Poetry News (Autumn 2021)

POETRY NEWS

The Newspaper of The Poetry Society www.poetrysociety.org.uk

National Poetry Competition 2021: a word from the judges

For many, 31 October means fright wigs, tricks, treats and apple bobbing. For the poetry community it’s also the annual deadline for The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition, which demands just as much careful planning, creative spark and attention to detail.

You have just a few weeks to ready your entries for our judges, Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long, who await your poems with keen anticipation. We recently interviewed all three for our

National Poetry Competition podcast (listen at bit.ly/npc21judgesadvice). Their comments on their creative approaches to the making of poems

will, we’re sure, be just the thing to galvanise your submission.

Fiona Benson recommends reading “everything and anything” for

National Poetry Day: choose poetry

inspiration: “just follow your interests and your instincts”. She notes that even in old favourites, “there’s always something fresh, because you’re always a different person”; she herself returns again and again to the work of Anne Carson, Lucille Clifton and Sharon Olds. For Rachel Long, the space for creativity is fundamental. “I know that I need to give myself lots of space, and to float above and come at it sort of sideways before I write a poem... but each person’s process is different.” > Ctd, p. 2

Post•Keats

National Poetry Day on Thursday 7 October is on the theme of Choice – a resonant subject following a period when it has felt as if many of our most ordinary choices were being taken away from us. The Poetry Society will be celebrating with the announcement of our hundred latest Foyle Young Poets, who start a thrilling new writing journey as their poems and names are shared and celebrated all over the world. These hundred poems have been chosen from 14,000 entries by judges Clare Pollard and Yomi Sode – an accolade indeed. Visit our website to read the top 15 winning poems; the 85 commended pieces will be published later in an online anthology.

Our Twitter and Instagram media feeds will be even more poetic than usual; use the #NationalPoetryDay

hashtag to get involved yourself. And up and down the country, we will have a network of our poetry educators working in schools, performing, reading and writing with young people aged 4-18 years old. We’ve a new choice-themed teaching resource too, for key stages 2 and 3, based on Theodora Shillito’s poem ‘The Story of Squiddly Diddly’. This poem, which explores marine conservation and recycling, was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020 – an exciting way to

show students how influential young writers can be.

Take a look at the Events Map at nationalpoetryday.co.uk to find a poetry happening near you, or to advertise one yourself. The website also features poems on the theme of Choice and ideas of how to celebrate in your school, home or workplace. There are also poetry posters for your class walls, office doors and personal pinboards.

Is there any other option? On 7 October 2021, choose poetry! s

APoetry Society treat in your mail this autumn is a glowing postcard print of Will Harris’s poem ‘This Warm Scribe’. Inspired by John Keats’s ‘Hyperion’, Will’s poem was commissioned by The Poetry Society as part of Keats200, the bicentenary celebrations

> Ctd, p. 2

DEAN BROWNE Our Dearmer Prize winner on poetry, cookery and craft

SURREAL CITIES John McCullough takes a tour with members’ poems

BREATH interviewed

FOYLE 2021 Our latest are out

National Poetry Competition judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long (photo: Amaal Said)

•National Poetry Day 2021 artwork, nationalpoetryday.co.uk

A letter from the director•

Congratulations to Kathleen Jamie, who begins her role as Scotland’s new Makar, or national poet, succeeding Jackie Kay in the post. “My task as I see it is to meet folk, to support and encourage poetry, to laugh and lament and witness, and occasionally speak to our national life.

I’m excited to begin,” says Kathleen. She’ll hold the post for three years, in a change to the Makardom, which has previously been a five-year term.

Acclaimed for her nature writing, Kathleen expects to keep her focus on environmental issues. Her first project is to curate a collaborative collective Scottish nature poem for November’s COP26 summit. If you live in Scotland, she invites you to contribute a couple of lines by 30 September – a tight deadline, she admits, “but working fast is a central issue, if we are to avert the worst climate change predictions”. Go to scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk for details of how to submit. The assembled poem will be made into a poetry film by regular Poetry Society collaborator Alastair Cook (with whom we also have new projects afoot).

National Poetry Competition 2021 deadline, ctd

We’re excited that The Poetry Society will be in Glasgow for COP26 with representatives of our Young Poets Network. Look out for the announcement of the winners of our YPN challenge, Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis, selected by poet Louisa Adjoa Parker in our partnership with the People Need Nature charity.

Meanwhile, you poets of all ages and all habitats, Sujata Bhatt invites your entries for our latest members’ poems competition (p. 10) on the subject ‘survival and extinction’. There’s no required theme to the National Poetry Competition, but nature-inspired poems are just as welcome there (deadline 31 October). Coming soon is a major new competition for primary and secondary schools, which explores nature themes for a connected world. We’re sworn to secrecy on details until launch-date, but email our education team, who would love to tell you more, at youarehere@poetrysociety.org.uk.

Looking for recommendations of great new environmental poetry to read? Check out the shortlist of the Laurel Prize, the award founded by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage.

The summer of sport may be over – ah! the Euros, the Olympics, Emma Raducanu at the US Open – but it was great to see poet Raymond Antrobus flying the flag for poetry on stage at the Wembley Arena this week in a massive end-of-season celebration of sporting heroes put on by Channel 4 and Paralympics GB. Commissioned to interview parasport athletes and write a poem in response, Raymond joined the homecoming show. He performed his new poem ‘Sound Off’ accompanied by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and with virtusoso BSL artist Jacqui Beckford alongside him, shaping the poem in the air. s

Judith Palmer

The Poetry Society AGM Zoom

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What about stepping over that mysterious threshold between inspiration and action? For Fiona, “When I start off writing, I’m honouring the poem. I’m just trying to follow the poem. It’s like a little creature you’re trying to embody, but I think there is a certain grace in acknowledging that there is a reader that will participate in the poem. In my own poems, I choose not to block people out, I think. And I like poems that don’t block me out when I’m Davidreading.”Constantine recommends picturing your audience as you begin to write. “Thinking of addressing the human face I find enormously helpful, and it may be a beloved face, it may be a face that you conjured up, but actually that sort of proximity and intimacy absolutely doesn’t limit the scope of the poem.”

Truth is important for these judges. Rachel recalls the impact of watching Caroline Bird on stage: “She said, ‘This poem is entirely true, but it contains no facts.’ And I love that. And I think about that a lot. That truth is different from fact.” As David avers, this is much more than just an aesthetic concern. “Trying to tell the truth in the poem is now intrinsically a political act. It just is. It’s an act of resistance. That’s why the arts matter; the whole web

of them is an ecosystem which we can’t afford to lose any bit of.”

All judges advise against a neatly tied bow of an ending. David comments, “Everybody wants closure, the nation wants closure. And understandably, in many cases, but there’s no such thing. Human life is endless. You may reach a state, but it morphs into another state, on and on and on.” Rachel agrees: “I’ve tried to remember the poem is a question and not an answer. I find it very helpful. Life doesn’t have that kind of neatness or closure.”

Whatever creature of a poem you write, it will receive a warm welcome at the National Poetry Competition, where the judges read every single entry to pick their first, second and third prize-winners, plus seven commended poems and an extensive longlist. Visit poetrysociety.org.uk/npc to enter – we wish you luck! s

We have many resources for inspiring your NPC entries, including our ‘Then and Now’ video series, in which previous winning and commended poets read their winning piece alongside a new poem. Caleb Parkin, Vasiliki Albedo and Linda France are the latest contributors. For more on these films, our NPC writing guides and podcasts, plus full details on how to enter, visit poetrysociety.org.uk/npc s

Please join us for The Poetry Society AGM 2021, which will be held via Zoom on Tuesday 30 November 2021, from 6.30pm. Book your place at bit.ly/tpsagm2021 –in plenty of time if you can, to ensure you receive the login details! We’re happy to help anyone who needs support using Zoom.

Casey Bailey has been nominated to join the Board of Trustees. He is a secondary school senior leader specialising in behaviour, safeguarding and supporting the aspirations of all students. He is also an awardwinning writer and performer, and Birmingham Poet Laureate 20202022. He replaces our outgoing trustee Mairi Johnson who has completed her term – our warmest thanks to Mairi. Two of our trustees are seeking

Post Keats, ctd

re-election: Andrew Neilson and Ann Phillips. As there are no more people standing than places available, no vote on this will be required.

