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How I Did It: ‘Poem in which the girl has no door on her mouth’
In Anne Carson’s essay The Gender of Sound (from Glass, Irony and God, printed as Glass and God in the UK edition, and strangely omitting The Gender of Sound altogether) she writes of ‘…the haunting garrulity of the nymph Echo (daughter of Iambe in Athenian legend) who is described by Sophokles as “the girl with…
Rebecca Perry
‘Liberating Poetic Chaos’
Sylvia Plath worked hard at her poetry throughout the 1950s. She studied, read widely and mastered a range of poetic techniques, writing hundreds of poems. Her work received awards and prizes, was published in magazines and Plath was regarded as — and regarded herself as — a ‘success’. However, by 1960, Plath had become dissatisfied…
Steve Ely
Silent Spells: poems from our Manchester Museum project
Last year, the Poetry School dispatched a group of poets, led by Helen Mort, to the Manchester Museum and let them explore its endless curiosities – whale skeletons, hunched tigers and delicate paper birds – guided by the wisdom of Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes, who introduced some of the Museum’s rarest objects and…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff) CAMPUS Pamphlet: ‘Silent Spells’
Last year, the Poetry School dispatched a group of poets, led by Helen Mort, to the Manchester Museum and let them explore its endless curiosities – whale skeletons, hunched tigers and delicate paper birds – guided by the wisdom of Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes, who introduced some of the Museum’s rarest objects and…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
The first Digital Poet in Residence of 2015
We’re elated to announce that poet, writer, film-maker and human tornado, Ross Sutherland, will be our next Digital Poet in Residence. For his residency – ’30 Videos / 30 Poems’ – Ross will create thirty new films over March to April 2015, while he tours across the UK with his show Standby For Tape Backup. Each new film will be a…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Pub Chat: an interview with Shearsman Books
An Interview with Shearsman Books
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 Tony Frazer of Shearsman Books… Hello there, Tony! What are you drinking? Tony: Tequila, Herradura Reposado. How long has Shearsman been running? Tony: Well, the magazine (Shearsman) started in 1981. The first pamphlets appeared…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Prose Poets: ‘Of La!’
Over there! Cries the thief, pointing away from himself and the victim as he picks a pocket. While the attention is focused on one thing at a distance, some switch is made about the victim’s person. Only later, in a moment of condensing awareness does the victim feel the change. Something about them is…
Nichola Deane
Summer 2015 courses in one line or less
LONDON – SHORT COURSES The Tao of Poetry with Liane Strauss – reviltalise your poetic practices as Liane shares her love of classical Chinese poetry with you Developing a Style with Tim Dooley – develop your own poetic voice in conversation with the best of poetic tradition Alien Vs Predator with Kathryn Gray – poetry…
Poetry School
How I Did It: ‘The Cattle Farmer’s Tale’
Imagination, being by definition un-willed, often comes in unexpectedly, the result of some chance encounter or coincidence. We can’t will ourselves into a genuinely imaginative space. We can work with what imagination provides – uncover the form, improve the syntax, work to complete the poem – but imagination itself is uncanny, unbiddable. Imagination always takes…
Maitreyabandhu
‘The Garage, Tours’
As to what’s here, I can give you some idea: Various artifacts that Grammie brought back from the Philippines – probably one box All part of life’s rich tapestry. Shoes and clothing – probably at least two large boxes or equivalent You can tell a man by his shoes. Your Dad’s…
Olivia Sprinkel
‘Globalization Detritus’
Quivering pedal steel Green-winged dove Dilapidated keyboards from an ancient Commodore 64 Hendricks and tonic with a twist Failed expectations Dinner guests arriving early Maasai warrior with 3rd gen. iPhone Heavily-marketed ISIS You Tubes Traffic oceans on the 101 North Impossible bouts of insomnia Pre-planned pregnancies Unfortunate haircuts Hammond organs Cosmologist at his wit’s end…
Jenelle D'Alessandro
J O Morgan’s ‘At Maldon’
J O Morgan has confronted history in the form of the Battle of Maldon. It`s a real event that occurred in 991 AD, a battle between Anglo-Saxons led by Byrhtnoth the earldoman or local military leader and a Viking invasion horde led by Olaf Tryggvason a Viking prince. It took place near Northey Island a…
