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New Homers – a Reading & Writing Course
I’ve had a vivid and unscholarly interest in the Homeric stories since I was a boy. In those days both the battles of the Iliad and Odysseus’s wanderings among monsters and goddesses filled me with a simple, childish sense of wonder. In my early twenties I discovered Patrocleia, the first section of Christopher Logue’s Homer…
Edmund Prestwich
The Plot Inside The Poem
The playwright David Mamet famously said that what we want to know more than anything else is ‘what happens next’. My own obsession with narrative goes back to my writerly roots in theatre and later in film; I’m always looking for the story, even when it isn’t obvious. I’ve been making a study of the…
Jacqueline Saphra
Logbook: ‘My first day as Digital Poet-in-Residence is almost over’
Monday 28th April My first day as Digital Poet-in-Residence is almost over – in 30 minutes to be exact. I felt very different today – not in a turning-into-a-hologram kind of way, as some of my friends have helpfully suggested as being what will happen when I become ‘in-resident’ but in a ‘I-feel-like-a-writer’ kind of…
Kim MooreLive Q&A with Jen Hadfield: 7 May, 1pm
Who listens like lichen listens . . . ‘Lichen’, Jen Hadfield We’re delighted to have an exclusive audience with Jen Hadfield, who will be coming to CAMPUS on May 7 to discuss the startlingly original, Byssus, her latest collection, and her first after the T.S. Eliot prize-winning Nigh-No-Place. Byssus – pronounced ‘bissus’, and meaning the…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Meet the Digital Poet in Residence: Kim Moore
An Interview with Kim Moore
What on earth do poets do all day? It’s never been easy to earn your way as a professional poet, even for the greats. Wallace Stevens sold insurance policies, T S Eliot managed checking accounts, Marianne Moore worked in a library, Maya Angelou sang in nightclubs and Robert Frost was a chicken farmer (and his earliest…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Write more poems this Summer at the Poetry School
It’s just over a week to go before our Summer Term starts. We’ve dozens of new courses and workshops – both face to face and online – to help you wrangle your poems into shape. You can download the whole programme here – or browse the highlights below. Not taken one of our classes before?…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Online Q&A panel: ‘The Path to a First Collection’ with Amy Wack, Hannah Lowe, Kim Moore and Neil Astley
The path to a first collection – torturous and winding, or downhill all the way? As part of our CAMPUS Digital Open Day, we’ve put together a powerhouse panel of two poet/editor pairings – Amy Wack & Kim Moore, and Hannah Lowe & Neil Astley – who’ll be here to talk luck versus hard work,…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Open Workshop: ‘Dream Mechanics’
Do you write poetry in your sleep? Are you prone to visions of the night? Do you believe dreams reveals aspects of yourself? You’re not alone – poets from Chaucer to Kleinzahler have long delighted in the fantastical and uncertain landscapes created by our unconscious minds. In this workshop, poet and publisher Tom Chivers will…
Poetry School
CAMPUS Digital Open Day: join us May 7
CAMPUS – the social network for poets – is hosting its first ever Digital Open Day this Wednesday 7 May. If you’re currently a CAMPUS member or thinking about joining our community, this is best way to find out more, interact with other poets, as well as a rare opportunity to peek into our many…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)‘Scientists Count Whales From Space’
At night we listen to the crackle of antennae as we track populations. 10 million species and then these slow, shallow swimmers, pale against wavelengths. Image analysis shows us 55 probable, 23 possible pixels driven to extinction. We should monitor more. On this screen where lost things are un-found, automated systems surprise us with…
Nichola May
The Poetry School / Pighog Shortlist Announcement
The Poetry School and Pighog are pleased to announce the shortlist for their second annual pamphlet competition. Judges Simon Barraclough and Catherine Smith read more than 600 ten-page entries, longlisting 35 of them, and from that longlist, picked the following shortlist of 13. Amy McCauley – Slops Fiona Cartwright – Mrs Darwin’s Egg Francine…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Podcast: Hannah Lowe reads from ‘Chick’ and a new poem
Last term, Hannah Lowe headlined our Autumn term launch party and read from her debut collection, Chick, where she thrilled the crowd with tales of misadventure from her childhood and illuminated the secret life of her enigmatic, card-playing father. And now, with this podcast, we re-present the whole reading in all its glory. If you…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘The Poetry School has changed my life by providing an international forum for writing and talking about poetry – it is wonderful.’