The formal business of the AGM will be followed by a celebratory reading by some of our recent competition winners. For more information turn to p. 16 of this issue, and keep up to date online at bit.ly/tpsagm2021 s

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of the Romantic poet’s most productive years. To read other Keatsian commissions by Rachael Boast and Ruth Padel visit upJamessociety.org.uk/projects/keats200poetryTheprint,designedbyartistOses,isjustthethingtolivenanimpassivefridgedoororto

send to a friend to wish them season’s greetings – seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness, that is.

We have some extra copies of the print so if you would like a small bundle for your classroom or Stanza, just let us know at jbird@ poetrysociety.org.uk and we will post some out to you. s

More at bit.ly/tpskeats200

Casey Bailey Photo: Paul Stringer

All the breath with the words, seeking space

Dzifa Benson talks to m nourbeSe philip about philip’s astonishing book-length poem Zong!, story, silence and her upcoming Poetry Society lecture

•Dzifa Benson : Let’s dive straight in: let’s talk about Zong!, which tells of the massacre by drowning of some 130 enslaved Africans in 1781, and the infamous court case that followed. Did you come across the Gregson versus Gilbert legal decision, its source text, when you were a lawyer?

m nourbeSe philip : No. I first read about this case in a work by historian James Walvin. If you’re a black person, a lot of your extracurricular education is learning about these things. I was doing research about another ship where people developed a blindness.

DB : I’m thinking about Zong! ’s success in exploding language and the impact that has had on people. I want to quote a few responses to it:

“A radical act, physical, embodied, because language is of the body; a mutilation of language, a holy vivisection to expose its parts, and a healing that is not easy or gentle – reading Zong! is dangerous.”

“Equal parts a song, an undulation, an ululation, a shout, a honk, a groan, a moan, an oath, a curse, and a chant.”

“Represents maritime materialities below the sea’s surface in relation to aesthetic geographies of the sea in the aftermath of slavery as an abyss of loss.”

“Words that do not conform to the grammar of language and sounds that evoke an intuitive response rather than thought and contemplation constitute a more visceral form of memory than storytelling.”

“Could easily be an experimental novel that comments upon the madness of a British legal system.”

If I were to artificially attempt to simplify my own experience of Zong!, which itself was irreducible, to a single word, I would describe it as a kind of ‘exhalation’. I wonder what you make of all that?

mnp : I want to focus on the last one which is yours. You’re talking about breath. At the heart of Zong! is breath and breathing. I initially wrote it in a more conventional form. My publishers told me it was too long and I had to cut it by twenty-five per cent but they weren’t offering me how to do it. I sent it to a colleague who said that to lose twenty-five per cent of the book would really damage it. I didn’t know what to do so I put it aside. I was going to do a summer course of drumming and dance at the University of Ghana. Before I left on that trip – I don’t know how this thought surfaced – I felt the need to go and ask permission to bring these voices forward. Sitting in the plane on the way back from Ghana, I remember thinking: but if you’re asking permission of the ancestors on board that ship it means you’ve got to ask

Book now: m nourbeSe philip, ‘Small Islands Long Poems or the (un)Epic of Small in the Spiralling Memory of History’

The Poetry Society and University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing are delighted to present the third and final lecture in the Annual Lecture Series 2021, delivered by m nourbeSe philip. Her lecture, presented via Zoom on Wed 3 November from 7pm, will include a conversation with Sandeep Parmar, a Q&A from the audience, and the poet’s reading of selected poems, chosen to respond to her theme. Tickets are FREE but must be reserved. Book online at bit.ly/annuallecturephilip s

permission of the European ancestors too. I actually did go to Liverpool because that’s where the ship left from. I bought some whisky and went down to the docks to pour libation. Then I asked permission to bring these voices forward. So that’s how I knew how to break lines in Zong! One of the most important things happening in Zong! is not the words. It’s the spaces between the words. There’s a sense in which we breathe now for those people who could not breathe. When I came back, I went away to a farmhouse to work on the manuscript. Suddenly I had this idea to just spread it out. It’s almost counter-intuitive because you’d think that if I spread out the words the book would become longer but the manuscript became shorter. If you look at the book, no word, or cluster of words, comes directly under another. It’s the rule that gives the book its shape. It’s all to do with the breath with the words, seeking space.

DB : You described Zong! as a story that can’t be told yet must be told, as a story that can only be told by not telling. What did you mean? mnp : It’s impossible to know the entire story. We will never know all that happened on board that ship Zong. A log book was never found. So, it can’t be told. We don’t know how some of the people felt, we can only imagine. So it’s a story that cannot be told yet we must attempt it. So how do we attempt it? As beings who are human, we want, we need to remember and to heal. So the untangling, which is what I call the annual performance of Zong!, is a ceremony where the story can be told and untold in a different way. The untangling is where we let the story tell itself to see where it takes us, to see how, maybe, it doesn’t tell itself. How it allows the breath and silences to work with it. The silence is linked to what we can never tell, what we don’t know. That’s not something that sits well with Western approaches to knowledge capacity, where we feel we have to find out everything we need to know.

DB : What did writing Zong! cost you? In one of the descriptions of Zong! I read to you, it was called dangerous. Maybe it was dangerous for you to write it? Then to translate it – it feels like an act of translation – on to the page. I imagine that didn’t come without some kind of price.

mnp : As you talk I can feel tears in my eyes. I don’t know how to answer that because I think it’s so huge. What’s the cost to know those things? You used the word translation which is really insightful. I’ve been performing Zong! for eight years now, having written it five years before. After every one of those readings – and others have similar feelings – my feeling is as if something has washed through me. There was a burden to carry it. I think those breaths, that cathedral of breath balances it. I know that doesn’t answer the question but I think it gets to something about what it is. You said

The poet, essayist, novelist and playwright m nourbeSe philip, who will give the next Poetry Society lecture on 3 Photo:November.GailNyoka

< dangerous. I’ve had so many unfortunate encounters with people, actually only non-black people, who are really drawn to it but then they want to use it in a certain way, counter to what the book is, and not give credit. That can be costly in the system of exchange that we live in.

DB : You’re giving The Poetry Society’s Annual Lecture on 3 November. Can you give us a preview?

mnp : I want to give a sense of my genealogy as a poet. That includes some of what we talked about here. I want to look at the poetry of Saint-John Perse, a poet from Guadeloupe. I talked about the Caribbean being this place of massive interruptions so I want to talk about the genealogy of that. I also want to link it to ideas I’m playing with concerning the epic, which in terms of looking at the Caribbean is like a spiral. So I want to look at that shape, also a little bit at aspiring writers from Haiti. s

Read the full-length version of this interview at bit.ly/mnourbesephilip interview. To book for the lecture, see p. 3. m nourbeSe philip’s lecture will be published in the winter issue of The Poetry Review

minterviewnourbeSephilip•Poetry takes the train in Newcastle

Anna Woodford on creating a positive focus for post-pandemic travellers •

Back in 2018, as part of a residency I wrote about in Poetry News, I was placing poems inside and outside buses, encouraging people to be kinder to their fellow passengers. Academics from Newcastle and York Universities had discovered that older people’s ability to get out and about was challenged by how they perceived themselves and felt perceived by others. People with the same health conditions had very different experiences depending on their motility (how they processed and responded to their mobility).

Fast forward to 2020, and everyone’s motility was challenged. A year later, I found myself sitting on a Newcastle underground train feeling both exhilarated and antsy. There were ‘welcome back’ stickers but it felt like there was more of an opportunity to acknowledge what we had been through and encourage people on their way. I emailed Nexus, the company which runs Newcastle’s Metro, asking if they would be interested in putting some poems with a positive focus about the pandemic in Metro stations. Forty-eight hours later, I received a response beginning, “We like poems!”.

