News

The Debris Field is a new multi-media production exploring the sinking of the Titanic, written and performed by poets and poetry school tutors Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe being shown at the BFI on the 14th April. The evocative poetic text is accompanied by original music from Oli Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative, and film by Jack Wake-Walker. The poets talk here about the inspiration behind their writing, lost manuscripts and uncovered relationships with the ship.

Fawzia Kane's first collection Tantie Diablesse was recently longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Fawzia was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, at the cusp of the country's changeover from colony to independence. She came to the UK on a scholarship to study architecture. She began writing poems in earnest around 10 years ago after attending Arvon and Poetry School courses, considering Mimi Khalvati's Versification course 'life changing.' Her work has been published in several magazines, including Poetry Wales, Poetry London and the Rialto. In 2003, she was one of the featured poets of the Poetry School anthology, Entering the Tapestry (Enitharmon).

Gemma Green took part in Helen Mort's Autumn online course 'Poetry and the Supernatural' and was given a number of tasks to create poems around the theme of supernatural. With one of the poems she created on the course, Gemma came second in the annual International Plough Prize for the short poem category. Here, we showcase the winning poem and another of Gemma's short pieces.

The Poetry School recently teamed up with Spread the Word to relaunch the successful project Flight, a mentoring scheme set up for young writers offering them support and guidance with published writers, culminating with a showcase of the writers reading their work in mid-June. 

One of Flight's most prestigious alumni writers is the poet Dean Atta, whose recent poem 'I am Nobody's Nigger' - written in response to the Stephen Lawrence murder enquiry - went viral online. He received attention in the Guardian and the Huffington Post and his poem is has been circulated many more times than the Poet Laureate's. We caught up with him to talk about about his viral poem, the mentoring scheme that changed his life, and Carol Ann Duffy.