Poetry SchoolStAnza’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 populate dozens of the London gardens taking part in June’s Open Garden Squares Weekend with trainee poets in residence. Gardens bloom with poetry bunting, pop-up readings, poetic games and giveaways, while poets develop new professional, career-enhancing skills.
On Saturday, we’ll be delivering a training workshop for this year’s crop of poets, and allocating their gardens. We’ve got allotments, church gardens, wildlife sanctuaries and more to pick from this year, and we’ll divide them between these poets who are taking part in Mixed Borders for the first time. So, congratulations to:
Andrea Robinson, Axel Kacoutié, David Hale, Dorothy Yamamoto, Eleanor Vale & Alesha Racine (working as a pair), Frances White, Ginny Saunders, Gloria Nneoma Onwuneme, Hamizah Adzmi, Joanna Ingham, Lisa Kiew, Lewis Buxton, Louise Adam, Nicola Jackson, Philip Wood, Ryan Norman, Selina Rodgrigues, St John Stephen, Tolu Agbelusi and Toni Hurford.
Joining them will be Alex Josephy, Ann Perrin, Carol Rowntree Jones, Mary Dickins, Mike Sims, Shirley Nicholson and Steph Morris, poets who have taken part in Mixed Borders before, and will be acting as mentors to the new bunch. See the gallery of last year’s residency here.
We’ll be reporting and reflecting on the progress of the garden poets over the summer months, and letting you know where you can go and visit them in their sheds and flower beds.
Meanwhile, here’s a few of last year’s flowers – poems from some of the poets who took part last year, including Alex Josephy, Ann Perrin, Bridget Minamore, Camellia Stafford, Carol Rowntree Jones, Clarissa Aykroyd, Diane Mulholland, Edward Long, Eleni Cay, Emma Hammond, Hilaire, JC Niala, Julia Bird, Mary Dickins, Penny Hope, Shirley Garner, Shirley Nicholson, Sofia Amina, Steph Morris, Tony Lucas, and Zakia Carpenter-Hall
Read the Campus Pamphlet here.
[…] The popular poets-in-residence programme #MixedBorders, in collaboration with The Poetry School, and supported by Arts Council England, returns for a third year. Mixed Borders places poets-in-residence in many of the gardens participating in Open Gardens Square Weekend. This year, 27 gardens will host poets looking to compose new work inspired by the Weekend. Last year’s creations can be found here. […]