Three bursaries available for Arvon Poetry Workshop in Lincoln.

BURSARIES of up to £200 are available on this:

We’re offering three grants of £200 to cover a large proportion of cost of the weekend, which is £280 in total (including food and drink. We might consider offering the full fee depending on the applicant, but for now we’re offering £200 each.

I hope you are interested in the sounds of this, and would be able to promote it to your students. I have attached a PDF of our flyer which gives you a bit if the flavour of the course. More information can be found here: http://www.arvon.org/course/arvon-lincoln/

I am happy to speak with anyone interested in joining us, and so please do get in touch or put students in touch with me on 0207 324 2554. I work Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. If you have any advice or thoughts also about promoting the course I’d be interested to know.

 

Suzie Jones.

LINCOLN-FLYER

More publishing success for Shirley.

ourshirley
One of our grads, Shirley Bell, has a poem in The North 52 AND she is a Poet of the Week on the Poetry Super Highway (Facebook group) – “online during the week of June 23-29… and then forever thereafter on the Past Featured Poets archive section.”!

More about Shirley at her blog.

Free online poetry course (How Writers Write Poetry).

http://youtu.be/LhlqysmOvFA

The Course

How Writers Write Poetry, a six-week course beginning on June 28, 2014, is an interactive study of the practice of writing poetry. The course presents a curated collection of short, intimate talks on craft by two dozen acclaimed poets writing in English. Craft topics include sketching techniques, appropriation, meter, constraints, sound, mindfulness, and pleasure. The talks are designed for beginning poets just starting to put words on a page as well as for advanced poets looking for new entry points, thoughts about process, or teaching tips. The course will be taught by University of Iowa International Writing Program Director and poet/translator Christopher Merrill as well as Black Rainbow Editions Editor and poet Mary Hickman. Contributing poets’ video talks will be contextualized through online discussion and writing assignments. The Poetry Teaching Assistants (all Iowa Writers’ Workshop students or graduates with university level experience teaching creative writing) will join Mary Hickman in offering online poetry workshops to participants. (Please note: we can’t workshop everyone, but we will workshop a representative selection of participants’ work every week.) Poets who have contributed video craft talks for the course include former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, Kwame Dawes, Marvin Bell, Kiki Petrosino, Kate Greenstreet, and many others. How Writers Write Poetry will offer a diversity of answers to the question of how a writer develops and refines the lifelong practice of his or her craft. Enrollment in How Writers Write Poetry is free and unlimited.

Source/go to: How Writers Write Poetry.

The Shakespeare’s Birthday/St George’s Day Field Trip.

Our Shakespeare’s Birthday/St George’s Day Jaunt to Tupholme Abbey; followed later by visits to the bookshops of Horncastle, including The Most Dangerous Bookshop in the World (Tim Smith Books).

Ranin and Chelsea selfie

Ranin and Chelsea selfie

Frank thinks of Britt Ekland

Frank thinks of Britt Ekland

Joel looks at a pond

Joel looks at a pond

We eat pizza

We eat pizza

This is another pond

This is another pond

Ranin gets to go into an English field

Ranin gets to go into an English field

Poet Tony Curtis defends creative writing courses.

Poet and Emeritus professor Tony Curtis responds to Hanif Kureishi’s jibe about creative writing courses being a waste of time (TC being external examiner on the MA in Creative Writing here at Lincoln):

If Hanif Kureishi feels his experience as a teacher of creative writing at university level has been so negative, perhaps he or the University of Kingston should consider his position. My experience of introducing and teaching the subject at the University of Glamorgan, now the University of South Wales, beginning in 1982, was more positive, with some undergraduates and postgraduates going on to publish. Of course, that can never be the stated aim of such courses, but the success of published and award-winning writers and poets from a course reflects back on both their fellow students and the teaching staff…

Read in full.

Nice bit of publicity for Hanif Kureishi, though.

Google+

New poetry: Poetry of Hospitals and Waiting Rooms, Shirley Bell.

poemsofwaitingrooms

New from redplantpress, Shirley’s latest collection of poems written during the time her husband was waiting for his triple heart bypass.

You can buy the book from Amazon here, and read more at Shirley’s blog. Any profits will go to the British Heart Foundation.