The Royal Literary Fund, which I work for, was keen to support the project, enabling me to commission fellow RLF Fellows at Northern universities: Penny Boxall, Christy Ducker and Pippa Little. Our poems now appear on six-by-three-foot boards at Newcastle’s Longbenton Metro which, even post-Covid, serves one million passengers a year. This lovely art-deco station was principally built for workers at the nearby ‘Ministry’, which houses HMRC and the Department of Work and Pensions; it also serves a busy secondary school. Nexus now has exciting plans to turn it into a ‘poetry station’. To quote the end of Pippa’s poem, “from now on / anything can happen”. s

Notes from the Underground Poems on the Underground – the organisation which puts poster poems on London’s tube trains – celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary this year. It began in 1986 as an experiment by three friends, the writer Judith Chernaik and the poets Cicely Herbert and Gerard Benson. They persuaded London Underground to post a few poems on its trains, to the delight of bemused commuters. Transport for London continues to support the programme: millions of travellers still enjoy the changing display of posters every year.

A new website extends the commuting and reading experience beyond London at poemsontheunder ground.org. It offers an ever-expanding archive of past posters, including the most recent set of six which featured poems by W.S. Merwin, Pascale Petit, Ilya Kaminsky, Patrick Kavanagh, David Constantine and Fawzi Karim. You can beautify your walls with a poster or two; The Poetry Society will post them out to you for just the cost of p&p. Take your pick from the range at bit.ly/potuposters

Happy Here free to schools

Happy Here (see left) is an anthology of stories and poems by Black British authors and illustrators, with contributors including Sharna Jackson, Joseph Coelho, Theresa Lola and others. The anthology, published by Knights Of, is being distributed free to all primary schools in England by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and BookTrust. Online author events, teaching resources and CPD for teachers will also be offered: booktrust.org.uk

A candle for Keats

As part of the ongoing commemoration of the bicentenary of John Keats’s death, guests of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association toured a candlelit Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. They encountered the words of Keats, delivered by actors in appropriately evocative settings: ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ in the Gothic Monk’s Parlour, or the ‘Grecian Urn’ or moments from ‘Endymion’ among the classical busts and statuary.

More at keats-shelley.org/ks200 s

Celebrating Sylvia Plath •

Anew Sylvia Plath anthology will be published next year to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the poet’s birth. After Sylvia, co-edited by Hebden Bridge poets Sarah Corbett and Ian Humphreys, and published by Nine Arches Press, will include commissioned poems and essays celebrating Plath and her work. The anthology is part of a wider project backed by Arts Council England, which will include anthology launch events in West Yorkshire, Manchester and London, workshops, online events, library displays and two poetry competitions, one of which is a collaboration with The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network.

“We hope the new book will help dispel the myth of Plath as tortured genius destined to her tragic fate and express the power and complexity of her legacy,” says Corbett. “We’re huge fans too, of course, and feel proud of her association with the local area. Plath is buried in St Thomas the Apostle’s churchyard in neighbouring Heptonstall – both Ian and I can see the church tower from our houses.”

In 1956, Plath and Ted Hughes paid an extended visit to Hughes’s parents at their house in Slack, just above Heptonstall. “The trip took place two-and-a-half months after their marriage,” explains Humphreys, who is producing the After Sylvia project. “In a letter to her mother, Plath described the local countryside as ‘the most magnificent landscape in the world’ and confided, ‘I have never been so happy in my life; it is wild and lonely and a perfect place to work and read.’”TheSylvia

Plath Prize is a new international poetry competition offering cash prizes and publication. Poems should respond to one of five Plathian themes, around which the anthology is structured: Nature, Magic,

Mourning many talents

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Poet, actor, scriptwriter, choreographer and theatre director Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze was acclaimed as the first female dub poet, fusing poetry and reggae rhythms to speak powerfully about Black women’s lives, and known as a “one-woman festival” for her passionate live performances. She performed all around the world and published eight books of poetry and stories, including five with Bloodaxe. “I looked up to Jean, she

Mothers and Fathers, Womanhood, and Rebirth. The Prize opens for entries on Plath’s birthday, 27 October, and closes on 31 December. The authors of the top three poems will receive cash prizes and publication in After Sylvia, alongside the winning poem from the YPN competition. Selected commended entries from both prizes will also be published in the anthology.

The Plath celebrations don’t stop there. Plans are afoot to stage the world’s first Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in Hebden Bridge from 21-23 October 2022. Director Corbett explains, “The festival will do something totally unique by bringing together poets and scholars in honour and celebration of Plath’s legacy. It will also play host to the official launch of After Sylvia.” s For more details on the anthology and how to enter The Sylvia Plath Prize, visit sylviaplathanthology.com

led the way, showed us all how it’s done,” said Salena Godden. “Rest in power, rest in peace.”

Poet, editor, artist, translator and counter-cultural icon Michael Horovitz founded the ground-breaking New Departures magazine in 1959, while still a student at Oxford University, and was a central figure in the underground poetry movement thereafter, organising events including Jazz Poetry SuperJams and Poetry Olympics festivals, and performing at the International Poetry Incarnation of 1965. The author of twelve books and editor of anthologies including the celebrated Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, his guiding light was always that other independent spirit, William Blake.

Jaan Kaplinski – writer, translator, critic, sociologist and politician – was one of Estonia’s most prominent cultural figures. His many books of poetry and prose were concerned with ecology and the environment, Eastern philosophies, and Estonia’s cultural transition following independence. Bloodaxe published four poetry collections in English and his Selected Poems in 2011. Kaplinski was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2016 and has a main-belt asteroid named after him. s

In brief

News & eventsupcoming •

Makar Jamie’s “weel-kent truth”

Congratulations to Kathleen Jamie, appointed Scotland’s Makar on 18 August, succeeding Jackie Kay. Jamie said, “The post confirms a weelkent truth: that poetry abides at the heart of Scottish culture, in all our languages, old and new. It’s mysterious, undefinable and bold. It runs deep and sparkles at once.” More at scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk

StAnza’s new story

A warm welcome to Lucy Burnett (below), the new director of StAnza Poetry Festival. Read a blog post featuring a lively and extended conversation between Lucy and St Andrews local Don Paterson about starting the festival’s next story, with narrative as a festival strand, at bit.ly/stanzahappenings

Figura’s Salisbury residency

Martin Figura has been poet in residence at Salisbury District Hospital, creating a record of the pandemic and helping staff to process their experiences through poetry. “I hope I’ve gone some way to doing what poetry does best,” reflects Martin. “I’ve tried to honour the humanity

I found, by giving it a shape and making vivid the experiences to those who’d lived them and others too. Nothing I’ve ever done before has ever affected me quite so much as this.” Read more about his encounters and a wonderfully touching poem from the commission at: bit.ly/figurasalisbury s

Sylvia zoetaylor.co.ukZoëIllustrationPlath.byTaylor,

Martin Figura talking to Respiratory Care Matron Carrie Jones. Photo: Alice Smith

L to r: Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze (photo: Tehron Royes); Michael Horovitz (photo: Hayley Madden); Jaan Kaplinski (photo: Ave Maria Mõistlik)

In brief

News & eventsupcoming

•

Farley to judge Poole Award

Paul Farley will judge and mentor the Peggy Poole Award 2021, its fifth year. Paul said: “It’s a pleasure and a privilege to get this chance to work with emerging writers here in the North West. As for what I’m looking for – I can only say I’ll know it when I see it. To borrow something I saw on a T-shirt once, I’ll probably be reasonable and demand the impossible!”

The Peggy Poole Award, which supports new writers in the North West of England who come through the National Poetry Competition, was founded in memory of the poet and broadcaster Peggy Poole and is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Poole family and friends. bit.ly/peggypooleaward

More inspiration from Mole Simon Mole, one of our Poets in Schools stalwarts, has partnered with Apples and Snakes to mentor a collective of emerging poets in the art of writing poetry for children. “My approach isn’t about trying to teach children how to write in a certain way,” Simon explains. “I think that the more styles and voices they are able to watch or read, the more likely they are to find their own.”

Tahmina Ali, Rachel Cleverly, Stanley Iyanu, Harula Ladd, Carmina Masoliver and Chris White have been taking part in online Zoom workshops and receiving feedback directly from their target audience of children aged 5 to 11 years old. The mentorship is part of Simon’s Arts Council funded Poetry Picnic tour; more at simonmole.com s

Wat Tyler what? •

Rebel preachers, ruinous poll taxes and the country folk who marched on the capital: for many of us, knowledge of The Peasants’ Revolt stops here. A new research project aims to expand public understanding of this key period of medieval English history – and to create some stirring new poems in the process.

