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Blog on our course ‘Making Poetry Happen: Poetry Performance by Women & Gender Nonconforming Artists’
Iris Columb on her forthcoming course ‘Making Poetry Happen: Poetry Performance by Women & Gender Nonconforming Artists’, beginning Thursday 25 January 2024. The Risk of Liveness I attended my first poetry night, by chance, in 2014. It was through watching people share their words with a room full of friends and strangers that I really…
Iris Colomb
Stanzas for Ukraine – 25
The Heat by Fedir Mlynchenko, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj My flight from the war, launched by Moscow against Ukraine, is similar to the stories of millions of other forced exiles. It’s still too painful to even think about and especially to share my recollections.Despite having traversed thousands of kilometres, I still couldn’t…
Fedir Mlynchenko
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Elisabeth Sennitt Clough on ‘My Name is Abilene’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection to write about the inspiration behind some of their poems from the chosen collection. Here’s Elisabeth Sennitt Clough on what inspired her to write My Name is Abilene. My Name…
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough Stanzas for Ukraine – 24
Dreams by Dmytro Lazutkin, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj My four-year-old daughter asked me one day “Dad, how is it that we dream?” Wasn’t she too young to be interested in concepts like this? I thought. The answer surely was no. But was I ready for such challenges as answering this question? Of…
Dmytro Lazutkin A Story That Will Never End; An Obituary, for Victoria Amelina
The Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina died at the weekend from injuries she sustained following a Russian missile attack on the pizzeria where she was dining on 27 June 2023. Her death, which was announced on 3 July 2023, brings the total number of casualties from the strike to 13, including four children. Victoria, who was…
Victoria Amelina
Review Roundup – Inspector Inspector by Jee Leong Koh, Faust by Sandeep Parmar, O by Zeina Hashem Beck
Departing significantly from his earlier collection Steep Tea, Jee Leong Koh’s latest work, Inspector Inspector, is an elegiac, yet witty and bold exploration of history, exile and Asian queer identities. Through various forms and narrative, the reader is invited into a variety of spaces: the personal or the intimate, queer spaces of the lover; the…
Jennifer Wong Stanzas for Ukraine – 22
From the Springs of the Earth by Vasyl Makhno, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj I belong to the ranks of those who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union with their own eyes, and the Revolution on Granite and Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence. However, by contrast I observed the Orange Revolution and The…
Vasyl Makhno
Form Laboratory
Here are some exceptional poems from Jacqueline Saphra’s Form Laboratory. When I proposed this set of collaborative workshops to The Poetry School, I had no idea of the creativity it would unleash. During the darkening evenings of Autumn 2022, Thursdays became a poetic laboratory where an adventurous, generous, and inspired group of poets invented new…
Jacqueline Saphra Stanzas for Ukraine – 21
Hatred by Halyna Huliieva, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj The subjects and themes of my writing didn’t fundamentally change after 24 February 2022. The war as far as I and many other Ukrainians were concerned didn’t begin last year (and ultimately probably not nine years ago) because I studied history and somehow always…
Наlyna Huliieva Stanzas for Ukraine – 20
Me, Ulyana and Energy by Iryna Sazhynska, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj The day before yesterday, when there was a storm, my father said: ‘Do you hear that? It’s missiles again!’ It was just thunder, which we are doomed to associate for the remainder of our lives with the expectation of death. Last…
Iryna Sazhynska Stanzas for Ukraine – 19
The Poetry of Displacement by Darya Zorina, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj Forced displacement is a theme which has not been picked up by Ukrainian poetry. This is the literary genre, however, which is usually the swiftest and most sensitive to respond to all that happens in the country and to every mass…
Darya Zorina Stanzas for Ukraine – 18
To Speak by Oksana Osmolovska, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj I am ashamed to admit it but I was ‘above politics’ and even proud of it for a long time. I was of course for the Maidan and a little later I was against the annexation of Crimea and Donetsk along with Luhansk….
Oksana Osmolovska Stanzas for Ukraine – 17, Anniversary Blog
“Anniversary Blog: Speaking To The Moment” by Stephen Komarnyckyj On 24 February 2022 Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was struck by missiles and Russian troops, who had occupied part of the country’s Donbas region and Crimea in 2014, crossing the border. Russian state TV had been flooded with genocidal rhetoric for weeks, with threats to…
Steve Komarnyckyj Stanzas for Ukraine – 16
The Dead Flowers of Forgetting by Iya Kiva, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj I am often asked how I accepted the decision to leave Donetsk. Yes, I know that in Ukrainian the verb has to be ‘approved’, but there was neither approval nor acceptance of the choice I made. I left my home…
Iya Kiva Stanzas for Ukraine – 15
Fall in Love, Dark Eyed Maidens’[1] by Natalka Fursa, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj. The prelude of this war for me was the 27 June 2009, when my daughter brought her fiancé round so we could get to know each other. It was the same day that Poltava celebrated the three hundredth anniversary…
Natalka Fursa Stanzas for Ukraine – 14
The ‘Fraternal’ War[1] by Lana Perlulainen, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj. This war wasn’t a surprise for me. I happened to be living with my husband and son in Novosibirsk when the August Putsch of 1991 occurred, followed by the collapse of the unbreakable Union and Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence. Suddenly, Large-State chauvinism…
Lana Perlulainen
The Proust Questionnaire
TAMAR YOSELOFF Bio: A transplanted Londoner, poet, lecturer, urban walker, frustrated non-painter and practicer of tsundoku What do you consider your greatest achievement? I’m still working on it. What is your idea of perfect happiness? It isn’t so much an idea as a state – sometimes elements come together – place, weather, company – but…
Tamar Yoseloff Stanzas for Ukraine – 12
When Spring is Stolen by Varel Lozovyi, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj When spring is stolen from you right on its threshold.When you are waiting for her[1], like a bride, like a long-awaited release from prison, like God’s salvation from the clutches of cold, dank grey winter.And they steal it from you suddenly,…
Varel Lozovyi Stanzas for Ukraine – 11
THE LONG DECOLONIZATION; how, despite the destruction, Ukraine is moving towards the future by Anatoliy Dnistrovyi, translated from the Ukrainian and annotated by Stephen Komarnyckyj THE LONG DECOLONIZATIONhow, despite the destruction, Ukraine is moving towards the future There are three eras in recent Ukrainian history when culture and society have flourished significantly: the twenties and…
Anatoliy Dnistrovyi Stanzas for Ukraine – 10
The Language of Poetry and Losses by Oksana Kutsenko. Translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj During wartime the language that people use changes, you can’t argue with that, it’s self-evident. However, turning page after page of the Ukrainian calendar, beginning from February 24, 2022, many details are revealed that are important for the Word…
Oksana Kutsenko Stanzas for Ukraine – 9
It Was As If There Was No Life And No Poetry Before 24 February 2022 by Andrii Kovalenko, Ukrainian poet, novelist, journalist (Kyiv). Translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj Six months since the beginning of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and our latest war of liberation, life is divided into what came before and after….
Andrii Kovalenko Stanzas for Ukraine – 8
A World That Is Still Watching… by Anna Malihon. Translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj ‘Everything will start from a small country, from one that no one would have thought of’ she said ‘there will be great changes in the world, at a high price, along with blood and death. However, it will be…
Anna Malihon Stanzas for Ukraine – 7
The Poet’s Nose by Serhii Rybnytskyi, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj With what part of the body can I reflect on matters as a poet? My nose, which for me it is practically an ‘Achilles Heel’. Any blow can knock me down, the slightest cold or drop in blood pressure clogs my nostrils….
Serhii Rybnytskyi
Sources of Poetic Language
Imagination, Wonder, and the Everyday The mourning doves are beginning to coo again and yesterday I saw the families of cardinals in the yew, all busy setting up. The past few days were very windy, and we found a fallen nest, the size of a basketball, along the street. It feels as if I am…
Carmen Bugan
A Slice of Butterworth-Toast: Writing Poems for Children
I think I could spot a Charles Causley children’s poem a mile away, in the dark. All of them bear a unique fingerprint of magic, music, and respect for the reader’s wish to be entertained – but it’s also true that no two Causley poems are alike. Flip through his Collected Poems for Children and…
Rachel Piercey