Blog
All of our Blog Posts
Pub Chat: interview with Burning Eye Books
An Interview with Burning Eye Books
In the latest in this series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, set in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth, we spoke to Clive Birnie of Burning Eye Books… Hello there, Clive! What are you drinking? Clive: Brewdog Punk IPA. How long has Burning Eye been running? Clive: The first Burning Eye title (Slinky Espadrilles by Ash Dickinson)…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Open Workshop with Richard Osmond: ‘Written in Juice of Lemon’
Content and form should always be in dialogue. In this new Open Workshop with up-and-coming poet, Richard Osmond, you’ll make this dialogue more explicit, and take it to strange new places. In this workshop you’ll be looking at poems which are designed to be published, broadcast or inscribed in unconventional ways, on unconventional surfaces or…
Poetry School
Exclusive preview: Butcher’s Dog #4
In advance of our launch this weekend at the Durham Book Festival, we present some quick cuts and choice rashers from the upcoming issue of Butcher’s Dog magazine, co-edited by Sophie F Baker (from the naughty) and The Poetry School (from the sour). It was a Herculean labour cutting almost 750 poems or so down to 20 odd, but…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Pub Chat: interview with CB editions
An Interview with CB editions
In the latest in this series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, we found a warm fireside spot in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth, and spoke to Charles Boyle of the wonderful CB editions… Hello there, Charles! What are you drinking? Charles: Wine, large glass. (Given that we’re going to be here for…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Ain’t got no style / I’m strictly roots
Recently, I was getting acquainted with May Swenson. I saw her photo and couldn’t resist: Today, she would have a septum piercing and an undercut. A few days before I was reading Women Wearing Clothes – and the question came up: why do some girls have style and others not? On the train, I picked…
Jay Bernard
‘Hiccups’
and fall up – Toast crumbs dance on the plate hiccups – surprising as they rise askew through bright morning light to the ceiling, spring clouds of bread midges. Beautiful. Wrong. On the table, spoons, knives jolt and jounce; pounce upright; fire high, stab plaster. Anchored in my chair, I’m braced,…
Georgi Gill
The Profit and the Loss
This is an interesting moment to be thinking about this topic. Exhibit B, at the Barbican has just been shut down. When I was seven or eight, there was a giant house somewhere in London, where my grandmother used to organise events around black history. One night, there was a display of all the implements…
Jay BernardThe Poem Noir
Watched any of these TV shows lately – The Killing, The Bridge, Luther, or Breaking Bad? Or any of the following films – The Dark Knight, Black Swan, or Drive? If you have, then chances are you’ve already come across a version of film noir. Films noir, at their most cliché, are films about ordinary…
John Challis
Performance Skills for Poets
How do you stop your knees knocking and your paper wobbling when you perform your poetry? How can you make sure they can hear you in the cheap seats? We’ve got a workshop coming up at the Poetry School with poet and performer Nick Field that will help you settle those questions. Nick writes: ‘I’m really…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Pub Chat: interview with Valley Press
An Interview with Valley Press
In the latest in this series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, we put the kettle on for Jamie McGarry of Valley Press in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth… Hello, Jamie! What are you drinking? Jamie: Valley Press is powered by tea – medium strength, with one sugar (if no-one’s looking). How long has…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘Free Verse Cento’
There’s a lot at stake on a first line. For novels, the work’s mood is irrevocably set – you know when you read “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new” in Beckett’s Murphy what kind of book you’ve bought. Poetry collections are slightly different. There are multiple points of entry – I…
Alex MacDonald
1ne / 2wo / 3hree / 4our
I recently set the assignment for my Open Workshop on CAMPUS – which you should read if you have the time or an inclination towards paradoxes – and I thought it would be good to show my own workings, and how thinking about puzzles led to the skeleton of the poem I am about to…
Jay Bernard
Samuel Beckett & Poetry
It was not enough to drag her into the world, now she must play the piano. —from ‘Embers’ I remember the first times I encountered Beowulf, Auden, Hughes, Plath, and many others, but I can’t remember the first time I came across Beckett’s work. Was it on the page, in the theatre, on the radio,…