The People of 1381 – led by Reading, Southampton, Oxford and Glasgow universities – will reconstruct biographies of the people caught up in the political and economic rising. Wat Tyler, Jack Straw and

PostcardBrusselsfrom

other notable fourteenth-century rebels will feature, but the academic team plan to focus on investigating medieval records for evidence of revolt among social groups whose role has been little studied: servants, soldiers and women.

Poetry will help bring these historical figures to life. Working with the universities and the Historical Association, The Poetry Society will commission new rebel poems, and run schools workshops in the parts of the country where the revolution was fomented. The project will culminate in a new nationwide collaborative ballad to mark this moment of mutiny against oppression s www.1381.online • @peopleof1381

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Robert Frost once famously disparaged free verse as “tennis without a net”, but after living in Brussels for two years I find my own writing veering further from the “choppily well-separated thing” that Frost extolled. Brussels is an early draft of a city, a back-of-a-napkin scrawl peppered with rewordings and crossings out, and my writing has begun to accommodate more of it.

For me, writing is a collaborative act with my surroundings: one-fifth a keyboard-based battle and fourfifths wandering around for inspiration. The streets of Brussels are fertile ground for idle revelations, the surreal and flamboyant excess of its Art Nouveau architecture vying with other more austere styles. Living here I’ve started to view the rules of poetic form differently, playing with experimental line-breaks and shapes, mirroring the boisterous skyline outside my window.

Working for the EU has affected the language I use too. ‘Brusselisation’, a term used to describe the city’s haphazard urban development, applies equally well to the EU’s way with language. Words get built over, knocked through and redeveloped: think “comitology”, “abbeyage” or “shadow rapporteur”. I find myself reaching for this strange and enticing vocabulary, coaxing the poetic from these unusual creations.

Poets are no strangers to the administrative vernacular and quiet paperwork, whether it’s Wallace Stevens who spent four decades at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, or Dennis O’Driscoll at Ireland’s Office of the Revenue Commissioners. Although a genre of EU poetry has yet to appear from the Union’s many plenaries, the ingredients are there. If, as Michael

Donaghy argues, poetry is a negotiation between what the poet aims to say and the form in which they choose to say it, then the EU’s linguistic invention should facilitate new permutations. Part of poetry’s purpose is to open up closed spaces and connect readers with new realities; the corridors of the EU’s institutions are a good place to start.

The language collage of the EU’s workings rhymes with the city’s linguistic inheritance. Brussels is a phonetic meeting-point between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, while it also grapples with the introductions of English-speaking outsiders. When I first moved here, I found this all slightly overwhelming and overstimulating: as with poetry, many words here appear to have a double meaning. Streets switch identities at random turns as if caught in a sudden change of mind and road signs begin to look like strange, surrealist haiku. But I’ve come to value this tumult of language and energy and my writing is more daring because of it, more open to the different voices, stories and the fleeting moments. What better place to write a poem? See you soon. À bientôt. Tot ziens. Wish you were here. s Ben Ray works as a copywriter in the European Parliament. He won the 2019 New Poets Prize and his pamphlet The Kindness of the Eel is published by The Poetry Business.

Ben Ray on living in Brussels, word hoards and finding poetry in the EU

Composition avec portrait de Max Ernst et E.L.T Mesens, collage & gouache, by Édouard Mesens. © DACS 2021.

How to cook an egg

Dean Browne, winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, talks to Mike Sims about cookery, confusion, Dylan and Sweeney

•Mike Sims Congratulations on winning the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize with ‘My Last Consultation’. It’s a very funny poem. Dean Browne I’m delighted a poem of mine won. It wasn’t expected and I’m grateful. This would be the time as well to thank the excellent Emily Berry for homing my poems. It meant a lot to have her publish them in The Poetry Review

I hadn’t set out to write a humorous poem in ‘My Last Consultation’, but if humour wants to come in and it feels right I let it. I don’t find any of my poems funny, but I don’t mind if other people think one is. I have a poem that begins, “We were so poor we fried eggs on a spoon”. You could say there’s humour in that, but there’s something else as well, I hope, which is far from humorous. I like to find myself on that line.

Have you seen that footage of Dylan in the Scorsese film standing outside the pet shop, and he starts improvising spontaneously with the words on the sign? I think of that. I was just making it up as I went along, pushing its logic as far as I could in one good burst. That process is exhilarating when it goes well and there’s the satisfaction of result too, of course. But you’re out of it then and into something else.

MS Is Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ a model? And what about the last question in your poem – “is it art?”? Is the poem asking what’s the real point of being brilliant with words?

DB I wasn’t conscious of Browning as a model, but I’ve always liked his dramatic monologues, the one you mention, as well as ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’. So that’s very interesting. It’s possible!

I’m not sure the poem is asking what’s the real point of being brilliant with words, as you put it. At the time I think I was feeling some resistance or difficulty while writing and it took time to consciously realise this as doubt within myself and a need for some change in how I wrote or thought about writing. I wonder if this occurs every couple of years in one way or another, that some idea you’ve internalised as being useful gets outgrown and becomes instead a blockage. I hope that makes some kind of sense – it’s all so intuitive and difficult to articulate. At the same time I wanted to be writing and began to feel the lack of it; the poem was a gesture to myself and I hadn’t publication in mind at that point. Maybe that’s always the case.

MS The two houseflies “making love” that the grandmother crushes in ‘Barmbrack’, another of your poems published in the Review – you’re sneaking powerful concerns about mortality into a domestic setting there, aren’t you?

DB This happened! Though what my grandmother actually said was “the dirty fuckers are having sex”, so I did edit. I think I was primarily relishing the image and then only afterwards aware of what seemed, to me, a snapshot of an older Catholic attitude to sex. But I guess a poem’s capacity to mean always extends beyond the author’s original intentions. It’s also difficult to relive original intentions except asymptotically. You become an interpreter yourself after a while. But I think you’re right in that I do like to sneak the philosophical into the domestic. That seems right.

MS Your poems are full of stuff – (wonderful) food, Bach’s ‘Partita No. 2 in

D minor’, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Bashō’s frog, a goat. Is one of the points to try and get around all this detail too, to clear things a little? To quote another of your poems, ‘The Pineapple Massage’: “so the air brightens / yellow with the summer pent inside and is palpable”?

DB Plath loved “the thinginess of things”. I like things, while avoiding I hope the stuffiness of stuff. I suppose the speakers in the poems you mention are trying to negotiate absurdity and confusion to some extent. It’s always changing though. One poem you refer to there, ‘Tabernacle’, I wrote when I was 19; ‘The Pineapple Massage’ was written less than a year ago. There are times you want to clear up confusion and times you want to just acknowledge it, dwell in rather than dwell on. I try not to be doctrinaire, and can be suspicious of people who position themselves as having all the answers I guess, of pretensions to authority – “How wrong they are in being always right”, as Auden wrote. Many ways to cook an egg etc.

MS Cooking, music (and cooking while listening to music), a kind of glorious confusion and your wonderful elegy to him – is Matthew Sweeney an important influence?

DB I enjoy surprising juxtapositions – run one thing against another and watch for the Perseids. It has a wonder about it for me. I guess dreams too, in their “glorious confusion” as you say, have their own logic parallel to (or perpendicular to?) the daylight version. It’s the mysterious logic of images you find in Lorca, for example.

Matthew was an influence for sure. He was writer in residence at University College Cork the year I first arrived at 17 or 18 and I attended his workshops then. He was a mentor and over time a good friend. We used to meet up for a glass of wine and exchange poems and his opinion meant a good deal to me. He made time in one way or another for a lot of young poets I’d say. I think he liked being around their energy. He’s missed.

MS Here’s another poser from ‘My Last Consultation’: should anyone ever prescribe Rilke?

