Blog
Give It To ‘Em Straight: An Interview with Alex MacDonald
Alex MacDonald, Eric Gregory Award-winning poet and co-editor at poetry journal Poems in Which, will be running our Spring 2017 course Give It To ‘Em Straight. We caught up with him for a short chat about the course, and what he’s up to at the moment. Your upcoming course with us is called ‘Give It To ‘Em…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Blake in Lambeth Print Gallery
How do you fill a page? Poets scratch out one line at a time, darkening the paper slowly from top to bottom – but a visual artist will make one swoosh of a brush, and that’s their canvas completely full of colour and intent. Poets and artists swapped their page-making practices this Autumn in the…
Poetry School
How I Did It – Michael Marks Edition: Polly Clark ‘Tiger, Tiger’
‘Tiger, Tiger’ from my pamphlet A Handbook for the Afterlife is my longest and perhaps most ambitious poem, abandoning the strict notions I held of what a poem is or can be. For a long time it was in my head rather than on the page as a draft because the idea of it –…
Polly Clark
How I Did It: Michael Marks Edition: Fiona Moore ‘Sleep Sonnet’
SLEEP SONNET I last touched the world of sleep at midday when sun shone through and through a train and the woman opposite was painting her nails an ocean of deep red stations trailed unreal names jolted words away from language upholstered in grey/blue now through night without corridors or sleep or stars my mind…
Fiona Moore
Derivatives, Reflection, Homage: An Interview with Róisín Tierney
The Michael Marks Award-winning poet Róisín Tierney will be running our Spring 2017 course ‘Derivatives, Reflection, Homage‘. We caught up with her for a chat about the course, and what she’s up to at the moment. Hi Róisín. Your new course with us is called ‘Derivatives, Reflection, Homage’. Could you tell us a little bit about your…
Ali Lewis
How I Did It – Michael Marks Edition – ‘Anne Whittle (alias Chattox)’
“Wigged w/ cirrus”, “I shall be in a woman’s likeness…” and “LISTEN”: these are among the first notes I put toward the Malkin sequence, scribbling with sudden enthusiasm on a train from Lancaster to Cambridge back in June 2014 (the muses, as has been well-documented, often take the train). The Pendle Witches had fascinated me…
Camille Ralphs
40% off Poetry London subscriptions for Poetry School Students!
As a special offer for this term, students who book a course or one-day workshop at the Poetry School can get a year’s subscription to Poetry London for just £15 – 40% off the standard price of £25! Poetry London is an arts charity and leading international poetry magazine where acclaimed contemporary poets share pages…
Poetry School
Rachel Long Wins Paterson / Poetry School Competition
And that’s a wrap on the Poetry School / Soda Pictures Paterson competiton! Thank you to all of you who entered your diary poems. We loved reading your various approaches to the quotidian. A lot of autumn leaves were fluttering about in your poems, many cats were frolicking among them, and Donald Trump was the…
Poetry School
The Spring 2017 Programme – in two lines or less!
