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‘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
Animal Magick
It is perhaps not surprising that The Faber Book of Beasts, edited by Paul Muldoon, has been consistently in the top 50 of Amazon UK’s best-selling poetry titles since its publication in 1998. The earliest cave drawings depict humans alongside animals. Creatures have provided the imagination with the essential content for mythologies and allegories; they…
A.B. Jackson
Transreading Central Europe
When I mention I translate contemporary Polish poetry, I’m often asked: ‘Do you translate Szymborska?’ ‘I might, but I don’t,’ I explain, ‘there’re so many other poets who deserve equal attention.’ By now Szymborska, Różewicz, Herbert, Miłosz and Zagajewski have become household names also in English; they’re fortunate to have some poems in more than…
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
‘The Manacles, at Porthoustock’
This is what you gave me, Salvaged from a memory: Watching from the headland. Pointing from the outside in. You named the rocks, Sung them in a circle, Gave them their voice as they stirred in slack water. Penwin; Morah; Maen Voes. And those that came rising from the sea, The finger bones of witches,…
Amy Rafferty
Announcing our 4th Digital Poet in Residence… Jay Bernard
We’re very excited to announce that Jay Bernard will be The Poetry School’s 4th Digital Poet in Residence, following on from previous residencees Kim Moore, Alex MacDonald and Claire Trévien. Jay’s ‘An Untitled Text Adventure’ starts this Monday 11 August 2014, in which she will write and create a prototype for an online text adventure. These grew…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
The Poetry of Parenthood
The images coming from Gaza at the moment show mutilated and dying children. It would be tempting to say that as a parent you feel the horror more, but this is smug nonsense: people without children are just as capable of compassion. What a parent feels is, instead, perhaps more complicated – my compassion is…
Clare PollardPub chat: interview with Candlestick Press
An Interview with Candlestick Press
In the 2nd of our new series of feature-length interviews with independent publishers, we took afternoon tea with Jenny Swann and Di Slaney of Candlestick Press in our imaginary poetry theatre pub somewhere in Lambeth… Hello there! What are you drinking? Jenny: Coffee, from one of those traditional French green-and-gold cups but minus the saucer….
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Scotland small? A Century of Scottish Poetry
Buried in one of Hugh MacDiarmid’s long, later poems (‘Direadh’) is a clear passage that strikes the reader like an angry epiphany: Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small? Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner To a fool who cries ‘Nothing but heather!’ (…) MacDiarmid then moves…
Richie McCaffery
Sharpened Into Absence: poems inspired by the Polar Museum, Scott Research Polar Institute
Earlier this year, the Poetry School collaborated with the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge on a series of poetry workshops. Led by Lucy Hamilton and Lucy Sheerman, students explored the museum’s exhibits, research and artefacts in search of inspiration for new work. Via the first of a new series of ‘CAMPUS Pamphlets’ we’re delighted…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff) CAMPUS Pamphlet: ‘Sharpened Into Absence’
Earlier this year, the Poetry School collaborated with the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge on a series of poetry workshops. Led by Lucy Hamilton and Lucy Sheerman, students explored the museum’s exhibits, research and artefacts in search of inspiration for new work. Via the first of a new series of ‘CAMPUS Pamphlets’ we’re delighted…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)The Page of Love, or, ‘Some nice things people have said about us recently’
I would be lost without The Poetry School courses. Olivia Dawson, 2 July 2014, CAMPUS I have really enjoyed the course and everything Poetry School is doing for the cause of promoting this art … Personally, as I’ve never had any formal feedback/training it has been nothing short of utterly inspirational. Jake Higgins, April 2014,…
Poetry School