shingle street residency Articles

How I Did It: ‘Violet-among-the-Harpsichord’

I was commissioned by Claire Trévien to write a new poem for her Penning Perfumes Christmas Special. In the Penning Perfumes projects you are sent a mystery perfume to write a poem about. Once you’ve completed the poem, the scent is revealed to you. The idea is that you are able to work with the…

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‘People on the beach’

Before and also during this residency I was uncertain about the whole idea of ‘poetry of place’. I’m not sure, for instance, that a poem can ‘capture’ a locale, or relive a culture. Even if land changes fairly slowly, culture and language are changing all the time – they exist because of real human beings…

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‘Feelings’

On the Shingle Street residency we talked a great deal about how to get into the mode of writing a poem – how to get into the right feeling. Amy said that one way she writes poetry is to place objects or images around her which give her particular feelings and she tries to bring…

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Shingle Street Residency interview with Amy Key

An Interview with Amy Key

Last month, out intrepid poets-in-residence, Amy Key and Nia Davies, were in Shingle Street on the Suffolk coast for a week of writing, homesteading and blogging. Thank you to Poetry School trustee Daphne Astor and her friend Tim Miller (owner of the Shingle Street cottage) for offering this residency opportunity. Amy and Nia were kind enough…

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