News

The first Digital Poet in Residence of 2015

We’re elated to announce that poet, writer, film-maker and human tornado, Ross Sutherland, will be our next Digital Poet in Residence. For his residency – ’30 Videos / 30 Poems’ – Ross will create thirty new films over March to April 2015, while he tours across the UK with his show Standby For Tape Backup. Each new film will be a…

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Summer 2015 courses in one line or less

LONDON – SHORT COURSES The Tao of Poetry with Liane Strauss – reviltalise your poetic practices as Liane shares her love of classical Chinese poetry with you Developing a Style with Tim Dooley – develop your own poetic voice in conversation with the best of poetic tradition Alien Vs Predator with Kathryn Gray – poetry…

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Residents Association

Have you ever been a resident poet? Did your local stately home / barbershop / ironmongers invite you to soak up their atmosphere, talk to their customers and create new poems from the experience? We’d like to hear from you if so … The Poetry School is working on an exciting new project which will…

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Lo and Behold! It’s our new micro-commissions…

Last year, the Poetry School launched ‘Lo and Behold!’ – a fund to support innovative poetry creation and promotion projects. From more than 150 submissions, five projects have just been selected and are about to start work. ‘Lo and Behold!’ was designed to fund projects that explore new ways of creating or promoting poetry –…

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New Year’s Poetry Resolutions

Dear CAMPUS poets, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a restful holiday break. Sadly, my glacier glasses have been packed away, the reading specs are on, and I am now safely ensconced back in our pleasingly overheated offices. It’s not all grey skies and back-to-work, however – we’ve got lots of terribly exciting things…

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Open Workshop: ‘Beyond English – Poems in Constructed Languages’ with Harry Giles

Nadsat, Riddleyspeak, Klingon, Zaum, Lapine, Newspeak: what happens when we take a hammer and nails to language? What happens when we break a language apart, or try to start a new one? Constructed words and languages can be for play and imagination, like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, and they can be part of a broader political…

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Open Workshop: ‘The List Cause’ with Beverley Nadin

When does your shopping list become a poem? Is there hidden poetry in your New Year to-do’s? Find out on our latest Open Workshop with Beverley Nadin. The structure of the list can build a cumulative atmosphere, narrative or scene. Train stations, molars, fallen men… Sequential or random, protracted or efficient, informative or plain indulgent,…

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Open Workshop: ‘Crimes and Misdemeanours’

Think of all the rules you’ve heard in poetry workshops: Show don’t tell. Be more concise. Restrain your use of adverbs and adjectives. On this Open Workshop with Kathryn Maris, you’ll be ripping up the workshop rulebook with a roguish disregard for good taste and ‘respectable’ writing. With the help of a step-by-step assignment devised by…

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Open Workshop: ‘Mosaics from the Broken Mirror – Writing and Revising the Ghazal’

The ghazal makes unique rhetorical demands on the Western writer. In our latest Open Workshop, Jason Schneiderman will be getting you to think through your ghazals and to explore the multiple ways to revise these modular poems. Do you enjoy finding a hand-crafted wooden puzzle in your Christmas stocking more than a satsuma? Prefer origami…

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Live Q&A with Mark Doty: ‘Queer Poetics’

This 5 December 2014, one of the mega-giants of American poetry, Mark Doty, will be live on CAMPUS and in conversation with Digital Poet in Residence, Jason Schneiderman. Mark Doty was the first American poet to win the British T.S. Eliot Prize. One of the most important authors to write about HIV/AIDS in America, Doty’s vision…

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Live Q&A with Don Share – ‘Poetry Here & There’

We are overjoyed to announce that Don Share, poet and editor of Poetry magazine, is coming to CAMPUS this December for a Live Q&A. No wacky catchy byline needed – it’s Don Share, everyone. Don Share! Don will be in discussion with Kathryn Maris, our Digital Poet in Residence, and they’ll be variously discussing: the…

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Lo and Behold! The Poetry School Micro-Commission Fund

Lo and Behold! The Poetry School Micro-Commission Fund The Poetry School invites applications to its fund to support innovative poetry creation and promotion projects. We have five sums of £750 to support poets, artists and producers in the creation of ambitious new work. We want to fund projects that explore new ways of creating or…

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Announcing our 5th and 6th Digital Poets in Residence!

We’re very excited to announce ‘American English’, a twisty Trans-Atlantic twin residency with Kathryn Maris (DPIR #6). Kathryn Maris, who grew up in New York and now lives in London, and Jason Schneiderman, who spent his early childhood England and now lives in Brooklyn, will compare notes on trends in UK and US poetry, discussing…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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Poetry School to guest edit Butcher’s Dog #4

We’re thrilled to announce that The Poetry School will be Guest Editor of issue #4, from submissions to launch, giving poets and readers an understanding of the things magazine editors are looking for and dispelling a few myths along the way. Send us your poems! The submission deadline for Butcher’s Dog #4 will be published in…

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Autumn 2014 courses in one line or less

L O N D O N   –   L O N G   C O U R S ES Advanced Poetry Workshop with Mimi Khalvati (afternoons and evenings) In-depth feedback on your poems in progress Form & Music with Roddy Lumsden A technical approach to poetry for advanced writers Take Your Writing Further with…

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Announcing The Poetry School / Pighog Poetry Pamphlet Competition Winner!

Pighog and The Poetry School are delighted to announce the winner of our second annual pamphlet competition. Judges Simon Barraclough and Catherine Smith whittled down more than 600 entries to a shortlist of thirteen, then awarded the first place in the competition to … Natacha Bryan for her pamphlet If I talked everything my eyes…

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Open Workshop: ‘Half-remembered Things’

A brand new Open Workshop for Summer with Rialto poet, Jen Campbell. In this workshop, Jen will get you to dig through your childhood memories, picking out something half-remembered and twisting it into something new. You might change something small, or transform it into a whole new tale. You’ll then put this story into a…

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Open Workshop: ‘Putting A Poet In Your Pocket’

Hot on the heels of her ‘Show Us Your Poems’ surgery, current Digital Poet in Residence Kim Moore leads the next in our Open Workshops series… Reading other people’s poetry is vital to keep our own poems alive and breathing.  In this workshop, you are going to be carrying around a poet in your pocket,…

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Live 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…

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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?…

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