DB If you’re in the habit of prescribing, you can’t go wrong with the Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to a Young Poet, a number of the shorter lyrics... you’d require a second prescription slip. But I was thinking here of that sublime imperative in ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’: “you must change your life”. That change isn’t available to the figure in my poem, apparently. It’s not given to everyone to fulfil that command, yet at the same time Rilke’s line places the possibility in anyone’s grasp. s

The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is an annual prize for the best poem published in The Poetry Review written by a poet who doesn’t yet have a full collection. Dean Browne’s poem, ‘The Last Consultation’, chosen by Patricia Smith, was published in the winter 2020 issue. You can also read it online, alongside poems by former winners including Raymond Antrobus, Phoebe Stuckes, Kim Moore, Maitreyabandhu, Mary Jean Chan, and many others, at poetrysociety.org.uk/dearmer

Dean Browne. Photo: Phil Cremin

Members’ poems ‘Surreal cities’

John McCullough joins your peregrinations •

The standard of the 602 entries I read for this competition was very high, with many imaginative poems journeying to thrillingly unfamiliar places. I thoroughly enjoyed far more than the six winners and apologies if something you’ve worked hard on isn’t in that select group. It doesn’t mean your poem won’t find another home.

‘Matryoshka’ by Alexandra McCauley (Selkirk) demonstrates the power of structuring a poem around a central metaphor. It generates intensity through the unexpected ways this comparison probes the manner in which cities demand a multiplication of the self to meet the demands of a broad array of interactions. The last line is electric because it both channels what’s come before but sends us in a surprising direction.

The dynamism of questions evokes urgency in ‘A Yiddish phrase book’ by David Bleiman (Edinburgh). Inspired by Jo Shapcott’s poem ‘Phrase Book’, it tells a very different story, a poignant and understated narrative

Genevieve Carver

The Train and the Whale

In November 2020 a metro train that overran the stop blocks at a station outside Rotterdam was saved from plummeting 10m into the water below by a giant plastic sculpture of a whale’s tail.

THE TRAIN: It’s not what it looks like.

THE WHALE: Nor am I.

THE TRAIN: I’m stranded.

THE WHALE: You’ve suffered an uncoupling.

THE TRAIN: The yellow jackets are taking measurements.

THE WHALE: You should have been listening.

THE TRAIN: I couldn’t hear over the shrill blue noise of whalesong.

THE WHALE: You should have been watching for the signs.

THE TRAIN: They’ve taken a swab from the signal points.

THE WHALE: Did you notice the black-backed gulls overhead?

THE TRAIN: Splash me in oil and put me on a stretcher of steel.

THE WHALE: The ones now pecking out your eyes.

THE TRAIN: Release me into the diesel sea where I can swim free.

THE WHALE: You should spend a bit of time on you

THE TRAIN: Under the water are you smirking through your baleen?

THE WHALE: Have a bubble bath. Put a favourite record on.

THE TRAIN: When are you coming up for air?

THE WHALE: For the nightmares, try a sleep app.

THE TRAIN: How much longer can you hold me?

emerging through the speaker’s desire to find two long-lost family members who departed suddenly, leaving a decades-long ache.

‘There is a banana plant at the laundrette’ by Tim Kiely (London) compelled my attention quickly with its opening image of said plant trapped inside a suit. It works on a much quieter level too, however, its beautifully simple language trusting the reader to unfold the moving backstory of the dislocated Turkish cashier “paralysed with belief”.

‘A Place Called Ash’ by Patrick Maddock (Wexford) tackles feeling isolated in a crowd, being adrift amid the speed and sensory overload that characterise urban living. In the absence of recognition, the self here loses the sense of a shared reality, bombarded by outside forces represented via the poem’s captivatingly dramatic images. Again, the boldness of the first two lines pulled me into this microcosm expertly.

I love the giant risk ‘The Train and the Whale’ by Genevieve Carver (Hope) takes by focussing tightly on a dialogue between the two entities in the title. It commits itself utterly to the disjointed world it constructs, generating emotional subtexts through non sequiturs. The fashion in which these non-human voices avoid answering each other’s questions suggests so much about city-dwellers’ yearnings for connection.

‘Waste ground’ by Laurie Smith (Carshalton) excited me with the freshness of its phrase-making and coinages, here the result of the speaker being involved in a traffic accident. The poem’s linguistic creativity is a fabulous match for its content. Its prophetic visions are delivered in sentences that sound unmistakably like the words of someone wide-eyed, a person hitting upon strange truths with wild conviction. s For details of the winter competition, judged by Sujata Bhatt, see p. 10.

Tim Kiely There is a banana plant at the laundrette

For the same reason as anyone else –this heat leaves bands of chalk white on the lining of its suit jacket, which yes is hardly practical wear for a plant in this weather, but still it has to be worn, at least for work.

It stands in a line snaking out the door where everyone nods in the traffic fumes failing to be surprised.

Its face is wet with late August. It is just aware of the xylophone of Saint-Saën’s ‘Fossils’, since the Turkish cashier has the radio tuned to Classic FM to make things seem normal. It’s not working; his face is paralysed with belief.

Its turn arrives. There are a few whispered apologies to the customers swept by its broad leaves, before it bends over the counter, puts five white shirts and a suit jacket down, explains itself to the Turkish cashier who is struggling to comprehend what he might bring to life with his next daydream, and a single slow bead of sweat falls to the counter in a plea softer than language for understanding.

Laurie Smith Waste ground

I was thinking what Rousseau would say about traffic lights… ASTOOM! a car onomatopoeia’d my bicycle and the road slid into my face.

Awake, I had lost some teeth and my sight was astoomatic. I tottered on some waste ground towards the distant light.

At the Westfield Astoomia people were spending their credit’s credit and taking back control. I was going in when a tout breathed

My name is Mark, I’m your new best friend, I can help your life in many ways; and, by the way, it isn’t true that Facebook is a stalker.

I made my excuses and left to where banks and building societies raise a question unheard in these days: what shall we do to be saved?

They went to sea in a sieve, they did, and Jesus walked the waves –two possible ways.

Worms and trojans!

What hope for the nine bean-rows we planned?

We lack the anti-virus and the anti-vari-virus

Goand

east, young person. In a back-street bar in Tokyo Boethius meets K’ung-fu-tzu sumo-style:

The sea is the most solid ground, most is achieved by yielding – ’STOOM! To cultivate my own garden and make my own green shade.

Me? I’m taking my holiday at the Marabar Caves.

Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Astoom Astoom Astoom

Alexandra McCauley Matryoshka

I pay him three dollars to make me Slavic, retracing my genes (“quite a coup”).

There are no Face Apps in the 90s but artists stuck to streets like flavoured chewing gum –earning more than surgeons.

A “veneer of civility” won’t do so I translate myself into “just like you” and he peels me off in layers, grins through broken teeth, and finishes with a caricature.

How small can I go?

In my next iteration I give out plastic bags I’d saved as prize possessions to unfamiliar children who want me as their penpal.

I pay them my address like gold –which here resides in God’s home only, churches bold with guilt outshine concrete tower blocks –“of course I’ll write”.

And even closer to my core Ivaluesrefuse to eat at McDonald’s as only tourists can afford it –which is “just awful!” (I’m vegetarian anyway).

Returning to my hotel –armed guards at the door “with those sexy uniforms and accents” –I bravely shed my outers triumphantly solid, the last woman standing and completely unchanged.

David Bleiman A Yiddish phrase book

“As for the country in which I’d do well to have a copy of Say It in Yiddish in my pocket, naturally I’ve never been there... I don’t believe that anyone has.” – Michael Chabon

Can you help me?/Kenstu mir helfn?

Do you speak English/German/Russian? I do not understand Croatian.

Does anyone in this city speak Yiddish? Can you give me directions?

What is the name of this city?

What was the name of this city before? And before that?

Who lived in this house before?

Where do I get a bus to the Cathedral? How much is a taxi to the University?

Is this the old cemetery?

Where was the synagogue before?

My grandfather/my grandfather’s sister. Her husband, the Rabbi.

I am looking for their two boys. Can you help me?

How old are you, if I may ask?

Do you remember two boys who used to play here?

Here in the yard of the synagogue. The synagogue that stood here before.

Here is a photo of the boys.

Did you play with these boys?

Do you remember the day when they left?

I know. It was a long time ago. It’s okay.

Is there a doctor/a dentist/a pharmacist near here?

No, I mean a doctor by the name of Rosenhaft. I have a pain in my stomach/my mouth/ my throat.

I have lost my appetite/my voice/my city.

Can you direct me to the railway station?

What is the final destination?

I would like to buy a return ticket. I do not want a single ticket.

Kenstu mir helfn?