Keith Parker
Re: Drafts – ‘The Cab Rank Principle’
I’ve been thinking about the law over the last couple of weeks. Not that I’m in any trouble I hasten to add – apart from the usual one that I’m sure some of you have also been quizzed on by other members of the family: “Yes this poeting is all well and good, but when…
Rishi Dastidar
Prose Poets: ‘Of Abstraction’
It’s one of the great, gratifying surprises to discover that Dr Johnson was an Objectivist. Epochs ahead of his time, he extols in his 1755 dictionary the virtues of paying attention to the world itself – the world of objects – in a manner that would surely have met with approval from William Carlos…
Dai George
Meeting Kit
Anyone who loves reading knows that there’s only one thing better than words. In certain books it’s hard to even call those things ‘pictures’ because that sort of suggests something flat and two dimensional that you can rest your cup of tea on. In those books, what we are actually talking about is a) windows…
Emma Hammond
How I Did It: ‘On First Meeting Margot’
One Thursday afternoon in May 2014, I left my Poetry School class and headed to Waterloo for the train home. On Lower Marsh, I bumped into my friend Alice, who I had not seen for quite some time. With her was Margot, her small daughter whose father is a close friend of mine, the poet…
Roddy Lumsden
This Enchanted Isle: reading W H Auden’s ‘The Sea and The Mirror’
Shakespeare’s The Tempest contains a potent mix of the worldly (politics, power, parenthood) and the other-worldly (myth, magic, monsters). In the mercurial spirit Ariel and the earthy, ‘monstrous’ Caliban, elemental forces are given free rein to express their desires, while Prospero delivers some of the most famous lines in all literature: These our…
A.B. Jackson
Residents Association
Have you ever been a resident poet? Did your local stately home / barbershop / ironmongers invite you to soak up their atmosphere, talk to their customers and create new poems from the experience? We’d like to hear from you if so … The Poetry School is working on an exciting new project which will…
Poetry School
Prosodies in the US & the UK: A TransAtlantic Coda
When Kathryn and I started our residency, the one topic we were sure we would discuss was the difference between the poetry scenes in the US and the UK. Of course, that never happened—it’s like how the song you buy the album for becomes the song you start skipping first (well, before iTunes). So here…
Jason Schneiderman
How I Did It: ‘How to Renovate a Morris Minor’
I was having a conversation this week with a brilliant Welsh poet, who’s currently at work on his second collection. He said something about his creative process which resonated strongly with me: he was working hard, he said, to get to the stage where the poems wrote themselves. That’s always been it for me: the…
Jonathan Edwards
‘Sex Education’
When I am asked what I most want to be when I grow up, I think about sex education: to my fourteen year old body hauling itself to the cafeteria, where Mister Jacobs takes the girls and plays film stills of mutts devouring meat outside a butcher’s. In the next room, the boys are handed…
Sarah Fletcher
‘The Drowners’
They will step into you – first a toe, then the ball of a foot. Some will come clothed, though most will leave something behind – a tell-tale coat, a pair of shoes. They will make it seem easy, as if they are stepping into nightfall – not even you, nor the eye of a…
Maggie Sawkins
Lo and Behold! It’s our new micro-commissions…
Last year, the Poetry School launched ‘Lo and Behold!’ – a fund to support innovative poetry creation and promotion projects. From more than 150 submissions, five projects have just been selected and are about to start work. ‘Lo and Behold!’ was designed to fund projects that explore new ways of creating or promoting poetry –…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Poetry and the Brain: an interview with Helen Mort
An Interview with Helen Mort
Hi Helen! Tell us about your upcoming course, ‘Poetry and the Brain’. It seems a far cry from Division Street… Helen: For the past three years, I’ve been studying for a PhD at the University of Sheffield, thinking about whether neuroscience and contemporary poetry might have anything interesting to say to each other. It turns…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘The Poetry of Money’
Check down the back of your sofa for coins, what do you find? Coppers, shrapnel, cents, francs and thrupenny bits? Your handful of change could be the basis for a handful of new poems – The Poetry of Money is a forthcoming workshop with Claire Crowther. Claire is the current poet in residence at the…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)