news and events
A LITTLE, ALOUD - NEW ANTHOLOGY
"Listening to the spoken word is one of the most profound sources of comfort. The sense of being looked after, nourished and replenished, is like being fed. The listener can relax and place their trust in the reader. The experience is quite unlike reading to oneself. Part of this, claims Davis, comes from "the slowness of the human voice". When we are engaged at the pace of ordinary speech, we don't skip on, we engage with the many levels of meaning in the story. It grows deeper and more real. From this, people start to talk freely about what a text has meant to them – and become liberated in their personal lives.
To promote this programme, the Reader Organisation is about to launch an anthology of prose and poetry, A Little, Aloud, for reading out in one of the hundreds of "read aloud" groups that have been springing up across the UK. It's an eclectic volume, with well-chosen gobbets from Tennyson, Dickens, Saki and Yeats as well as Elizabeth Jennings, Anna Sewell, the Brontes, Louisa M Alcott and Joanne Harris.
"Bibliotherapy" is not yet in the dictionary, but if this campaign takes wing, it might turn out to be a really important breakthrough in the practice of mental health. Words becoming deeds: it's a winning formula."
Robert McCrum The Observer 4th July 2010
A Little, Aloud. RRP: £9.99. Publisher: CHATTO & WINDUS. Publication Date : 30 September 2010.
THE ALZHEIMER'S POETRY PROJECT
GLASGOW
St Mungo's Mirrorball. This is a Glasgow based network for poets and poetry lovers that organises regular readings from the best local, national and international poets.. For more information on becoming a member or on upcoming events contact Jim Carruth. email : jim@carruth.freeserve.co.uk. Free
WINNERS OF THE NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION announced
Leading novelist and poet Helen Dunmore has won this year's National Poetry Competition, organised by The Poetry Society. First prize of £5,000 was awarded for her poem 'The Malarkey'.
Dunmore said of receiving the news: "I've written very few poems over the past four years... but now I have the feeling that there is the kernel of a new collection. It is a great boost to receive the prize - a confirmation."
Judges Daljit Nagra, Ruth Padel and Neil Rollinson were captivated, as Padel explains: "This poem sprang out at me at once, on first read-through, from ten and a half thousand poems, because of the surprising focus it gave, linguistically, imaginatively and emotionally, on something that was not there. It was not showy. I found it completely arresting in its
quietness; in the hidden strength of what it was saying so unobtrusively."
Second prize (£1,000) was won by Ian Pindar for 'Mrs Beltinska in the Bath'. He has two collections, Emporium and Constellations, both forthcoming from Carcanet.
John Stammers was awarded third prize (£500) with 'Mr Punch in Soho'. The poem will appear in his third collection, Interior Night, published by Picador in April.
Commendations were awarded to Julie Collar, Peter Kahn, Valerie Laws, Neil Lockwood, J.P. Nosbaum, Frank Ortega, Sam Riviere, Cherry Smyth, Jon Stone and Jane Yeh.
For more information and to read the poems, visit the Poetry Society's website at www.poetrysociety.org.uk.
NEW IPHONE APP brings multimedia poetry project to a new platform:
This April, Poetry Everywhere with Garrison Keillor (www.poetryfoundation.org/poetryeverywhere and www.pbs.org/poetry) returns to public television and the Web with new poems and unique voices.
Produced by WGBH Boston and David Grubin Productions, in association with the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, the project offers 32 short poetry films during unannounced moments in the public television broadcast schedule. Through television and the Internet, viewers are granted an exclusive, front-row seat to the world’s greatest poetry festival.
The poetry films are freely available to all local public television stations and interweave with regular programming, airing unexpectedly. The Poetry Everywhere series employs a variety of dynamic production approaches, including poets reading their own work to the camera, animated interpretations of much-loved poems, and celebrities reading favorite poems. The project aims to reach a broad audience with the power of great poetry, and to increase poetry’s presence on television and the Web.
