Residency
Neringa Dastoor: On the ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency
This one-month experimental poetry residency was a very healthy and refreshing process for me, an absolute treat in terms of professional development. Having no particular plan to start with was already very different to what I am used to when teaching BA students or running a creative workshop with the public. Workshops throughout the month…
Neringa Dastoor
Семечки by Iris Colomb: Art from the Drawing Poetry Residency at the Centre for Recent Drawing
Throughout August, six poet-artists took part in our ‘Drawing Poetry’ residency with the Centre for Recent Drawing. John Sheehy, Claire Collison, Sria Chatterjee, Eleanor Penny, Neringa Dastoor and Iris Colomb spent a month in the studio at C4RD, developing hybrid and cross-genre drawing-poems. Throughout September and October, we’re showcasing their work. The third poet-artist whose work we are displaying is Iris Colomb. She discusses her work Семечки…
Iris Colomb
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
Artwork by John Sheehy from our ‘Drawing Poetry’ Residency at Centre for Recent Drawing
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,…
Ali Lewis
Reflecting on a Poetry Residency – Fair Field
I drift between rehearsals staging a peasant’s revolt, watching the actors transform into Money, Holy Church, False, The Pie Seller, and a man running through a dream trying to save the world. I dive head first into Langland’s politically rife, distinctly religious, world. I think about the many problems of today, contemplate the inevitable…
Sophie Fenella
‘Sugar Envy’
I could lick the back bench of austerity, if that would be useful, if that would be something someone wanted somewhere, or I could go day tripping in a house of mould and sin and meet Envy there, and hear about his inability to congratulate mortgages, promotions, mortgages, promotions, awards, mortgages, “I am happy for…
Sophie Fenella
‘Drawing Poetry’: An Experimental Residency – Call for Applications!
‘Drawing Poetry’: An Experimental Residency with The Poetry School and the Centre for Recent Drawing. The Poetry School and the Centre for Recent Drawing are seeking applicants for a new experimental research and practice residency. The residency aims to explore the intersection and cross-pollination of poetry and drawing, and provide an opportunity for creative research,…
Ali Lewis
‘The Last Sight of Her’
Mouthing sleep in a window of adverts Truth finds herself advertised, with the same calligraphy as exploitative news. I am broken, Truth says, Can’t hold my head up can’t shake the dread settling in the eyes of Truth – cementing-empty-nothing. Truth can’t get out of bed, Truth had a heavy night, Truth makes boiled eggs…
Sophie Fenella
1215.today Poet-in-Residence Round Up: Week 4
It’s been another busy week for our 1215.today Poet-in-Residence, Remi Graves. On Monday, Remi explore a ‘positive vision for the future’, setting out the intention to investigate different relationships to “utopia” throughout the week. On Tuesday, Remi reminisced about dancing to Janelle Monae with sisters, discussing the empowerment & hope of lyrics and asking…
James Trevelyan (Poetry School)
Mixed Borders – Plan Your Visit
The snowdrops have blown, the blossom has had it – but the poets are still growing. With two months to go before Open Garden Squares Weekend, our resident poets are nurturing the seedlings of their poems and projects, ready to display them round London’s green spaces the weekend of 17/18 June. The poets have plans…
Poetry School
Fair Field Poet In Residence Call Out
Fair Field Poet In Residence a collaboration between the Poetry School and Penned in the Margins Written almost 650 years ago by William Langland, Piers Plowman enters the mind of a wanderer, Will, as he falls asleep in the Malvern Hills, dreams of a ‘fair field full of folk’ and embarks on a quest to…
Poetry School
Announcing the Mixed Borders 2017 Poets
StAnza’s been and gone, the Ted Hughes Award announcements are on their way — but there’s a gap in the Spring poetry calendar that The Poetry School is still to fill. It’s time for this year’s Mixed Borders. Mixed Borders is a regular collaboration between the Poetry School and the London Parks and Gardens Trust. We…
Poetry School
Battle of the Somme Poetry Residency Performance
A few months ago we invited applications for a collaboration opportunity with Simon Barraclough to commemorate the Battle of the Somme. The ten poets selected have been busy writing poems and will perform them at a special event in London on Saturday 4 February. This is our contribution to the UK-wide cultural commemorations of the…
Poetry School
