Blog
Writing the Self: Performance & Sacrifice with Nisha Ramayya
In Indo-European Poetry and Myth, philologist M. L. West traces links between poets and priests in the Indo-European language family, from Old Irish, Welsh, and German, to Greek, Avestan, and Sanskrit. He begins with a simple thesis statement: ‘all peoples at all times have had poetry and song.’ Understanding poetry and poetic language as language…
Nisha Ramayya
Poetry Books of the Year 2019
Well, it’s been a remarkable year for poetry and the Poetry School. So remarkable, in fact, that we haven’t had time to do full justice to our annual best-of-the-year list. Worry not: we’ve managed to scrabble together enough time not spent in poetic reverie or arguing over kerning to recommend fifty-two of the year’s finest…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘Go to the Zoo’: on Writing About Animals
A couple of weeks ago, I came across this recording of Greta Stoddart reading her poem ‘Errand’. I love the poem, and I love her introduction to it. Describing a time when Rilke was suffering from a sort of writer’s block, she talks about Rodin’s advice to him: ‘Go to the zoo. And stand in…
Jonathan Edwards
Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, and The Poetry School launch The Laurel Prize
We are delighted to be able to announce the launch of The Laurel Prize and honoured to be collaborating with Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage on one of his headline projects. The Laurel Prize will be an award for the best collection of environmental, ecopoetry, or nature poetry. The Prize will further the discourse around climate…
Poetry School
Spring 2020 Term Courses Are Now LIVE
We are delighted to announce that our Spring 2020 courses are now UP and BOOKABLE! Below is a quick guide of all of the courses that have opened for booking today. Note: We expect many of our courses to sell out very fast, so make sure to secure your place on your favourite course or courses today!…
Sarala Estruch
Xriss Xross: A Report
Poetry can spring up in the most unlikely places – even Zone 3. For Xriss Xross, a free one-day writing festival, the Poetry School took over RAW Labs, an airy studio space at a fringe of the DLR that many Londoners (this one included) will never have visited before. It was the perfect setting for…
Tristram Fane SaundersApplications open for paid internship at the Poetry School
About the role At the Poetry School, we believe that a career in the literary world should be an option for anyone, regardless of background, and not just the privileged few. What is more, we believe in true diversity of voices and that this can only be achieved by an industry whose workforce more accurately…
Helen Galliano
Memory, History, Loss, & Gains
If, like me, you believe that uncovering untold histories – whether personal, familial, or national – is important, and a vital part of the poet’s work, then join me for a day of reading and discussing poets who do just that. A few months ago, I was in a workshop with Bernardine Evaristo and the…
Sarala Estruch
The Big Issues
I began thinking about writing this blog on the day of the mass murder of Muslims in New Zealand. Just how do you begin to respond as a poet to something like this? And in the UK, and around the world, there have been similar atrocities. We’re in this mess of seemingly endless Brexit, with…
Katrina Naomi
Poetry of Parenting Playlist: Thirteen For Now
Fiona Benson, author of the brilliant Vertigo & Ghost, and tutor of the Poetry School course Writing Childhood, Writing Parenthood, presents an unmissable Poetry of Parenting Playlist. (1) Kathleen Jamie, ‘Ultrasound’ This gorgeous, unsurpassable sequence in Jizzen (Picador, London: 1999) travels from ultrasound (‘Second sight / a seer’s mothy flicker, an inner sprite’) through the ‘difficult giving’ to ‘the first…
Fiona Benson
Review: ‘Shadow Dogs’ by Natalie Whittaker
Natalie Whittaker’s Shadow Dogs (ignition press) introduces a powerful, controlled new voice. The twenty-one poems collected here are often short and restrained but, to steal from the pamphlet’s title, the elegant sentences and striking images cast enormous shadows, conjuring something much bigger than themselves. Because of the care with language and the sense of a lived…
Jonathan Edwards
Pub Chats: Bad Betty Press
Welcome to Pub Chats, our series of interviews about the nuts and bolts of publishing with some of the country’s most innovative indie presses. Joining us for a chat and a drink today is Amy Acre of Bad Betty Press. Hello there! What are you drinking? I like a bit of everything, but it’s 4pm…
Ali Lewis
Pub Chats: Platypus Press
Welcome to Pub Chats, our series of interviews about the nuts and bolts of publishing with some of the country’s most innovative indie presses. Joining us today in our mystery spit-and-sawdust somewhere in Canary Wharf is Michelle Tudor of Platypus Press, an indie publisher of poetry, fiction & non-fiction based in England. Hello there! What…