New this season is the Poetry Everywhere iPhone application. The app continues to serve the series’ objectives by expanding the audience for the art form and introducing a new way of experiencing great poetry. Through an easy-to-navigate media player, the app will offer selected videos from the project and provide moments of excitement and even revelation throughout the day.
According to WGBH executive producer Brigid Sullivan, “With Poetry Everywhere, our goal is to provide a new destination for poetry. It’s a wonderful gift if we can give television viewers a moment to slow down and think about a poem.”
David Grubin, the producer of the series, has always believed that “if poems became a part of our media landscape, as easily available as an e-mail or a text message or a television program, we would turn to them more often, and find the solace and wisdom, beauty, and delight for which we long.”
Building on Poetry Everywhere’s existing collection of 24 short poetry films, the project’s third year adds eight new poets reading their own works: Marilyn Chin, “The Floral Apron”; Toi Derricotte, “Blackbottom”; Martín Espada, “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper”; Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry Picking”; Maxine Kumin, “After Love”; W.S. Merwin, “Yesterday”; C.D. Wright, “Lake Echo, Dear”; and Daisy Zamora, “Mother’s Day.”
Anne Halsey, media director at the Poetry Foundation, notes, “One of the Poetry Foundation’s intentions is to encourage new readers of poetry by finding new avenues of delivering poetry to people. Through this emerging platform, we hope to reach a new audience with the works of some of our greatest living poets.”
Selections from Poetry Everywhere are also offered on iTunes U and YouTube for free downloading. The video content can be shared among individuals, colleges, educators, book groups, and poetry clubs.
Garrison Keillor returns to Poetry Everywhere as series narrator. Keillor’s enthusiasm for poetry is well documented, both as a regular feature on his public radio programs, A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac, and in his poetry anthologies, Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times. Keillor’s introductions to each of the poems and poets provide audiences with wonderful insights into each poet’s perspective.
Poetry Everywhere is a co-production of WGBH and David Grubin Productions, in association with the Poetry Foundation. David Grubin is the producer. WGBH’s Brigid Sullivan is executive producer. The poetry films of Philip Levine, Charles Simic, and Seamus Heaney were created by Leita Luchetti for the WGBH series Poetry Breaks. The series is distributed nationally by Boston-based American Public Television (APT).
Visitors to Poetry Everywhere on the Poetry Foundation’s website, www.poetryfoundation.org, will find the text of the featured poems as well as biographies and more work by the poets. In addition, selected poems are featured in a special educational collection on the Poetry Foundation website, which includes video, background essays, strategies for teaching the poems, and sample lesson plans.
The Poetry Everywhere website at www.pbs.org/poetry and the Poetry Foundation’s website also feature a collection of original animated interpretations of contemporary poems created by undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
For a full list of poems included in the Poetry Everywhere series or additional information on the program and partners, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org/poetryeverywhere.
T.S.ELIOT PRIZE WINNER: PHILIP GROSS
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce that Philip Gross has won the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry with The Water Table, published by Bloodaxe.
The judges of this year's Prize, Chair Simon Armitage, and fellow-poets Penelope Shuttle and Colette Bryce, reached their decision after months of deliberation and debate. The winner was chosen from a field of ten highly-regarded poets.
Simon Armitage said:
'A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence.'
Born in Cornwall in 1952, Philip Gross lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth in South Wales. His previous collections include The Egg of Zero (2006), Mappa Mundi (2003), Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), The Wasting Game (1998) and several collections for children, including Scratch City (1995) and The All-Nite Café (1993). He has recently published I Spy Pinhole Eye, a collaboration with photographer Simon Denison, published by Cinnamon Press. He is also the author of ten highly-praised novels for young people. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. The Water Table is published by Bloodaxe.