The Long Read: Reflections on a Poetry in Aldeburgh Residency
In Autumn 2016 we advertised for applications for Poet in Residence at the inaugural Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival. Ben Rogers was subsequently put into position and undertook a month full of research, interviews, writing prompts and poems. We asked him to provide his reflections on this mammoth task in the hope it might prove useful to…
BenRogers
Meet Ben Rogers – the Poetry in Aldeburgh / Poetry School Poet in Residence
Poetry Schoolers, meet Ben. Ben, meet the Poetry Schoolers. Some of you might have already met, mind you. Ben Rogers is a familiar face round London and Cambridge’s poetry events. He’s published a pamphlet recently with the Emma Press (Mackerel Salad) and he’s also featured in Carcanet’s New Poetries VI. Poetry in Aldeburgh is a…
Poetry School
Mixed Borders: The London Open Garden Square Weekend
The tomatoes are plumping and the lawns greening ready for this year’s London Open Garden Square Weekend. For the second year running, the Poetry School and the London Parks and Gardens Trust have planted trainee poets-in-residence amongst London allotments, churchyards and communal spaces for a weekend dedicated to opening up London’s secret gardens to curious…
Poetry School
Re-Mixed Borders
Re-Mixed Borders Poet? Lover of flowers and / or vegetables? Want some poet-in-residence training? Read on, we have an opportunity for you! Last year, the Poetry School and London Parks and Gardens Trust teamed up for a poet-in-residence training scheme centred on London’s Gardens. We called the scheme ‘Mixed Borders’. Julia Bird from the Poetry…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
“All I can do now is keep walking”: an interview with Choman Hardi
All this week we’ve debating on CAMPUS the issue of how to give voice to the silenced in poetry. The contributions so far have been fascinating, so please keep them coming! For the second act, I interviewed Choman Hardi, a hero of mine and whose poem ‘The Angry Survivor’ provided the centerpiece of this debate. The…
Clare Shaw
Meet the Digital Poet in Residence: Clare Shaw
Hi Clare! Tell us about your upcoming residency, ‘You took the words right out my mouth’. Clare: I’m a poet, but until recently I spent most of my working life as a trainer and researcher in mental health services. This work was explicitly rooted in my own history – a history which has also found…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)Happy National Poetry Day!
To celebrate, here is a sumptuous jumble of poems touching upon the themes of ‘books’, ‘bookshops’, ‘craft’, ‘design’, ‘handwriting’, ‘reading’ and ‘libraries’. Thank you to all who made recommendations, and if there are any that I’ve missed, please write them in the comments section below as I’d love to see them. Enjoy! ✎ ‘In my…
Lavinia SingerThe Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow, and its beauty. – Oscar Wilde, De Profundis In 1891 Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas in the architectural jewel-town of Rouen. Douglas was…
Janette AyachiA Personal Preface
As a child I wrote many a “happy song”, often compiling them in books of my own construction with accompanying drawings. Thankfully these weren’t such “that all may read”, but remained private, incompletely formed little objects that I enjoyed making and owning. Since then I’ve been learning about the bookmaking process and how techniques…
Lavinia SingerMeet the Digital Poet in Residence: Lavinia Singer
An Interview with Lavinia Singer
Hi Lavinia! When we first started discussing your residency – For the Love of Craft: Confessions of a Bibliophile – you spoke about wanting to “defend your aestheticist interests”. So could we start by explaining what those are and why you think they need defending? Lavinia: I suppose the issue is with beauty and how to…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)CAMPUS Pamphlets: ‘Mixed Borders’
This giant marrow of a flicky book is the latest in our series of CAMPUS pamphlets, and has sprung from the green fingers of our Mixed Borders poets. In early summer this year, we collaborated with the London Parks and Gardens Trust to put sixteen poets in sixteen of the gardens taking part in London…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)Rebellious Love: Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky
When Allen Ginsberg first laid admiring eyes on Peter Orlovsky in 1954 in a flat in San Francisco, he was naked in a painting with tousled yellow hair and a beguiling gaze. He asked the artist who it was posing, and Orlovsky was called from the other room, transmogrified into reality, fully clothed. It was…
Janette Ayachi