Blog
All of our Blog Posts
Downloading the Undergrowth
“You do worry about buying electronic goods these days, because technology evolves so fast. It’s not quite the same concern when purchasing an anvil” – Harry Hill Poetry, for many people, will be seen as an anvil – something that won’t fluctuate within the constant gallop of technology. Unlike TV, film or modern art, that…
Alex MacDonald
How to Write Poetry: a List of Various Guides, Primers, Essays and Introductions
Poetry School staff doing some ‘very important’ poetry-based research on Facebook one recent lunchtime noticed an interesting thread populating itself on Allison McVety’s page. Poet and friend of the Poetry School, Allison was asking for recommendations on the technicalities of writing poetry – and dozens of her writerly friends responded with tried-and-tested books and essays…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)This Twittering World
‘This Twittering World; or 8 Things I Don’t Necessarily Disagree with About Poetry On The Internet’ Internet as 3D Poet The Internet provides the readership of a Poet with a rounded representation of his or her life and work. Social media, which typically the Poet is fond of, allows the Poet’s Shakespearean ‘aside’ to…
Alex MacDonald
Meet the Doctors: Helen Taylor
An Interview with Helen Taylor
The second of our eight Is There A Doctor in the House? poet tutors is Helen Taylor. Helen is studying for her PhD at Royal Holloway University in London, concentrating on the Liverpool-based movement Merseybeat. Helen, what’s your PhD about? Helen: My thesis is the first major critical discussion of Merseybeat poetry, considering it as…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Meet the Doctors: Tara Bergin
An Interview with Tara Bergin
How many times have you been to a literature event and a person in the audience has asked the person on stage ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ We’ve just discovered the answer. The Poetry School’s forthcoming Is There A Doctor in the House? event is the place writers (you) get their ideas from….
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
Live Q&A with Sean O’Brien: ‘The Poetry of History’
We’re ecstatically excited to announce that Sean O’Brien will be coming to CAMPUS this Spring to kick off a new season of Live Q&A’s and answer your questions. Sean is one of the most prolific and important figures in British poetry over the last four decades, as well as being a highly acclaimed critic, journalist,…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Open Workshop: ‘Hackwriting’
So far in our Open Workshop series we’ve had Oulipio-style creative upcycling with Claire Trévien, pronounless prosody from Dai George, and a reflection on the power of inheritances from Richie McCaffery. February’s Open Workshop comes courtesy of Alex MacDonald, our Digital-Poet-in-waiting, who will be offering ‘a study in uncreative writing’, inspired by his own poem…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
How I Did It: ‘The Shipwrecked House II’
I wrote ‘The Shipwrecked House II’ at my grandmother’s funeral. I know this because this image is my contribution to her funeral book. A few weeks later I met Tom Chivers for the first time to discuss my yet untitled collection. I wanted to go with ‘Hook’ in memory of my grandmother (her maiden name)…
Claire Trevien
Shingle Street Residency interview with Nia Davies
An Interview with Nia Davies
This is the second part of our series of interviews with our two, ever-doughty Shingle Street poets-in-residence. You can read the first interview with Amy Key here. This month we spoke to poet, editor and outdoor runner, Nia Davies, on everything from Sinbad the Sailor to the Suffolk coastline and haunted weapons training facilities. Again, a big…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Reading Dylan Thomas
The first time was a reading Fern Hill aloud, pacing the room the while, hoping (though not meaning to) that some of the pastoral Dylan stardust of having been so ‘honoured among wagons’ that he was ‘prince of the apple towns’ might rub off on a Londoner. The second time was a glimpse, from the…
Graham FawcettOpen Workshop: ‘Absent Pronouns’
There’s another free Open Workshop coming your way on CAMPUS. Starting 27th January, Seren poet, Dai George, will lead you through the process of writing pronoun-less poems, removing the ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘you’ altogether. Pronouns shape our thinking and determine the type of poem that we might write. For this Open Workshop, you will look at the…
Poetry School
On Inklings: an interview with Sarah Westcott
An Interview with Sarah Westcott
