
Sarah Hesketh
‘Beyond Romanticism: Green Lanes & Byways’
What are the contours of Romanticism beyond the ‘Big Six’ poets, who we at least think we know? There is no doubting the achievements of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake, or Byron, Shelley and Keats: but their poetry sprang from a culture as infinitely rich and various as their verse itself, marked by social ferment and…
Dan Eltringham
The Poet’s Book: an interview with Lavinia Singer and Anna Robinson
An Interview with Lavinia Singer & Anna Robinson
We interviewed Anna Robinson and Lavinia Singer about their new Poetry School course, The Poet’s Book. Hi Anna! Hi Lavinia! How are you? And what are you both up to? Anna: I am well thanks! I teach writing to students at UEL, at Barking library and to prisoners by distance learning, so I have been…
Ali Lewis
Retrospective: Looking back on ‘Hide and Seek in the Ideas Forest’ with Sophie Herxheimer
In this retrospective, we’ll be looking back at some of the poems and works of art created by students on Sophie Herxheimer’s recent Poetry School workshop, ‘Hide and Seek in the Ideas Forest: Poetry and Picture Making’, and having a chat with Sophie herself about the day. First up, the interview… Hi Sophie. In the workshop,…
Ali Lewis
‘Wooden’
I am carving your initials into my chest shedding oak in your name, mahogany heavy. I am beside you with skin like saw dust skin is saw dust. Neck braced with trunk, stiff – like the first time. Burning bark under duvets. For all the times we lay in silence thinking of walks, of holding…
Sophie Fenella
‘Radio, Radio: Making Poetry Sound’
I listened to The Verb on Radio 3 long before I ever appeared on it, and before I made my first radio documentary. I remember Ken Campbell talking about language, Wendy Cope making poems about going to classical music concerts. It was exciting and inspirational to hear people on the radio talking about poetry, and…
Ira Lightman
The Line Break #9 – Ouyang Yu: Creative Mistakes
THE LINE BREAK
Will Barrett (Poetry School)Pub Chats: if p then q
In the latest of our series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, set in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth, we spoke to James Davies of if p then q… Hello there, James! What are you drinking? James: I’ll have a Death in the Afternoon cheers. How long has if p then q been running? James: Eight good years. What…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Open Workshop: ‘Make Your Own Filmpoem’
Have you ever thought of turning your poems into a short film or Youtube video? Poetry films – or ‘filmpoems’ – merge two genres to create a new piece of art, and through the hybridisation, augment and extend both genres. In this Open Workshop, Eleni Cay will cover basic techniques for creating poetryfilms, and video…
Poetry School
Open Workshop: ‘The Poetry of Pain’
As developments in technology increase our access to the world, it can often feel like we are losing touch with the bodies we inhabit, and the remarkable functions they provide from moment to moment. Whilst we often treat pain as an inconvenience to be blanketed over with medication, it can also provide us with a…
Poetry School
‘New Myths and Legends: Building a World through Poetry’
There are two types of fictional worlds, one that exists within its own sphere and the other – a place we travel to from our own world. For me the second has always been more compelling, the idea that there are layers to our world, a sort of Platonic imprint, inhabited with creatures or heroic…
Emma Hammond
Announcing our Summer 2016 Courses!
Short Courses Making Birds: New Poetic Forms with R.A. Villanueva – experiment, invent new forms, and encounter innovative poetry. Shape Up and Send with Rishi Dastidar – Get your poems fighting fit and send them out into the world. The Poet’s Book with Anna Robinson and Lavinia Singer – produce a handmade book containing your…
Ali Lewis
The Line Break #8 – Jane Hirshfield: What Comes Through
THE LINE BREAK
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Re-Mixed Borders
Re-Mixed Borders Poet? Lover of flowers and / or vegetables? Want some poet-in-residence training? Read on, we have an opportunity for you! Last year, the Poetry School and London Parks and Gardens Trust teamed up for a poet-in-residence training scheme centred on London’s Gardens. We called the scheme ‘Mixed Borders’. Julia Bird from the Poetry…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Poetry & Visual Art Gallery Day: Itinerary
Poetry & Visual Art Gallery Day: Itinerary Poets have long drawn inspiration from painters and sculptors; with the rise of a new generation of artists challenging traditional media, can we find in them a source for poems that push boundaries in a similar manner? As part of Tamar Yoseloff’s Poetry and Visual Art course, students…
Ali Lewis
Open Workshop: ‘The Conceit’
Some poetry takes everyday reality as its starting-point in order to reveal something about the world we know. But poetry can equally begin with a ‘what if?’ – it can create unreal or unlikely situations and then, by exploring the consequences of those situations, lead us to unexpected ideas and images. These ‘what if?’ situations…
Poetry School
How I Translated It: ‘It makes two signs…’ by Krystyna Miłobędzka
Translating is attending to what might happen in language and what might occur between languages. As readers and writers we know this space intimately – the in-betweenness where we can experiment, hesitate, discover, doubt, try again. ‘“Try” – there’s so much faith in it, and so much resignation. But we keep trying. … Only such…
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese