featured Articles
Carol Watts – Laurel Prize: Below the Surface
Welcome to our Below the Surface series for the 2025 Laurel Prize finalists. These pieces shine a light on the creative practice behind these outstanding collections and show how nature and the climate crisis impacted the authors’ processes. Here’s Carol Watts on her collection Mimic Pond. I’ve written poetry as far back as I can remember….
Carol Watts
Katrina Porteous – Laurel Prize: Below the Surface
Welcome to our Below the Surface series for the 2025 Laurel Prize finalists. These pieces shine a light on the creative practice behind these outstanding collections and show how nature and the climate crisis impacted the authors’ processes. Here’s Katrina Porteous on her collection Rhizodont. Networks of Nature Communities and Commissions I did not set out…
Katrina Porteous
Eliza O’Toole – Laurel Prize: Below the Surface
Welcome to our Below the Surface series for the 2025 Laurel Prize finalists. These pieces shine a light on the creative practice behind these outstanding collections and show how nature and the climate crisis impacted the authors’ processes. Here’s Eliza O’Toole on her collection A Cranic of Ordinaries. Writing as the tip of the iceberg How…
Eliza O'Toole
JR Carpenter – Laurel Prize: Below the Surface
Welcome to our Below the Surface series for the 2025 Laurel Prize finalists. These pieces shine a light on the creative practice behind these outstanding collections and show how nature and the climate crisis impacted the authors’ processes. Here’s JR Carpenter on their collection Measures of Weather. How and where do you write? Do you have…
J. R. Carpenter
Judith Beveridge – Laurel Prize: Below the Surface
Welcome to our Below the Surface series for the 2025 Laurel Prize finalists. These pieces shine a light on the creative practice behind these outstanding collections and show how nature and the climate crisis impacted the authors’ processes. Here’s Judith Beveridge on her collection Tintinnabulum. I always write at home in a garage that I have…
Judith Beveridge
Writing After Rimbaud: How Reading the Greats Can Transform Your Poetry
Stav Poleg discusses how to take inspiration and influence from iconic writers such as Rimbaud and use it to elevate your own poetic craft. What drew you to writing in response to other poets’ work? Do you remember the first time you tried it? I’ve always considered the practice of writing as simultaneously an act…
Stav Poleg
Beyond Representation: Supporting Global Majority Writers in a Demanding Literary Landscape
As part of our Poetry Craft series, Louisa Adjoa Parker discusses how to support global majority writers in a demanding literary landscape through poetry. What are some craft strategies you use to elevate personal or political content into work that also speaks artistically or universally? I am very much what I describe as an ‘intuitive…
Louisa Adjoa Parker
CLIMATE POETRY: Kate Simpson and James Ford, ‘Adaptation Gap’
Poets have long used their craft to reframe issues, convey emotion and share ideas, and climate change is an increasing feature of poetry shared across the world. To mark the launch of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures last year, our partners, the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, paired University of Leeds poets with Priestley Centre climate…
Poetry School
Five Women Poets You Should Be Reading Right Now
Clare Pollard who teaches our popular course Learning from Female Poets recommends her top five women poets you should be reading right now. 1. One contemporary woman poet. I’m reading Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry at the moment and absolutely loving it. It’s the sort of poetry that makes me jealous. I read a couple of…
Clare Pollard
How to: Feedback, Originality, & Ownership in Poetry Workshops with Matthew Caley (part 2)
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry and its place in their world. These interviews will cover creative writing tips, excelling in a poetry workshop, building a literary career, and finding your poetic voice. Here’s part 2 of Matthew Caley discussing feedback, originality & ownership in workshops. You can read part 1 of…
Matthew Caley CLIMATE POETRY: Matt Howard and Dr Katie Wright, ‘Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 1775’
Poets have long used their craft to reframe issues, convey emotion and share ideas, and climate change is an increasing feature of poetry shared across the world. To mark the launch of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures last year, our partners, the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, paired University of Leeds poets with Priestley Centre climate…
Poetry School
CLIMATE POETRY: John Whale and Lone Sorenson, ‘Jizz’
Poets have long used their craft to reframe issues, convey emotion and share ideas, and climate change is an increasing feature of poetry shared across the world. To mark the launch of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures last year, our partners, the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, paired University of Leeds poets with Priestley Centre climate…
Poetry School
Poetry Queries: Can Poetry Be Taught? with lisa minerva luxx
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry queries. Here’s lisa minerva luxx discussing the idea of whether poetry can be taught.
lisa minerva luxx How to: Feedback, Originality, & Ownership in Poetry Workshops with Matthew Caley (part 1)
Matthew Caley discusses the emotional aspect of receiving feedback.
Matthew Caley
Poetry Queries: Can Poetry Be Taught? with Giulia Ottavia Frattini
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry queries. Here’s Giulia Ottavia Frattini discussing the idea of whether poetry can be taught.
Giulia Ottavia Frattini
Poetry Craft: My Favourite Poetic Device with Simon Barraclough
Simon Barraclough discusses his favourite poetic device.
Simon Barraclough
Poetry Queries: Can Poetry Be Taught? with Sascha Akhtar
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry queries. Here’s Sascha Akhtar discussing the idea of whether poetry can be taught.
Sascha Akhtar
Poetry Craft: My Favourite Poetic Device with Eve Grubin
Eve Grubin discusses her favourite poetic device.
Eve Grubin
More love poems? Really?
‘Love’ must be one of the most overused words in the English language. So much ‘love poetry’ has been written over the course of human experience, that it might be reasonable to ask – why bother adding to the literature of love poetry? Is there anything more to say? I think there’s lots more to…
Catherine Smith
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
Poet as Archaeologist Studio Blog
This autumn, I’m thinking about what poets can learn from archaeologists and their discoveries. Poet as Archaeologist Studio will be a chance to generate new work, read and discuss poems and get feedback on your drafts. It will also be an opportunity to consider how a different discipline might inform our writing. I spent my…
Holly Hopkins
Taking the Piss Flower: on the pitfalls of writing poems inspired by art, and bringing something new to the party
Ekphrasis is one of those poemy words poets assume everyone knows, like villanelle, and pantoum; but my Mac doesn’t recognise it, flags it up, and takes me to Wiki – ‘an ekphrastic poem is a poem inspired or stimulated by a work of art’. I remember feeling so happy when I first discovered the word,…
Claire Collison
The Zen of Ecopoetics: the contribution of Zen to modernist American poetry
In Breathing: Chaos and Poetry, the Italian philosopher Franco Berardi suggests that poetry is the excess of semiotic exchange that goes beyond the limits of language and, by extension, transcends the limits of reality as we know it. In this sense, poetry offers us a way of rethinking our relationship with non-human beings and environments,…
Enaiê Mairê Azambuja
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
‘Sea Between Us’
The sea turns its beautiful face away, turns its lily-face to the sun. The sea gets cat-close, its muscles ripple under fur as it stalks off alone. In the sea-mirror waves are clouds, whale moon, spaceships polystyrene islands of debris. In the sea-mirror your hand is fairground-strange. The sea is a graffiti artist, writes huge…
Anna Kisby