Sujata Bhattwill judge the wintercompetition on thetheme of ‘Survivaland extinction’– see page 10

Members’ poems on ‘Surreal cities’ continue on page 10

Patrick Maddock A Place Called Ash

Members’poems‘Surrealcities’

I carry my head under my arm, the slates no longer real ones on the roof of my house. A crack runs through my favourite spongeware mug hanging from its hook on the dresser cupboard.

The globules of sound in my mouth are buttermilk. I want to speak, to make myself understood but there’s a scarcity of ears in the district, even the wagging ones of little piggies.

Throughout the years, loaded and emptied sacks pass each other up and down the gangways. Their bearers shake hands as they pass without ever losing the rhythm of their stride.

Long chains of buckets will, it’s said, draw water from the river until the river itself sizzles out upon a place called Ash. Where might I be at such a furnace hour – in the nearest parched waterhole or gully trap?

(How truly random are my thoughts when I’m forced to sit down to arrange them on a blank sheet?)

The Warnings of the Elders press strange shadows into my book of dreams: I turn the wick up on each atmospheric event and try not to break the glass globe. With the aid of the oil lamp, I look to figure it out.

True, nothing stays fresh: everything goes off at the speed of a herring. This results in a terrible rush on salt and ice among my unsweetened thoughts. I don’t even have a new adage to present.

Yet I have at my disposal a ball made of rags. There’s also a bladder I can blow into and tie the opening up – something which allows me a few blissful moments, depending on the shape it takes.

So many lives were veiled in simplicity: born close to poverty, raised in broadest honesty –is there not to be a light eternal, a locus of peace? Not even a mappemonde etched on a seagull’s egg?

Read other winning poems in our ‘Surreal cities’ members’ poems competition, judged by John McCullough, on pages 8 and 9.

Writing survival and extinction

Sujata Bhatt will judge our winter members’ poems competition on the theme of ‘Survival and extinction’. Sujata has published nine collections with Carcanet including a Selected and a Collected Poems. Her numerous awards include the Mexican International Poetry Prize, Premio

Hear, hear!

Looking for your next listen? Tim Relf recommends some great poetry podcasts – four from the UK and three from the USA •

The New Yorker Poetry Podcast

A strikingly simple premise: a guest reads a poem from the archive, talks about it with the host, then reads and discusses one of their own also published by the magazine. Given that since 1925 The New Yorker has showcased countless American poetry greats, there’s plenty of material, including work by Sharon Olds, John Ashbery and Joyce Carol Oates.

This podcast became the soundtrack to months of lockdown dogwalking for me, and my favourite episode is Nick Laird chatting with the original host Paul Muldoon about Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Moose’, which appeared in the magazine in 1972. Agreeing that the poem is one of the best of the past century, the pair explore its cinematic quality – “like Google Earth,” they suggest, “zooming in and zooming back out again”.

The podcast is now hosted by Kevin Young, Muldoon’s successor as The New Yorker’s poetry editor and author of fifteen books of poetry and prose.

The Verb

This one isn’t solely poetry – it’s a “cabaret of the word, featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance”. A huge range of guests have appeared in the hundred-plus episodes, which have a wonderfully approachable feel and act as the perfect vehicle for the charms of host Ian McMillan.

Airing on Radio 3, archived episodes have titles such as ‘Christmas Nonsense’, ‘To the Circus’ and, one that immediately caught my eye as a Leicestershire resident, ‘Writing the Midlands’. The Verb is a fun and informative listen and the affable, ever-smart McMillan is definitely writing, reading and hosting his way towards acquiring the title ‘national treasure’.

Poem Talk

Al Filreis, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, presides over a lively round-table discussion, convening friends in the world of contemporary poetry and poetics to “collaborate on a close – but not too close – reading of a poem”.

Filreis is vastly knowledgeable and never loses his fascination for the subject. Although at times there’s an academic approach to dissecting a work, the show retains an informal feel. “We’ll talk, maybe disagree a bit and perhaps open up the verse to a few new possibilities,” says Filreis, whose subjects have included Anne Sexton, William Carlos Williams and Sylvia Plath. Ultimately, Poem Talk feels like a group of friends sitting round shooting the breeze about the pleasures of poetry. And what better format could there be for a poetry podcast?

Internacional de Poesía Nuevo Siglo de Oro 19142014. Her work has been widely anthologised, broadcast on radio and television and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She has been a visiting writer at various international institutions throughout the world. In spring 2020 she was the inaugural writerin-residence at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany.

The submissions deadline is 1 November 2021. Please upload your entries at thepoetrysociety. submittable.com/submit (email msims@poetrysociety.org.uk if you have difficulties). Rules at poetrysociety.org.uk/memberspoems s

Sujata Bhatt to judge members’ competition

Lunar Poetry Podcasts

Founded in 2014, this podcast features discussions, interviews and live recordings examining the creative process. David Turner presided over one hundred-plus recordings before Peter deGraft-Johnson, aka The Repeat Beat Poet, aka PJ, took over as host and producer. Here you’ll find a far-reaching conversation “investigating the world of those who make magic with words” and PJ is a generous, gracious host, adept at drawing out observations and anecdotes from guests. I’m grateful for the introduction to the work of Tom Sastry, a wonderful poet who can be laugh-out-loud funny.

LPP has a younger feel than some other podcasts and here’s a warning that this can sometimes mean a higher-than-average expletive count.

Lit from the Basement

A married couple have a series of one-hour conversations in their basement while their kids are sleeping upstairs. She’s an accomplished poet and academic; he’s a stay-at-home dad and a newbie when it comes to poetry.

Poets’•prizes

Congratulations to members on their latest successes • Elena Croitoru is one of four featured poets in the Erbacce-Prize for Poetry; Nicholas Paparoidamis was longlisted • Peter Sutton was joint winner of the

Kipling Society’s John McGivering Poetry Prize; Marjory Woodfield was commended • Jenny Mitchell won the Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition, with Clare Proctor and Maeve Henry second and third; Stephen Boyce, Carole Bromley, Jeanette Burton, Rachel Carney (twice), Ian Royce Chamberlain, Jenny Danes, Kerry Darbishire, Joanne Key, Sara Levy, Erica Jane Morris and Natalie Whittaker were commended; Lucy Crispin won the Son-

The format is great, but what really carries it is Oregon-based Professor Danielle Cadena Deulen’s insights, plus the chemistry between her and husband Max. It’s great for entry-level poets and readers, with each episode featuring a close reading of a poem, which Danielle introduces to “poetry resistant” Max. She doesn’t so much explain it as draw out his response. A good starting point would be their fascinating discussion about Mark Doty’s ‘Visitation’ (episode 21). The couple wound up the show this summer when their kids started school and “Max went and got himself a job”, but they’re hoping to still add the occasional episode and there’s an archive of more than fifty to enjoy.

The Poetry Review Podcast

Part of The Poetry Society’s ever-expanding audio library, the Review podcast presents exchanges between contributors and editors of the magazine. Emily Berry, preceded by Maurice Riordan in the podcast chair, is as incisive and sensitive an interviewer as she is a poet.

I particularly recommend Emily’s conversation with Mark Waldron, who opens up about his “imposter syndrome”, having come to poetry relatively late in life and not having been to university. “I still expect to be taken by the shoulder, escorted out... and told I shouldn’t really be doing this,” says Mark. Another fascinating exchange is the one between Emily and Fiona Benson, talking about how writing difficult material makes poets feel. “Shame is very unhelpful and taboos can be very unhelpful – so maybe we should try to be as brave as our poems,” suggests Fiona.

Poetry London podcast

Poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely is in the chair for this one, launched in the summer of 2021. He took over as editor of Poetry London last year after a spell on Ambit, promising to “showcase even more work from voices that have been persistently sidelined by mainstream British and American publishing”. The inaugural episode featured performances by Joy Harjo and Lewis MacAdams, as well as a look at Instapoetry, and a tribute to Colin Falck by Declan Ryan.

If subsequent episodes continue in a similar vein, it promises to be erudite and eclectic – a place of considered reflection in this fast, noisy world, echoing the direction in which Naffis-Sahely appears to be taking the magazine. The plan is to release three podcasts a year, coinciding with each new issue of Poetry London. The second instalment is set to launch on 23 October when Poetry London publishes its one-hundredth issue.

And while you’ve got your headphones on...

