News

On the 24th April, we held our second event at the Tea House Theatre to launch our Summer programme. With readings from Simon Barraclough and Robert Vas Dias, with collaborative performances from students of Chris McCabe's Collaborations course. We also recorded our first podcast from the event, with highlights from the evening. 

 Mohsen Jabbari takes online courses with the Poetry School from Zanjan, Iran, where he was born. His poems have appeared online and in print in The London Magazine, Pomegranate and Shadowtrain, among others. Besides putting together his first chapbook, he is currently doing an MA in English Literature at the University of Tehran and preparing for a PhD in Creative Writing. Here, he talks about the culture of poetry in Iran.

Multi-talented Inua Ellams has established himself as a poet, performer, playwright, graphic artist and designer. His first book was the best-selling poetry pamphlet, Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales (2005), and in 2009 his debut play, The 14th Tale (2009), won a Fringe First Award at Edinburgh Festival,  and ran at the National Theatre in 2010. His latest play was Black T-Shirt Collection. His online course for our summer term looks at the blending of poetry and plays.

The Poetry Library is currently hosting the Visual Poetics exhibition, curated by David Miller and Chris McCabe, concentrating on the ways in which poetry has moved into a visual dimension in certain works by recent practitioners. In particular, the emphasis is on the way that individual poets have incorporated their writing in or with visual images, or pushed their writing into something inherently visual, either lucidly, vividly or extravagantly. Poetry School student Sophie Herxheimer talks about the story behind her piece in the exhibition.

 A Special Offer for New Students

There are about 62 million people in the UK. A recent Arts Council survey suggests that 5% of the population write poetry. That’s 3 million people or thereabouts. We know that we don’t have 3 million students … so if you’re one of those 3 million who’ve not enrolled with us yet, this is a special offer for you. If you’ve never taken one of our courses or workshops, we’ll give you 25% off the price of any Summer term activity. Come and see for yourselves how we can help inspire and improve your poetry.