Taking our lead from David Tait and Jennie Osborne this term, we’ve tried to give a concise run-down of our Spring 2017 courses, using just two lines or less! Short Courses A Conversation with the Past (Modernisms) with Tim Dooley: Consider how the innovations of modernism influenced the direction of poetry and workshop new poems in…
Poetry School
“Battle of the Somme” Centenary – Collaboration Opportunity with Simon Barraclough
Attention all – we have a new opportunity to announce! From 2014-18, a huge range of cultural activities are taking place across the UK to mark the centenary of the First World War. The focus of 2016’s commemorations is the Battle of the Somme – or the film of the same name that was released…
Poetry School
Haiku Rebellion: An interview with Lynne Rees
An Interview with Lynne Rees
“I think there’s a democratic aspect to haiku that persists in Japan and in the West that’s very appealing: groups of ordinary people meet to write and share their haiku and, inevitably, their lives”
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
Anti-Poetry for today: Melissa Lee-Houghton looks to reinvent Dada
This is a course for people who want to do something new and respond to the world around them by writing poems which engage with the fizzing energy and anarchic vibe of Dada whilst exploring contemporary art, film and writing and assimilating the current political climate. So what will poets be doing on this course?…
Melissa Lee-Houghton
Adventures in the Blind Field: An Interview with Sally Flint
An Interview with Sally Flint
“The art of really looking intrigues me – especially how poets interpret, use and move beyond what they see“
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
A Tale from the World City: David Tait
“Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you will reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has…
David Tait
How I Did It: Poem in Which…
In darker periods, I spend far too many hours Wikipedia-hopping: clicking from link to link and half-learning all sorts of extraordinary things. I find Wikipedia a real horde of things to write about and poems to find. My favourite articles are the list pages, and the best of these (and a good portal to further…
Harry Josephine Giles
Shey Hargreaves reads ‘Death at Sea’ and ‘Junior Doctors’
Shey Hargreaves, our former Digital Poet-in-Residence with 1215.today, reads two of the poems written during her residency. The poems are also hosted over on the 1215.today site. Junior Doctors is “an homage to all those toiling long, red-eyed hours in the fluorescent throb of hospital corridor”. You can read Shey’s blog post and poem about the…
Ali Lewis
How I Did It: ‘Interlude’
This poem was the first poem I tried to write after a period of about three years during which I didn’t write at all. During this time, I was making some significant discoveries about my family, my mother and myself, unpicking the deep legacies of intergenerational trauma. One day, after work, I took myself to…
Ruby Robinson
Hands On Zines: An Interview with Cherry Styles
An Interview with Cherry Styles
For me, the definition has to do with intent. Zines are not made for profit, it’s all about community, support and a desire to share the good stuff.
Ali Lewis
Ryan Van Winkle’s Blues Gallery
This Autumn, we introduce a new course format on CAMPUS: the Poetry Studio. These will be three-week intensive writing sessions, with inspirational challenges designed for you to get as many poems on the page as possible. We’ve called on our poetry podcaster extraordinaire, Ryan Van Winkle, to take charge of the first of these in September…
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
How to Put on a Poetry Reading
We get a lot of messages from our students asking us how to organise a poetry reading, so we’ve gathered all of our favourite pointers and suggestions into this handy guide. Anything we’ve missed? Let us know your top gig tips in the comments. First Find Your Venue · How many people do you want to invite to…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
The Stanza: Why do poems have them?
I have a fair few books about writing poetry on my shelves, some more helpful and inspiring than others. They do seem to have one thing in common, though: while they spend plenty of time talking about the poetic line, they have nothing much to say about the stanza. They may discuss set forms of…
David Clarke
How I Did It: ‘The Survivors’
I began the poems in Disko Bay during a midwinter residency at Upernavik Museum in Greenland. My brief was to write about the history of the island and its present-day community but I hoped to record some observations on the wider Arctic environment too. However, the weather conditions were so extreme I couldn’t walk much…
Nancy Campbell
How I Did It: ‘Upstairs’
‘Upstairs’ is the pivotal poem in my collection Distance. Six years ago, illness forced my mother to live, sleep and eat in the downstairs part of the house. This was the inspiration for ‘Upstairs’. My original intention was to highlight how, in old age, we slowly lose the world we created. But to write it…
Ron Carey
The Autumn 2016 Programme – in two lines or less!
Everyone likes a bite-sized chunk, right? Well here is a barrel full of them as we try to introduce our Autumn 2016 course programe in two lines or less… Three-Term courses The Construction of the Poem with Tim Dooley, Judy Brown, Matthew Caley, Claire Crowther and Martyn Crucefix: A 30-week course on the history…
Poetry School
Open for Entries – Primers Volume 2: a Mentoring and Publication Scheme
The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press are delighted to announce the arrival of Primers Volume 2, the second year of an annual scheme which creates a unique opportunity for talented poets to find publication and receive a programme of supportive feedback, mentoring and promotion. The scheme will select three poets whose work will feature…
Poetry School