And while we’re at it – congratulations to Shirley on getting her MA in Creative Writing!

Free Poetry Books Society membership for students.

The PBS has launched a free student membership, which is open to all UK higher education students, who can enrol by emailing or sending their proof of student identity to us.

Students can join online and contact will be via email. Once they have enrolled and logged in, student members will be able to view the online version of the Bulletin, our quarterly review of the best new poetry, in the restricted members’ area. They can also order books and receive their 25% members’ discount.

Read more at PBS.

Two poems by Susan Flower: “Homecoming” and “Bolsover Castle”.

HOMECOMING

I take the Romany’s sprigged heather,
tuck its pink tight buds curled like
baby fists tight as a talisman,
blue with longing, into my bag.

I am pierced mid-flight
by a hint of traveller she sees
within – an Irish woman
on the grandmother side,

Ellen Glancy unschooled, catholic
in tastes and religion,
pawned her soul for potatoes
that lay rotting, bleeding
into darkened sod.

Her pilgrimage to England
and Alfred, then retracing steps
to Enniskillen for the wedding,
returning to peg washing
not in a whipped north-easterly
which cut the souls.

Back across grey waters
fretful and choppy, till her own
broke a tidal wave, her firstborn.
Homesick for emerald patches,
a mercurial sky tilting meniscus,
struggling for freedom.

Iron rain lashes my face,
her slashed smile a rent petticoat.
Merging the troubles one with another,
I take her hand in mine,
it lies still but warm, without
need for words.

*****

BOLSOVER CASTLE

I stride the battlements; crenelated Portland stone,
Sheer five hundred feet below grassy fields.

A twenty-mile fish-eye panorama of peaks;
Arkwright’s Sutton Hall, Bess’s glass Hardwick.

Beyond receding greens to softened hues, greys
Through anthracite, slate, to a sooty-blue meniscus

The wind moans the miles, traps whispers in
An ancient avenue of limes to the riding stables, keep.

I descend eroded limestone steps, scoured clean
By tides of serfs; stranded in landlocked Derbyshire.

by Susan Flower (alumna 2010-2011)

The Black Path free literary event, Wed 23 October.

Don’t forget that there will be a free reading of work from The Black Path by last year’s students on the MA Creative Writing course.

The reading will take place in MC0025, 12.00 – 1.00, Wednesday 23 October (2013). Work will include poems, flash fiction and extracts from longer pieces.

Everyone welcome.

Poetry & Audience: 60th birthday celebration at Leeds University.

P&A sculpture1

Prof John Whale with the sculpture bequeathed to the editors of P&A magazine in its early days.

P&A sculpture3

Saturday, 19 October, 2013

Editors past and present, together with various poets, magazine editors and current students gathered at the School of English at Leeds University to celebrate 60 years of Poetry & Audience.

Poetry & Audience is one of the longest-running poetry magazines in the UK and owes its longevity as much to the frequently crisis-driven student-owned nature of its existence as to the commitment of the School of English. It also forms an integral part of the strong literary tradition of Leeds, which includes JRR Tolkien and poets such as Geoffrey Hill, James Kirkup, Tony Harrison, Ken Smith, Jeffrey Wainwright, Jon Glover, William Price (“Bill”) Turner, Paul Mills and many others.

The anniversary involved a roundtable discussion of poetry magazine publishing, readings by P&A poets and editors and individual accounts of the history of P&A (Michael Blackburn, Elaine Glover, John Goodby, Emma Must, Chris Nield, Antony Rowland, Jeffrey Wainwright).

The event was hosted by Prof John Whale, with sessions chaired by Fiona Becket, Hannah Copley and Emily Timms (who also arranged an exhibition of P&A materials). Many thanks to all of them and anyone who I’ve forgotten to mention.

Participants: Michel Blackburn, Carole Bromley, Elaine Glover, Evan Jones, Paul Maddern, Adam Piette, John Goodby, Jay Parker, Christie Oliver-Hobley, Sarah Webster, Amy Ramsey, Mick Gidley, Elaine Glover, Emma Must, Antony Rowland, Jeffrey Wainwright, Hannah Copley, Eleanor Ford, Daniel Boon.

Current and former students of Lincoln may want to submit work to P&A, of course.