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‘Look Out Tree’
Two ghosts sat in a tree gusting songs and talking, yakking about the moon round as a bullet hole. The sky is soldered black, yet to be opened by dawn, thunk it with clods of earth and know it never will. Everything but those ghosts has stopped. Grass stopped dog stopped tree stopped whole turning…
Rebecca Mackenzie
How I Translated It: ‘The mask of the angry one’ by Brecht
The translation of poetry, as well as being, famously, impossible, is, for the translator, the most wonderful and most punishing form of close reading. There is no limit to the aspects of the poem at hand to which the translator must desire to be attentive. Form in all its forms, meaning in all its meanings:…
Tom Kuhn
‘A Blue and Pink Encounter at the Mall’
COMMENT Jinny Fisher is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and was previously a classical violinist. She lives in Somerset and is a member of Juncture 25 and Wells Fountain Poets. She has been been, or is about to be, published in The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Prole and Ink, Sweat and Tears. “I wrote (or…
Jinny FisherThe T S Eliot Prize – some deep reading
Tonight sees the announcement of the winner of the T S Eliot Prize, a poetry prize that draws speculation, chatter and discussion towards it like pins to a magnet. Yesterday, John Greening led a brilliant discussion event for us at Southbank Centre, cogently summing up all ten of the shortlisted collections and shepherding some great…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
The Line Break #7 – Mark Doty: Desire
THE LINE BREAK
Poetry School
Woah, look at all this extra stuff!
There are lots of new additions and nifty enhancements to discover on this new version of poetryschool.com. Here’s a rundown of what’s new and why: 1) AUTOMATIC ENROLMENT Book onto any course or workshop – online or face to face – and immediately access your course group on CAMPUS Automatic enrolment means you can…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Digital Poet in Residence Opportunity
We’re pretty hot on the digital poetry residency at the Poetry School – CAMPUS has played host to nearly a dozen poets now, each of them bringing their own distinct take to what a writer with all the resources of the internet at the end of a mouse can do for an audience. We are…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Voice Skills for Poets: an interview with Nicola Collett
Hi Nicola, we’re delighted you’ll be offering a one-day workshop in February. Can you tell us a bit about yourself? Nicola: Yes, I started off as an English and Drama teacher, teaching the 11-18 age group, in comprehensive schools in Harlow and London. Eventually, I became fascinated with the way in which a teacher’s voice…
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
Gastromancy – speaking from the gut
A lot can happen in five weeks. Just over the last seven days, I swallowed a gold filling, bought a sofa and organised party games for ten shrieking eight year-olds as Hebden’s flood sirens sounded. The centre of town has been underwater this weekend; thankfully, it emerged from the waves unscathed. I know lots of…
Clare Shaw
5 moments when poetry and pop music collided for the general benefit of us all!
So, as those of you joining my online listening group next term will discover, I reckon pop songs and other assorted detritus from rock ‘n’ roll culture are a great jumping off point for writing poems. Whether it’s the thump of a tom-tom, feedback whistling round your brain, even the sheen of an ill-advised leather…
Rishi DastidarNot the T S Eliots 2015: our best poetry books of the year
So here it is, our reasonably eagerly-awaited end of year list, a miscellany of the most thumbed, borrowed and coffee-splotted poetry books and pamphlets lying around the Poetry School offices. In many ways, it’s been a remarkable year: Radio 4 whole day takeover of Andrew Marr’s epic radio documentary on British poetry; Daljit Nagra’s appointment…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘Bound’
COMMENT Vasiliki Albedo Bennu lives in Greece. Her poems have been published in magazines, recently in ‘The Interpreter’s House’, ‘Lighthouse’ and ‘Beloit Poetry Journal’. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. “This poem was written for Claire Trévien’s ‘Cosmic Compositions’. The challenge was to write something inspired by ‘Space Travellers’. My intention…
Vasiliki Albedo
‘Andromeda As A Teacher’
COMMENT Majella Kelly is a poet, photographer and teacher from the West of Ireland. She happens to teaches teenagers in a prefab, behind the main school building, and here she re-imagines the students as her own constellation. The poem came about after a prompt from Claire Trévien on her ‘Cosmic Compositions’ course at…
Majella Kelly
‘Grandma’s Hands’
She wore pigskin gloves so fresh and soft you could almost hear them squeal as she rounded a bend, flicked the giant indicator, flashed me a grin with her own white teeth. We’d drag her squeaking mangle across the rippled concrete floor where patiently she’d feed it – puce slip, cashmere cardi – like knitted…
Lucy Cotterill
This is my story not yours.