Simon Barraclough
The One and the Many: interview with Dai George
An Interview with Dai George
Hi Dai. You’re teaching a course for us this Autumn – ‘The One and the Many’. Tell us more about it. Dai: I cooked up the course as a response to some aspects of poetry that have been intriguing me for a while, to do with how we address ourselves and/or other people in any…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘The Secret Languages of Ireland’
Breaking camp, they left at dawn without waking a soul their wagons consigned to flames. Anna na mBreag Veronica swirled poitín against the light; cautioned me not to smash my teeth with the bottle as we swigged. As I felt her Irish tongue in my mouth, I pondered the significance of words. So the back…
Derek Littlewood
Pub Chat: Penned in the Margins
An Interview with Penned in the Margins
In the latest in this series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, we went for a drink with Tom Chivers of Penned in the Margins at our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth… Hello there, Tom! What are you drinking? Tom: A pint of London Pride! How long has Penned in the Margins been running? Tom: Penned…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Verse Stories: interview with Catherine Smith
An Interview with Catherine Smith
Hi Catherine. You’re teaching a course this Autumn 2014 called ‘Verse Stories’. Tell us more about it. Catherine: I’ve always been drawn to narrative in my own poems – I wrote short fiction first, poetry afterwards, so it seemed a natural progression – and whilst I enjoy and admire all sorts of poetry, I feel most…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Open Workshop: ‘It is true that this poem is false.’
After a summer hiatus, our Open Workshops series is back with an original workshop from our new Digital Poet in Residence, Jay Bernard. The thing about life is that it’s a series of mysteries, puzzles, contradictions and paradoxes – our histories, our imaginations, our relationships and our desires. In this workshop, Jay invites you to…
Poetry School
‘The Day She Dropped’
the trifle, it exploded on the blue floor pain -ting cryptic signs churned in chaos. Raspberries, cream, vanilla custard, glacé cherries, perfect sponge, (home-made of course) secrets hinted by hundreds and thousands no-one would ever understand. The cold glister of broken crystal, the old bowl her ex brought back from Paris at his own risk. She…
Lydia Popowich
Pub Chat: Smokestack Books
An Interview with Smokestack Books
This month: we spoke to Andy Croft of Smokestack Books in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth… Hello there, Andy! How long has Smokestack Books been running? Andy: Since 2004. Does your personal background lend itself being an independent publisher? Andy: I have been involved in writing projects that finished with a published product for…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
A Name To Conjure With: Reading ‘Mercian Hymns’
When I first started reading poetry as a teenager, poets seemed to come in three flavours. There were urbane cynics living in the fast lane or sulking in the suburbs. There were the everyday poets who were fond of anecdotes and who wandered into kitchens, started listing things and then tried to force an epiphany…
Holly Hopkins
The Fabric of Cringe … and how to avoid it.
We’re a big fan of Judy Brown’s poetry – here she is reading from her Forward shortlisted Seren collection Loudness – so we are very pleased we’ve been able to tempt her to teach for us this Autumn. Jusy is interested in getting to the nub of how to successfully incorporate details of our modern lives –…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
From ‘As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh’, by Susan Sontag –
This book was recommended to me and yielded good results: Artifice + Reality is an interesting description of death, as well as the cemetery. Cemetery as ideal city is fascinating – curated; everybody obedient. Time effacement — as in, making time inconspicuous? Making the memory ever present / timeless? Last words – almost always trite,…
Jay Bernard
Meet the Digital Poet in Residence: interview with Jay Bernard
An Interview with Jay Bernard
Hi Jay. Your residency is centred around an interactive poem – ‘An Untitled Text Adventure’ – that you’re going to build and document over a period of 5 weeks. Tell us more about the project. Jay: I had this idea last year and wanted to make something really ambitious in time for the WWI centenary….
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘Brother tongue’
This song is for my brother across the water, whose raised eyebrow by email is a flicker in which I do believe. I sing the praises of his silences which sweep up the dead leaves of sound I praise his photos of girlfriends leaning on pillars in temples the light hitting them sideways. For he…
Nicole Fordham