Simon Armitage formally announced the winner on January 18 at the T S Eliot Prize award ceremony at the Wallace Collection, where Mrs Valerie Eliot presented the winner with a cheque for £15,000. Each shortlisted poet receives a cheque for £1,000, in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry. The Poetry Book Society would like to thank Mrs Eliot for her generosity in providing the prize money.
In the second year of a three-year sponsorship the John S Cohen Foundation is sponsoring the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. The Foundation includes the David Cohen Prize for Literature amongst its portfolio, which covers the arts, education, culture, environment, conservation and heritage.
The T S Eliot Prize is supported by the T S Eliot Foundation.
The Water Table by Philip Gross and all the shortlisted titles can be ordered online from www.poetrybookshoponline.com or by phone from the PBS on 020 7833 9247. Poets shortlisted: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Fred D'Aguiar, Jane Draycott, Sinéad Morrissey, Sharon Olds, Alice Oswald, Christopher Reid, George Szirtes and Hugo Williams.
NEW ONLINE MAGAZINE
The Poetry Society has launched a new online magazine showcasing work by young people.
You can read poems by young poets, articles about poetry by established poets, and get information about competitions and other outlets for your work.
Read the first issue here: www.ympoetry.org
LONDON
8pm, Monday, 8th March 2010
Venue: Troubadour Coffee House, 263-267 Old Brompton Road, London SW5, nr. junct. Earls Court Rd & Old Brompton Rd
Entry: £6 (concs £5)
Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour
Publicity material for this event states: A major moment in the poetry season when the latest Magma rolls off the presses. Magma 46 editors, Jacqueline Saphra and Norbert Hirschhorn, the regular Magma team, a wide selection of Magma 46 contributors and two guest poets, Anne-Marie Fyfe and Penelope Shuttle.
For information, advance booking, season ticket & mailing list enquiries, phone 020-8354 0660 or visit www.coffeehousepoetry.org.
HULL
City of Hull announces Larkin festival and trail
Hull, the city where Philip Larkin worked as the university librarian, has announced that it is to honour the poet's memory with a five-month festival and an interactive poetry trail.
Full article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/25-years-on-hull-honours-larkin-with-tourist-trail-1864708.html
LONDON
Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling
6.30pm, Monday, 1st March 2010
Venue: The Swedenborg Society, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
Admission: £5 (£3 concession)
Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling
Iain Sinclair will give a reading with poet, sculptor and performance artist Brian Catling, as part of Swedenborg House: Fourteen Interventions, our bicentenary exhibition. The evening will be a chance to view the show, and in particular items of interest from the Society's archives.
Advance booking is highly recommended. Contact: nora@swedenborg.org.uk or call 0207 405 7986.
LONDON
The Poetry Hour in Jewish Book Week 11am 28th February
Let yourselves be transported by the readings and musings of three major poets. They may be about Budapest or the East End, film reels or music scores, philosophy or politics, reflections on love and death or the dilemmas of being Jewish.
Bernard Kops is the much-loved author of more than forty plays for stage and radio, nine novels, two autobiographies and most recently a collection of poetry, This Room in the Sunlight.
George Szirtes was born in Budapest and came to England as a refugee in 1956. Trained as an artist, he is a translator, editor and has published some dozen prize-winning books of poetry, his most recent The Burning of the Books. www.georgeszirtes.co.uk
Michelene Wandor is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician. She is the first woman to have had a drama on one of the National Theatre’s main stages – The Wandering Jew, in 1987. Her radio drama includes original radio plays and dramatizations, the most recent, Tulips in Winter, about the Jewish philosopher, Spinoza. Her books about contemporary theatre include Carry On, Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics, and Postwar British Drama: Looking Back in Gender. She has made a CD of the music of Salamone Rossi, the 17th century Italian-Jewish composer. Her poetry collection, Musica Transalpina, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for 2006. www.mwandor.co.uk.