Poetry School
Poetry School Books of the Year 2018
It’s been a superb year for ‘little shapelets’ and their ‘sprinkling of white space’. Funny, painful, complex, adventurous, elegiac, innovative, insightful and enduring, the books we have chosen to celebrate here represent just a small selection of the marvellous work we have read and loved over the past twelve months. Below, in alphabetical order, you…
Poetry School
The Poet’s Bookshelf
What book can no poet do without? That’s the question we ask every poet who teaches or writes for us. The Poet’s Bookshelf is a fantasy library containing one title – poetry or prose – recommended by each and every poet who comes through our doors. If you’re stuck for inspiration, why not have a…
Poetry School
Pub Chats: Verve Poetry Press
In the latest interview in our Pub Chats series, we sat down for an imaginary 8am pint with Stuart Bartholomew of Birmingham’s Verve Poetry Press, sister press of the successful Verve Poetry Festival. Hello there! What are you drinking? I am scarily varied on drinks (a bit like I am with poetry). White Wine, Guinness,…
Poetry School
Poetry in Aldeburgh Round-Up
Friday Aldeburgh is a lovely seaside town lined with little shops, bakeries and cafés. As one of the poets, I was lucky enough to stay at Elizabeth Court, the artists’ accommodation, which was entirely booked for the festival. How often do you run into poets in the corridor or meet them while making breakfast in…
Danne Jobin
Pub Chats: Seren
Pub Chats is back! After an extended hiatus, the Poetry School’s long-running series of interviews with indie publishers returns with a fresh round of innovative small presses. First to join us in our imaginary theatre pub somewhere in London’s docklands is Rosie Johns, Marketing and Communication Officer at Seren. Hello there! What are you drinking? Rosie: You…
Poetry School
Pub Chats: Holland Park Press
Pub Chats is back! After an extended hiatus, the Poetry School’s long-running series of interviews with indie publishers returns with a fresh round of innovative small presses. Joining us today in our imaginary theatre pub somewhere in London’s docklands is Bernadette Jansen op de Haar of Holland Park Press. Hello there! What are you drinking? Bernadette: A…
Poetry School
Summer School 2018
Get your towels ready, it’s about to go down! Our Summer School is back, and this year is better than ever. So dust off that bathing suit and dive into a week of half-day workshops running 23 – 27 July. This time around we’ve collaborated with Rachel Long, poet and founder of Octavia – Poetry…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Tutor Academy – April 2018
Looking to shake off this Siberian weather? In need of some springtime inspiration? Then check out our upcoming Tutor Academy! For this project we have collaborated with Nathalie Teitler, director of The Complete Works, and co-curated a panel of up-and-coming poets who have never taught for the Poetry School before. We are very happy to be welcoming these 8 poets into…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Poetry School Books of the Year 2017
What were your top five poetry books of the year? What about top one hundred? Despite a rumour to the contrary… this year has been an alarmingly thick one for poetry. Stupefyingly thick. Not simply coats-the-back-of-a-spoon thick, but thick-enough-to-stand-up-in-a-straw thick, cutting-off-oxygen-flow-thick, a year so thick with great poetry you could re-mortar Dame Mary Archer’s 1683 residence, The Old Vicarage…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
Queer Poetics: Beyond the White, Straight, (Cis-)Male Literary Canon
In recent years, I’ve been increasingly keen on the word ‘queer’ as a descriptive tool for self-identifying as LGBTQ+, but also as a way of negotiating and understanding the society we find ourselves in. Despite its former derogatory connotations, ‘queer’ has since been reclaimed by many as a powerful lens through which to better depict…
Mary Jean Chan
By Heart in C Minor: On the ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency
Throughout August, six poet-artists took part in our ‘Drawing Poetry’ residency with the Centre for Recent Drawing. Sria Chatterjee, John Sheehy, Eleanor Penny, Claire Collison, Neringa Dastoor, and Iris Colomb spent a month in the studio at C4RD and attended workshops with poets Holly Corfield Carr and Chris McCabe, and artist Jamie John James Jenkinson, as well as…
Claire Collison
Interview with the Primers Vol. 2 Winners: Cynthia Miller, Marvin Thompson and Ben Bransfield
With the deadline for Primers Volume Three, our mentoring, editing and publication scheme, just around the corner, we thought we’d catch up with last year’s Primers poets, Marvin Thompson, Ben Bransfield and Cynthia Miller, to find out about their experience on the scheme. You can buy their book, Primers Volume Two here! To apply for Primers Volume Three,…
Poetry School