To see further testimonials from our students, please click here.
Poetry School
Taking a poem for a walk
To celebrate the release of Walking London – our new audio walking tour download – we asked tutor and urban wanderer, Tamar Yoseloff to write about why walking inspires her and how the best ideas always happen on foot. In her brilliant book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit says: Walking, ideally, is a…
Tamar Yoseloff
‘On the Borders of DTs’
(from The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas) It’s a wild wet day in this tided town and it’s too cold to write. Scarlet ants crawl from the holes in the rocks onto my idle hand. The wind’s blowing hair across my face. I stare from this muddied edge at the shapes of rocks carved in…
Maggie Sawkins
Poetry School / Pighog Poetry Pamphlet Competition longlist announced
The Poetry School and Pighog are pleased to announce the longlist for their second annual pamphlet competition. After receiving over 600 entries (a big increase on last year’s entries), judges Simon Barraclough and Catherine Smith can reveal the 35 poets on the longlist. Simon Barraclough says of the judging process ‘Arriving at the long-list was…
Poetry School
Summer courses on CAMPUS
Dear CAMPUS poets – our swimming shorts are on and our 12 tog duvets have been stuffed back in the attic. Summer is arriving. The Poetry School’s summer term starts 5 May 2014 and we’ve got lots of new, excellent online courses packed full of powerful poetry prompts and fool-proof exercises to get you all…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)This is the end
So I have come to the end of my residency at the Poetry School. It has been a lot of fun, lots of writing in the evening, lots of editing in the wee weekend hours. A great opportunity, and thanks to all of the staff at the Poetry School for being so supportive and encouraging….
Alex MacDonald
Twit Twit Twit: Charol-Annnnn Dhuffy
One of the great things about Twitter is how people can take on personalities for comic affects. There’s a fake Queen, fake Prince Charles, fake David Cameron, so why not have a fake Carol-Ann Duffy? Young_Laureate’s tweets are hilarious and weird, and have very little to do with C.A.D. (or do they?) but the idiosyncrasies…
Alex MacDonald
‘Is There a Doctor in the House?’ The day in tweets…
[View the story “Is There A Doctor In The House?” on Storify]
Will Barrett (Poetry School)Keep Yes and No Unsplit: the rise of Internet translation
Last year, I was delighted to be asked by SJ Fowler to be part of his Camaradefest (a continuation of his series of events where two poets collaborate on a project) with Jack Underwood, Faber Poet and lecturer on Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College. We merged recent ideas which we were both interested in. Then,…
Alex MacDonald
How I Did It: ‘Fat Dandy’
Most people know me as a “performance poet”. I don’t like the term, it’s rather restrictive and plenty of what I write ends up in books, not on stage. Sound is very important though. I want the poem to sound good, to rattle off the tongue, or fall on the ear like a big, soft…
Luke Wright Twit Twit Twit: Crispin Best
I love Crispin’s tweets. Mainly they are plays on words, puns, or subversions of famous lyrics. It is a great example of how Twitter gives an insight into a poet’s work. Crispin’s work is often presented in a fragmented way, humorous and is sometimes aware when an occasion needs capital letters. So Twitter is a…
Alex MacDonald
Internet Explorer: Is ‘Internet Poetry’ any good?
In my previous post and in my manifesto, I mentioned ‘Internet Poetry’ – but what is it? In this post, I aim to give some distinctions of what this form of poetry is, some good examples, and reasons as to why I think it is a sign of a healthy poetry scene. When I found…
Alex MacDonald
‘The Summer our Father Sailed the English Channel’
The summer our father sailed the English Channel, we rolled packets of Polos into smooth white paper tubes. My sister used her felt tip pens to write EMERGENCY MINTS down each bony spine. You were our polar explorer, arctic adventurer. We charted your route, coloured the curved waves of land, solid blue slab of sea….
Karen Jane Cannon