For more information:http://www.jewishbookweek.com/2010/the-poetry-hour.php
LONDON
Poetry: New York - London 7pm, Monday 1st March 2010
Venue: Oxfam Books & Music, 91 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 4RB
Entry: Free (£8 suggested donation)
Publicity material for this event says:
An exciting evening of trans-Atlantic poetry. American poets David Lehman (Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, Academy Award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990) and Mark Ford (editor of the Collected Poems of John Ashbery and own poetry published by Faber) read alongside five of the Young British Poets to celebrate the launch of Oxfam's poetry DVD Asking a Shadow to Dance:
Emily Berry (Eric Gregory Award winner 2008), Liz Berry (Eric Gregory Award winner 2009), Kayo Chingonyi (Poetry Society's Slambassadors UK championship winner), Luke Kennard (shortlisted for the Forward Prize 2007) and Heather Phillipson (Eric Gregory Award winner 2008).
Admission is free, but during the current emergency appeal for Haiti, a donation of £8 is suggested.
Please RSVP on 020 7487 3570.
CRASHAW PRIZE shortlist announced
The 2009 Crashaw Prize - which attracts manuscripts from poets in the UK and Ireland, the USA, Australia and New Zealand - has announced its shortlisted poets.
The Crashaw Prize is an international annual prize for a first collection of poetry. Entrants must not have been published before, and must permanently reside in the UK & Ireland, the USA, or Australia & New Zealand.
The shortlisted poets, selected from over 120 entries, are:
Phil Brown, Il Avilit (ENGLAND)
Matt Bryden, Boxing the Compass (ENGLAND)
Theodore Z. Cotler, House with a Dark Sky Roof (USA)
Nathan Hoks, Book of Clouds (USA)
Yvonne C. Murphy, Aviaries (USA)
Andrew Pidoux, Year of the Lion (USA)
Nick Potamitis, The Book of Night Terrors (ENGLAND)
Terry Ann Thaxton, Getaway Girl (USA)
Jonty Tiplady, Zam Bonk Dip (ENGLAND)
Ryan Van Winkle, Untitled (SCOTLAND)
Eoghan Walls, The Salt Harvest (IRELAND)
Anna Woodford, Birdhouse (ENGLAND)
Salt's managing director, Chris Hamilton-Emery, said: "The Crashaw Prize is unique in discovering poets from many different cultures and locations, yet it is clear that we share not only a language but increasingly a shrinking, more accessible, digital world. Poetry in English is now a global exchange of ideas and practices: there are no dominant modes of writing, no success patterns to adopt or defend, no single model of expression and our heritage is a global one. Audiences, too, are as diverse as the writing and writers. This diversity as well as the community of poetry in English is to be celebrated and, indeed, forms the background and impetus to the Crashaw Prize itself."
The winners will be announced on Friday 26th of February
Aldeburgh First Collection Prize Winner for 2009, J.O.Morgan, announced
The book, Natural Mechanical, - which was also shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize - comprises a single narrative poem recounting a childhood on the Isle of Skye. In a year attracting a record 92 entries, Aldeburgh judges (and poets) David Constantine, Mimi Khalvati and Michael Laskey (Chair) were unanimous in their final decision.
Mimi Khalvati said:
"Such an engaging, affecting book. It effortlessly combines different verse-forms: remarkable, particularly for a first collection, in deftly tackling a book-length narrative, and also refreshing in its sense of tradition."
Michael Laskey said:
"We admired this book for its live language and sophisticated story-telling, but we loved it for its generosity, its unsentimental celebration of a disadvantaged boy making good."
Responding to news of his win, J O Morgan (31) said:
"I've never thought of it as a prize-winning book. I had hoped it might affect people in the way books have affected me in the past. That?s all I've ever wanted from any of the works I've undertaken. I really hope the book continues to be enjoyed by many more people."
In addition to a £3,000 cheque, J O Morgan receives an invitation to read at next year's Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (5-7 November 2010), plus a week's paid protected writing time on the inspirational East Suffolk coast.
