Yesterday Macmillan publishers and the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education announced the result of research done on the place of poetry in primary schools – the first of its kind since a report by Ofsted in 2007. The conclusions make depressing, but not entirely surprising, reading: many teachers don’t feel confident teaching poetry and…
“Throughout bandit country, Patterson notates what the blurb describes as a ‘hybrid dialect of Newry-streets and Scots and Irish-inflected English’. For most readers the dialect will be the first thing they notice. For many it will represent a barrier to entry, but it is the kind of barrier I am grateful for. It makes you…
In the last couple of weeks I’ve come across two recent blogs from poets who are always worth listening to which offer sideways looks at the poetry-publishing-machine – what Jonathan Davidson calls the ‘poetry-industrial-complex’. I want to draw your attention to them here and then add a couple of thoughts of my own about the…
As far as I know Mark Antony Owen’s project iamb is one of a kind: an online journal which exclusively publishes poets reading their work. I was really glad to have three poems featured in the most recent edition. iamb was inspired by the Poetry Archive, but works like a magazine of new poetry. If…
The first poetry competition I ever entered was a local one. Test Valley Borough Council had just re-opened a bridge along the canal path north of Romsey, or just a bit of path, perhaps a bench (it was a long time ago) and wanted poems from local residents to mark the occasion. I was a…
The 100th anniversary of the poet Philip Larkin’s birth took place earlier this week. Larkin is an important poet for me, personally, yet I still somehow manage to underestimate the hold he has on the imagination of the British public. For better or worse, if you mention poetry in this country to someone who doesn’t…
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Jeremy Wikeley 