Sarah Westcott’s debut pamphlet Inklings feels deceptively flimsy – I love the way that it builds up minute observations to reach its epiphanies. ‘Who can argue with the woman / who saw Christ in a slice of Mother’s / Pride, his beard and aquiline nose / branded into the hot crust?’ Without wishing to blow the Poetry School’s trumpet,…
Sarah Dawson
Reading the South Americans
My father, early on, lit the touch-paper of South America for me by trying to make short work of my disappointment that Colonel P H Fawcett, who wrote Exploration Fawcett and then disappeared in the Mato Grosso in 1925 while looking for El Dorado, was not a direct relation. I even ended up glad he…
Graham Fawcett
Podcast: James Brookes reads from ‘Sins of the Leopard’
Last term, Poetry School tutor James Brookes co-headlined our Autumn launch party with this wintery tranche of poems from his debut collection, the Dylan Thomas Prize-nominated, Sins of the Leopard, which we are delighted to present to you now. James will also be teaching an Online Feedback Course for us this Spring, so if you…
Poetry School
The Sound of the City
An Interview with John McCollough
Seasoned city-stroller, John McCullough, returns to the Poetry School with his new course, The Sound of the City, a cross-town train ride through the exciting sounds, juxtapositions and energy of modern urban life. With their dense, swarming zones of activity, cities have long provided powerful sources of poetic inspiration, giving form and impetus to many…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Not the T S Eliot Prize: our best poetry books of 2013
It’s that time of year again. The Christmas tree in your front living room has already begun to embrown and turn weepy, when the first of the ‘Best Poetry Books of Year’ lists begin to trickle in. Far be it from us to snub such an important tradition. As hard as we tried to read…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘King Kong’
On my 8th birthday, just after the 1976 release of King Kong Aunt Sarah gave me a creature – a rubber toy the size of a two litre bottle of Coca-Cola, as fake as the story, all the stories she used to tell me about justice and democracy punishment and freedom the sins of men…
Albeniz Clayton
Killer Serials: Sequences, Groups and Multi-part Poems
An Interview with Simon Barraclough
A man of many projects, Simon Barraclough is well placed to guide our students towards successful sequences in his new spring term course, Killer Serials: Sequences, Groups and Multi-part Poems. All three of his collections hinge on the strength of their sequences; my personal favourite is the series of heart poems in Neptune Blue (Salt,…
Poetry School
The end of a residency
So it is now the end of my digital residency with the Poetry School and I am having trouble concluding. It was an exciting time for me to be involved, seeing CAMPUS grow in numbers, reading the fascinating blogposts by Julia Bird, Amy Key, Nia Davis, participating in the Live Q&A’s, pushing students of the…
Claire Trevien
Shane Rounce
How I Did It: ‘As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent / you asked for the latest party’
This is the last poem that made it into my new book, just as the publishers and printers were calling time. It’s a definite Summer of 2013 snapshot. When I wrote it, all these things were in the air: the David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A; BOWIEOKE (David Bowie karaoke) at The Betsy Trotwood,…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
How I Did It: ‘Violet-among-the-Harpsichord’
I was commissioned by Claire Trévien to write a new poem for her Penning Perfumes Christmas Special. In the Penning Perfumes projects you are sent a mystery perfume to write a poem about. Once you’ve completed the poem, the scent is revealed to you. The idea is that you are able to work with the…
Amy Key
‘Levelling Song’
I am the new crow laureate of the empire state, perched on a cushion at the right hand of the governor, by his appointment, a bard-bird of sorts; diamonds sparkling in my claws, I wear a ruby crown, and sing a song so strong it rivals Niagara’s electrifying roar, saving millions for Albany; I sing…
Lisa Bellamy
Maintenant! An interview with S J Fowler
An Interview with S J Fowler
Has any other poet thrown himself into curating and collaboratively creating contemporary poetry with the same enthusiasm as S J Fowler? Publishing five collections in three years is an achievement in itself, but there’s also something admirable about the way he draws other artists and poets into his creative orbit, whether that be by collaborating…
Sarah Dawson
‘People on the beach’
Before and also during this residency I was uncertain about the whole idea of ‘poetry of place’. I’m not sure, for instance, that a poem can ‘capture’ a locale, or relive a culture. Even if land changes fairly slowly, culture and language are changing all the time – they exist because of real human beings…
Nia Davies