Further information, contact: Alice Kent, 01986 835950 or email akent@thepoetrytrust.org
MANCHESTER
A Poetry Discussion Course led by Ian Pople & Frances Sackett
November 7th: Selected Poems, Robert Herrick
December 19th: Nigh-No-Place, Jen Hadfield
January 9th: Singing in the Dark, Alison Brackenbury
February 13th: Harbour Lights, Derek Mahon
March 13th: The Chine, Mimi Khalvati
April 13th: Continuum, Nina Cassian10am to noon, Saturday, 7 November 2009
Friends' Meeting House, Manchester
£50 for 6 sessions Booking: 01457810531 or ian.pople@manchester.ac.uk
OXFAM Oxfam launch poetry CD - live recordings of 69 leading British and Irish contemporary poets
JOSEPHINE HART Catching Life by the Throat . How To Read Poetry and Why. Poems from Eight Great Poets is the new book and 4 hour CD from Josephine Hart. The poets featured are Auden, Dickinson,T.S.Eliot, Kipling, Larkin, Moore, Plath andYeats, read by celebrated actors and writers.Josephine Hart's Poetry Hour
BALLOCH
A poetry reading group now meets in Balloch Library, Balloch, West Dunbartonshire approximately six-weekly. Details can be obtained from Ian Baillie or Alistair Paterson, at 01389 830739 or by e-mail at prism.atic@virgin.net.Free.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
J.O.MORGAN Natural Mechanical
ROBERT PINSKY Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems To Read Aloud +accompanying CD
JEAN VALENTINE Lucy
BASIL BUNTING Briggflatts. New Edition with DVD and CD
W.S.MERWIN The Shadow of Sirius
KEVIN HART Young Rain
JOHN BURNSIDE The Hunt In The Forest
DON PATERSON Rain
CHRISTOPHER REID A Scattering
GLYN MAXWELL Hide Now
PETER PORTER Better Than God
EMMA JONES The Striped World
MEIRION JORDAN Moonrise
HUGO WILLIAMS West End Final
ALICE OSWALD and JESSICA GREENMAN Weeds and Wildflowers
FRED D'AGUIAR Continental Shelf
CHARLES WRIGHT Sestets : Poems
PAULA MEEHAN Painting Rain
GILLIAN CLARKE A Recipe For Water
JANE DRAYCOTT Over
JEN HADFIELD Nigh-No-Place
RUTH PADEL Darwin:A Life In Poems
NICK LAIRD On PurposMARTHA KAPOS Supreme Being
GEORGE SZIRTES Collected Poems
MICHAEL DONAGHY Collected Poems
DAVID CONSTANTINE Nine Fathom Deep
SHARON OLDS One Secret thing
DAVID MORLEY Invisible Kings
NUALA NI DHOMHNAIL The Fifty Minute
FIONA SAMPSON Common Prayer
MARY OLIVER Thirst
SARAH MAGUIRE.The Pomegranates of Kandahar
LAURIE SHECK Captivity
SEAN O'BRIEN The Drowned Book
FRANCES LEVISTON Public Dream
CAROL ANN DUFFY The Hat. Her new anthology for children of poetry from Chaucer to Ted Hughes
ed. KEI MILLER New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology
EILEAN NI CHUILLEANAIN The Sun-fish (Gallery)
FRED D'AGUIAR Continental Shelf (Carcanet)
JANE DRAYCOTT Over (Carcanet)
PHILIP GROSS The Water Table (Bloodaxe)
SINEAD MORRISEY Through the Square Window (Carcanet)
SHARON OLDS One Secret Thing (Cape)
CHRISTOPHER REID A Scattering (Areté)
GEORGE SZIRTES The Burning of the Books and Other Poems (Bloodaxe)
LES MURRAY The Biplane Houses. Carcanet
ROBERT CREELEY The Collected Poems 1975-2005
ROBIN ROBERTSON Swithering. Picador