There’s a great array of listening on The Poetry Society’s website, including National Poetry Competition podcasts [the latest with 2021 judges Rachel Long, Fiona Benson and David Constantine is at bit.ly/npc21judgesadvice]. Faber made a two-season podcast co-hosted by Granta’s poetry editor Rachael Allen; and George the Poet is always worth hearing. In addition, any of the lectures given by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, when he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, are worth checking out – a good starting point is the inaugural one titled ‘The Parable of the Solicitor and the Poet’. s

Tim Relf is a Leicestershire-based poet, working on his first collection. His most recent novel, What She Left, is published by Penguin.

net Prize • Gillian Dawson won the Gutter and Edwin Morgan Trust ‘All Things are Possible’ poetry competition; Morag Anderson and Caroline Bracken were highly commended • Isabella Mead won the Julian Lennon Prize for Poetry, with Rachel Burns second; Margaret Beston was commended • Jane Lovell won first prize in the open category of the Poetry on the Lake International Poetry Competition, with Aileen Ballantyne and Caroline Carver shortlisted, and

Christopher North, Carole Bromley, Alun Robert and Mike Farren highly commended; Anne Ballard, Christopher North, Anne Stewart, Carole Bromley, Kate Young, Fran Reader and Diana Cant were shortlisted in the formal poems category; Scott Elder won the short poems category, with Michael Swan, Brian Clark, Bridget Frost and Christopher North on the shortlist. s

hannahbuckman.comBuckman,HannahIllustration:

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Poets are notorious homebodies. Even before the coronavirus pandemic entered our lives, we were the original ground-floor ghosts, drifting between coffee pot and writing desk. Where we once dreamed of landing a gig as writers in residence, during lockdown we became writers resident in our own homes. For some, furlough has been a melancholy introduction to the reality of being a full-time writer – Simon Armitage recently wrote of a poet throwing himself an office Christmas party for one.

During the groundhog day of lockdown, with inspiration a little thin on the ground, I swapped my pen and PC for scissors and glue, and began making brightly coloured cut-ups of famous poets’ homes. Which set me thinking about how poets’ houses and homes inform their work. Home is the central stage in our lives, its walls blank pages that soon fill up with memories and regrets. When we’re at home we’re truly ourselves and when we’re away, home takes on a mythic quality. For those who think of home as overfamiliar, Longfellow sounds a cautionary note in ‘Haunted Houses’, reminding us: “All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses”. While we bustle around, looking for pens and replacement ink cartridges:

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air [...]

The itinerant Elizabeth Bishop carried her various homes through her imaginative life. In ‘Sestina’, the house is a site of both trauma and comfort:

September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother Sits in the kitchen with the child [...]

In a reversal of The Wizard of Oz’s shift from monochrome to colour, the darkness creeps in: “the child / is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears / dance like mad on the hot black stove”.

Billy Collins writes happily from home, listening to jazz, eating oranges, drinking coffee and typing, but home facilitates adventure. In ‘The Night House’, he imagines the heart rising from the sleeping body in the middle of the night. She “leaves the trapezoidal bedroom / […] to sit by herself at the kitchen table”, and is soon joined by the mind “who puts on a robe” and “lights a cigarette”, and the soul “up on the roof / in her nightdress [...] / singing a song about the wildness of the sea”. Wallace Stevens captures the magical stillness of the house at night with equal lyricism: “The house was quiet and the world was calm. / The reader became the book; and summer night // Was like the conscious being of the book.” Night makes a library of the noisiest house.

The connection between home and national identity runs throughout poetry, with Browning’s ‘Home-Thoughts, From Abroad’ perhaps the most famous example: “O, to be in England / Now that April’s there”. Browning knew the English abroad idealised their green and pleasant land and that it’s an image that is most convincing at a distance. Conversely, in ‘O Daedalus, Fly Away Home’, Robert Hayden ponders the immigrant’s experience: “Night is an African juju man / weaving a wish and a weariness together / to make two wings.” His poem becomes an invocation or prayer: “O fly away home, fly away. // Do you remember Africa?”, ruminating on a split identity – a homeland among the “Georgia pines”, dancing to the sound of the “jubilee banjo”, and another older, deeper affinity. America is a home the subject no longer wants, and never asked for.

Homesickness is evoked in Edward Thomas’s 1916 poem ‘Home’ (not

to be confused with two others of the same title). Three strangers share a shelter in a snow-filled land. Despite tasting “sleep and food and fellowship” each feels disconnected and adrift until one mentions home:

The word ‘home’ raised a smile in us all three, And one repeated it, smiling just so That all knew what he meant and none would say.

But for Thomas, as a soldier separated from his home and family, the very word ‘home’ is too painful to bear: “If I should ever more admit / Than the mere word I could not endure it”. In Browning’s poem, the thought of home is a comfort; for Thomas, it is an aching reminder of enforced absence.

For William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Dove Cottage at Grasmere was the centre of their world. Indeed, Grasmere had been on William’s mind since his youth, as he recalled in a poem published in full only after his death: “What happy fortune were it to live here”. With a sort of retrospective clairvoyance he sees his future there filled with “sunbeams, shadows, butterflies and birds”. There is a curious sense of him discovering a home, rather than being born into one – identifying an arcadia where he (and Dorothy) could most fully be

Withinthemselves:thebounds of this huge Concave; here Should be my home, this Valley be my World.

The poet Sarah Doyle recently published a very fine book of montage poems based on Dorothy’s journals (Something so wild and new in this feeling, V. Press). In almost every line is that magnetic sense of attraction that home brings – all roads lead not to Rome, but to home: “We rowed home across a lake as still as glass.”

In ‘The Homes of England’, Felicia Dorothea Hemans attempts to uncover a universal truth about home as the nest, where “the child’s glad spirit” is nurtured. The child may find a home of their own, but like Bishop, they will return, imaginatively, to their first home throughout their lives. I recently saw an estate agent’s brochure for the house I grew up in, transformed almost beyond recognition. Yet there were shapes and shadows that evoked indelible memories. The decor might change, but the ghosts live on. s Christopher James won the 2008 National Poetry Competition. His collection The Penguin Diaries is published by Templar.

“Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?”

Many of us have spent a lot of time at home lately. Christopher James explores it as a place for poetry

Above: Dove Cottage, Grasmere – home to William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Right: The Elizabeth Bishop House, where Elizabeth Bishop spent each summer with her maternal grandparents, William Brown Bulmer and Elizabeth (Hutchinson) Bulmer. Cut-up collages by Christopher James.

Sharing the creative spark

As the country shifts tentatively towards live events and face-to-face socialising, some Stanza groups are enjoying ‘traditional’ meetings: sitting around a table with cake, tea or wine and tangible, printed poems.

Portsmouth Stanza held its first live poetry reading on 1 September, following a seaside get-together in July. The group was celebrating members’ joint successes over the past eighteen months. “We have all been pulling our socks up, putting our best feet forward and keeping our toes in the poetry waters,” writes rep Denise Bennett. “Next year, we hope to produce a new anthology of our work and celebrate our delayed fiftieth anniversary with a reading.”

Roundel Stanza in Tonbridge (see below) met for the first time on 1 September, for a workshop with Abegail Morley. The group is full of plans: “Apart from regular monthly meetings on a Wednesday and Saturday,” explains Margaret Beston, “writing days at exhibitions at a local art gallery and a museum are also planned. Roundel has also been invited to take part in a public performance later in the autumn.”

Other groups, such as York Stanza, are taking a hybrid approach. Regular meetings are thriving online, but a live reunion reading is planned in the new library at Hungate, York on 7 October. Rep Carole Bromley reports: “We have all become real Zoom experts, sharing the screen and making good use of all the buttons! Being on Zoom has enabled us to include a lot of people who would otherwise not be able to attend and we have loved welcoming them to the group.”

Holme Valley Poets, one of The Poetry Society’s newly affiliated Stanzas, is also making good use of

a Zoom subscription. The group has been in existence for over a decade; before the pandemic they met at Huddersfield University. “We are always delighted to welcome new members and anyone who would like to drop in to see what we do,” writes rep Sue Clark. They also work closely with Holmfirth Writers’ Group and on 19 September participated in a live event at Holmfirth Arts Festival, writing poems on the spot, commissioned by members of the public.