I love reading out poems – and this poem loves to be read out loud. But I hate showing unfinished poems. It feels like being partially dressed – and not in a good way. This poem is still under edit. But I wanted to post it as an introduction to this week’s topic: This is…
Clare Shaw
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is – if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Philip Levine, ‘What Work Is’ The more I think about what work is, the more…
Kim Moore
Paradise Lost: ‘An Express Elevator to Hell!’
Oh Milton, Milton, Milton: local boy born on Bread Street just off Cheapside; the ‘Lady of Christ’s’ College Cambridge; defender of regicide; pro-divorce pamphleteer; free-speech zealot; house guest of Galileo; blind visionary; dreamer of Paradise Lost, now buried alongside the Barbican’s fountains – how oft I think of thee. Forgive my windy oratory/Milton draws this…
Simon Barraclough
“All I can do now is keep walking”: an interview with Choman Hardi
All this week we’ve debating on CAMPUS the issue of how to give voice to the silenced in poetry. The contributions so far have been fascinating, so please keep them coming! For the second act, I interviewed Choman Hardi, a hero of mine and whose poem ‘The Angry Survivor’ provided the centerpiece of this debate. The…
Clare Shaw
Follow the Brush: Making Zuihitsu Poetry
Zuihitsu? What is it? I’d never heard of this strange word before either until I first encountered the work of American poet, Kimiko Hahn, and in particular her mesmerizing collection The Narrow Road to the Interior (2006) in which she employs this ancient Japanese technique in the writing of some startlingly modern poetry. If you…
Cheryl Moskowitz
‘Conflagration’
i.m. Dominic When he falls, catching his foot on the kerb, he is a nuisance, to be skirted round quickly, like the fly-ridden spew outside The Queen’s Head. Even the pigeons ignore him. His backpack weighs on him, like a brickie’s hod, but struggling up on his knees, manages to right himself, takes small steps…
Andrew Curtis
‘A Survivor Strips Himself of Guilt’
Think of the trains running deep into the night, the windows a-jitter in their narrow wooden frames; think of your breath sent spinning into the small of my ear. Think of the steam paring loose from your bathwater like bark planed away from the trunk of a tree. Think of the idleness of morning hours,…
Nicholas Garrard
‘Hearing Voices: reading and responding to world poetry in translation’
Sometimes, as writers, if we tire of the view from the small patch of earth we inhabit, we look to cast our nets wider. The poem in translation is a wondrous thing – self-contained, tardis-like. On a chill, grey November day, what could be better than to be transported to a place where… ……
Shazea Quraishi
The Poem as Party Guest: an interview with Wayne Holloway-Smith
Hi Wayne, we’re very excited you’ve joined the Poetry School team. Can you tell us more about your course, what’s it all about? Wayne: Cheers. Yes, the course idea came to me after I attended a friend’s party and was collared by an individual who monopolised my attention for an extraordinarily long time. As the individual’s…
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
CAMPUS Debate: Other Peoples’ Voices
“This is my story, not yours”. In last week’s posting I gave myself a virtual sore throat arguing for the political imperative in poetry. This conviction is rooted in my own experiences: silenced as a child, silenced again in the psychiatric system, I have a deep-rooted belief that as poets we have an obligation to…
Clare ShawThe Complete Works Poetry – call for submissions
An update from our friends at The Complete Works … The Complete Works Poetry (TCW 3) Deadline: February 14th, 2016 Are you a Black or Asian poet at the stage where you are committed to producing a full-length collection? Would you benefit from a tailored programme of support and career development? Funded by Arts Council England…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)