Articles
Primers Announcement!
The manuscripts are dog-eared and the Judges dog-tired, but we are now delighted to be able to make the final Judges’ announcement in our Primers publishing and mentoring scheme. From the origianal submissions of about 350 poets, the four writers who we are going to take forward to publication with Nine Arches Press are ……
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Devouring and Creation: the Poetry of Food and that which Feeds our Poetry
In both his letters and his poetry, John Keats implored artists to “live unpoetically” by focusing on an “acuteness of vision”. This means listening, watching, touching and tasting what is going on around us every day. We do not isolate special occasions in order to squeeze out a poem, we are moved by something that…
rosie shepperd
Poetry and Multimedia II
In this installment of interviews with poets and performers who have combined poetry with other media we hear from actor Robert Bathurst, who is staging and starring in a double-bill of Christopher Reid’s A Scattering and The Song of Lunch at the Chichester Festival; Jacqueline Saphra, poet and poetry school tutor whose book If I…
Kathryn Maris
Our poetry gigs of 2014
As an extra stocking filler to go alongside our ‘books of 2014’ blog yesterday, we present our favourite poetry gigs of the year. After all, not all poetry is best experienced on the page… KEY OD = Ollie Dawson / JBrd = Julia Bird / WB = Will Barrett / JBdn = Jo Brandon Chris McCabe‘s…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Not the T S Eliots: our poetry books of 2014
Looking back over 2014, it’s not just the weather that’s been unexpectedly fine – it’s been a vintage year for poetry. Once again, we present our annual round-up of our favourite poetry books. Last year, we only managed to notch up 15 recommendations; this year we have hand-foraged a whopping 23 poetic pabulums for you….
Will Barrett (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)
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
Where do good ideas come from?
Well there’s a doozy of a question. For as long as we’ve been online, there’s been a lot of fervent chatter on the CAMPUS-sphere about where to look for ideas for new poems. Well, dear readers, if we had the magical formula we’d have already shut up shop, moved to the Bahamas and started banging…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
A Room of One’s Own
A couple of years ago I decided to have ‘A Room of One’s Own’ tattooed on my lower right forearm. It is extremely hard to explain to people what the words mean – I found this out when I tried to tell the tattooist why I was having this particular tattoo. How to explain that…
Kim MooreThis 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 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 Twit twit twit: Emily Berry
If anyone follows me on Twitter, they will know I am a big fan of Emily’s work since forever. Her debut Dear Boy is a wonderful book, filled with funny and sad poems that I just keep going back to read. Her Twitter feed is an immeasurable joy, and when I first started favouriting tweets…
Alex MacDonald Twit twit twit: George Szirtes
Many young poets and writers have been influenced/taught by George through his time at the University of East Anglia. Others will be more acquainted with his prize-winning book Reel and his extensive translation projects. I first came across him on Twitter, to be honest. I thoroughly enjoy his tweets about what it’s like to be…
Alex MacDonald Twit twit twit: Patricia Lockwood
The title of my residency is ‘This Twittering World’, a reference to T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton and, also, Twitter. I discovered a lot of my now favourite poets through Twitter when I joined several years ago. It also was an eye-opener into how the poetic mind works, shoring its ideas into small fragments. In this…
Alex MacDonald
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)
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)
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
Poetic tourism
When I first pitched the idea for this blog post I felt very strongly about the subject of poetic tourism (i.e against it), or at least I thought I did. Concretising my thoughts has made it unfortunately clear to me that this is not as clear cut a topic as I’d hoped, and it is…
Claire Trevien
The 100 poems challenge
What is it about being a poet that makes challenges so attractive? Many questioned my sanity when, inspired by Tim Clare, I decided to take part in a challenge to write 100 poems in a day. Tim Clare is a dab hand at this, having participated in the challenge for the last five years. In the…
Claire Trevien
Reviews as a creative act
Does reviewing feed into your writing? This is one of the questions I, and other poet-reviewers, hear most frequently. Well firstly, I feel that I need to add the following disclaimer: I’ve been heavily reducing my own reviewing of late, mostly as an act of self-preservation. I reserve my reviewing energy for other magazines than…
Claire Trevien
Lo-fi poetry: a best-of
In a recent interview with Helen Ivory, we discussed the new dawn of lo-fi poetry: zines that embrace their low-budgets, a preference for the hand-crafted over the sleek. Helen came up with this wonderful summary of the situation: ‘because of Kindle, books will generally become more beautiful as objects and be valued as such, rather…
Claire Trevien
Why We Built CAMPUS: A Foreword from our Director
With the launch of the CAMPUS blog, I’m delighted that we can now open up the Poetry School’s CAMPUS social network for public registration. CAMPUS is an online platform that incorporates the Poetry School’s tutor-led educational activity (online courses and workshops) and many free activities (digital poets in residence, live Q&A’s, video essays) within a…
Ollie Dawson