Julia-in-the-office has been running a series of food and poetry drop-in events based on Simon Barraclough’s heart poems this month. See ‘Pizza Heart’ and ‘Celeriac Heart’ here – http://simonbarraclough.com/#/videos/. We’d like to see Paella Heart, Escargot Heart, Bratwurst Heart, Big Apple Heart, Toblerone Heart, Shish Heart … all the holiday foods as metaphors for the state of your heart.

That’s it! Please upload any or all of your summer poems into the ‘A True Account of Talking to the Sun’ group.

Think about the people who make a holiday happen: the airline pilot, the holiday rep, the pool boy, the chalet girl, the waiter, the hotelier, the B&B landlady, the ice cream man, the donkey handler, the tour guide, the souvenir seller, kids’ club entertainer, bartender, lifeguard, museum guard, duty free parfumier, living statue, putting green attendant, cockle seller, pickpocket. What are their stories and situations in relation to your own holiday?

Please share your poems by uploading them to our ’A True Account of Talking to the Sun’ group.

Where are you going on holiday this year / where was your best holiday ever / where would you like most to go on holiday? What language do they speak there, and what are the untranslatable idioms from that language? What does the literal French phrase ‘to have a white night’ mean? What about the German ‘I understand only train station’? Or the Turkish ‘don’t iron my head’? Have a browse in some dictionaries of idiom, and see what poems ensue … here’s a few to get you started.

http://www.dw.de/top-10-german-idioms/g-17428878
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_idioms
http://omniglot.com/language/idioms/index.php

As ever, please upload your poems into our ‘A True Account of Talking to the Sun’ group.

Inspired by @betarish‘s poetry postcard workshop, go and buy yourself a postcard (local beauty spot or Donald McGill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill or anything in between) and write a poem on the back of it, one that comments in some way on the image. Scan it in or photograph it and post it on CAMPUS … or if you’d like to post it to us in real life, our address is The Poetry School, 81 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DX. We’ll pin it up on our wall!

SUMMER POEM PROMPT #1

We’ve all heard of the mini-break, but in the spirit of our week of holiday themed poetry workshops – some of which only last a couple of hours – we want you to write a very small holiday poem. What’s the smallest beach you can imagine – a glass of water and a pinch of sand? Does skidding along an icy pavement count as skiing? Think amount the smallest amount of time you’d need to take away from your normal week for it to count as a holiday … and how you’d fill it.

If you\’d like to take part, please upload and share your poems to the \’A True Account of Talking to the Sun\’ group.

http://tinyurl.com/talktothesun

Wild Swimming and Poetry | Facebook

Untourist Attractions | Facebook

Aha, it seems you can’t post a photo and a link to the same update in CAMPUS. Well, that last one was Rishsi’s photo, this is his poem choice …
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171368

This one is Rishi’s favourite, in advance of his session on poetic postcards … it’s a 17 July poem for sure. He’s also sent us a postcard image from his latest holiday – a scene of sunny Lyon.

This Tony Hoagland poem, ‘Jet’, is full of the strange wonder of Summer.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171284

I’m not sure if this knockout by Robert Graves qualifies as a summer poem in the purest sense, but it’s got a balmy, midsummer melancholy that I find very evocative of this time of year (plus marks should go to Graves for the non-naff use of ‘brininess’)

The Cool Web

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/cool-web

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I found this when I was looking for summer poems to tweet to advertise the Summer School. Charming, eh? The ‘Who Will Buy’ song from ‘Oliver!’ seems to owe it a very great debt. What’s my equivalent today? The burble of the coffee machine in the cafe near my bus stop on the way into work …
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182520

Please find attached a full timetable for the week, including information on all our Summer School activities and workshops.

PoetrySchool uploaded new file(s): summer-school-information-for-students.pdf to A True Account of Talking to the Sun: The Poetry School’s Annual Summer School 2014

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=d407d4ea7f3986f5ab1bdddb9&id=5b4c897982

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=d407d4ea7f3986f5ab1bdddb9&id=5b4c897982

Phrasebooks and Swimsuits: all you need for our forthcoming poetry Summer School …

http://18.134.219.44/courses-workshops/index.php?phrase=enter+a+keyword&type0=0&x=48&y=11