“We are so pleased that Holme Valley Poets now has the status of a Poetry Society Stanza,” adds Sue. “To be connected with the Society, which does so much for poetry nationally, feels very exciting.”The Society welcomes two more newly affiliated Stanzas, whose activities will be permanently online. Liz Cashdan is running an online Stanza critique group for PS members who do not want to or cannot attend Stanza meetings in person. It is open to UK and international members and will meet on the second Tuesday of the month. “It will be mainly a workshopping group,” explains Liz, “but we’ll perhaps do some writing and discussion if members choose those options.”

The Poets’ Directory Stanza (see above) has sprung from the Poets’ Directory, a one-stop shop of opportunities, listings and resources curated by Colin Bancroft. From what started as an Excel spreadsheet, the Directory has grown into a website that has garnered over 100,000 hits in the past year. The Directory has a Spotlight poetry section, with an interview and poem from a selected poet, and this was the spark of the online Stanza group: “The Poets’ Directory Live! Stanza group is a place that welcomes all poets, with the aim of promoting and championing new voices. It is a monthly, virtual event that will run on the second or third Sunday each month. Any poet from the UK or Ireland is invited to attend, read and interact.”s Holme Valley Poets: Susan Clark, susan.cartworth@gmail.com lizcashdan@gmail.com • poetsdirectory.co.uk

In brief

Stanza news & upcoming events •

Stanza competition in a jiffy

A giant jiffy bag of Stanza competition entries has just made its way west. Cornwall-based judge Katrina Naomi is busy working her way through the entries, and we’ll have our winners announced on National Poetry Day – 7 October. The subject this year was Choice – NPD’s theme – and we received submissions from more than two hundred Stanza members. Thank you to all Stanza groups who got involved, and we look forward to sharing the winning poems with you shortly.

Congratulations to members on their latest successes • Katrina Naomi won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize and Victor Tapner was runner up;

Nicola Jackson won the essay prize • Marie Naughton won the poetry category in the Rubery Book Award; Ella Duffy, Claire Dyer, Marie Naughton (again) and David Punter were shortlisted • Elaine Feeney won the McKitterick Prize • Rod Whitworth was commended in the Federation of Writers’ (Scotland) Vernal Equinox Competition • Anne Casey

won joint first prize in the American Writers Review Contest • Pauline Hawkesworth and Christine Buxton came first and second in the Southport Writers’ Circle International Poetry Competition • Elena Croitoru and Aileen La Tourette were winners of the Live Canon Pamphlet/Chapbook Competition; Nora Nadjarian, Mary Mulholland, Maeve Henry, Claire

Forest events and competition

The unflagging Forest Poets (Walthamstow) have lined up Zoom readings from Lorraine Mariner (18 Oct), Imtiaz Dharker (8 Nov), Linda Black and Jennifer Wong (1 Dec) – follow Forest Poets on social media, visit Eventbrite for details or contact paulmcgrane1 @yahoo.co.uk. The group has also launched its 2021 competition with the inimitable Joelle Taylor as judge (we interviewed Joelle in our summer issue). £1,000 in prizes is there to be won in adult and young poets categories. The deadline is 11 Oct 2021; details at bit.ly/wfpoetrycomp s

Collison and Rod Whitworth were shortlisted • Gareth Writer-Davies and Pam Thompson were commended in the Prole Poetry Competition

• Pnina Shinebourne came second in the Short Fiction/University of Essex International Short Story Prize

• Beda Higgins was shortlisted in the Pigott Poetry Prize 2021. s

See also p. 11

Joelle Taylor

The Poets’ Directory Stanza

Left: Abegail

The Foyle Award’s future stars

Young poets’ news

Making the World-dreem

If you’ve been inspired by all the great new poems on YPN and want to get into publishing yourself, check out our latest feature.

Last year, Foyle Young Poet Ian Macartney founded a micropress and published an anthology of his friends’ work called World-dreem It has been shipped to ten countries across four continents, and even sold at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. On YPN, he breaks down the poetry publishing industry in simple terms, shares exactly what is involved in micropublishing, and explains how you can get involved. For more on DIY publishing, we’ve interviewed another Foyle Young Poet, Cia Mangat, on her zine Zindabad (see right).

•

Agiant thank you to everyone who entered this year’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

•Nearly 7,000 young poets aged 11-17 from across the world sent us poems; we had over 14,000 in total and our two judges, Clare Pollard and Yomi Sode, had a mighty task choosing their 100 winning poems.

Congratulations to our winners, who have now been contacted, and our very best wishes to every single entrant, all of whom have been informed of the results via email. Soon our top 15 and 85 commended poets will be revealed at the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award ceremony, a poetry-packed, celebratory online event reserved for the winners, school groups and invited guests on National Poetry Day, Thursday 7 October 2021.

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is the biggest and most influential poetry competition for young people in the world and has introduced many star poets into the poetry firmament, including Caroline Bird, Helen Mort and Jay Bernard. Check The Poetry Society’s website on 7 October to be the first to discover the 100 winners and read this year’s top 15 winning poems. s

Finding poems in surprising places

It’s been a busy summer on Young Poets Network! We’ve published the winning erasure poems, as chosen by Julia Bird and Karen McCarthy Woolf, where writers were asked to black-out, highlight and decorate existing texts, to create a totally new work.

Congratulations to...

Foyle Young Poets Neha Agrawal and Xinyue Jenny Jiang, and YPNer

Fathima Zahra, whose poems appear in SLAM: You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This (edited by Nikita Gill), shortlisted for the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education’s 2021 poetry prize • Foyle Young Poet Iona Mandal on being highly commended in the Poetry For Good competition • Foyle Young Poet Jade Cuttle on winning a Northern Writers’ Award • Foyle Young Poet and Poetry Society member Sung Cho, a runner-up in the KeatsShelley Young Romantics Prize 2021 • Foyle Young Poet A. K. Blakemore, whose debut novel The Manningtree Witches won the Desmond Elliott Prize. s

The winning poems use texts as varied as L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to explore themes of home, equality and memory – and they’re beautiful! Check out the first-prize winning entry by Sarah Cassidy (right), and head to Young Poets Network to view them all.

We’ve also published work by the translators among you in our third annual challenge with world-leading journal Modern Poetry in Translation. Young poets cotranslated ‘Lu Neza VII’ by Isthmus Zapotec poet Irma Pineda, with the help of translator Wendy Call and MPT editor Clare Pollard. Read brilliant versions produced by young writers on YPN now, and first-prize winner Charlotte Hughes’s translation will be published in the next Modern Poetry in Translation.

Keep an eye out for new challenges coming soon, and for the results of the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis challenge (with a very exciting performance attached to it). We’ll also soon be sharing the winners of the four August challenges, set and judged by Foyle Young Poets Sinéad O’Reilly, Mukisa Verrall, Euan Sinclair and Anisha Minocha. We’ve been inundated

with poems about conversations, the absurd, objects and letters and can’t wait to share the judges’ favourites with you! s

Right: ‘Homes of Flesh and Blood’ by Sarah Cassidy is the first-prize winner of the Young Poets Network Erasure Poetry Challenge. It uses as its source text page 37 of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Western Publishing Company, 1990). Find the other winning erasure poems on Young Poets Network.

Illustration:

AnishaVerrallO’Reilly,judgesYPNfromClockwisetopleft:challengeSinéadMukisaandMinocha

Foyle artwork by James Brown, jamesbrown.info

A word from the zine•scene

Lateral flow tests, masks and outdoor workshops the Foyle Young Poets residential looked a little different this year, but it was as exhilarating and in-

spiring as ever. In August, fifteen of the 2020 Foyle winners were finally able to enjoy their prize of a writing retreat – postponed from February half term – at Arvon’s beautiful Shropshire centre, The Hurst. They were tutored by the judge of last year’s competition, Keith Jarrett, and award-winning poet Jacqueline Saphra, discovering new poems, new poetic forms and new friends. s

Eye to the future •

This autumn we’ll be announcing a brand-new project in collaboration with 59 Productions, the award-winning design studio and production company who created the breathtaking video design for the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, and Stemettes, the award-winning social enterprise working across the UK and Ireland to bring brilliant young women into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. The project will offer exciting opportunities to young poets aged 18 and under who are based in the UK. It will bring together cosmology, biology, projection technology, STEM education and poetry to tell an astonishing story that spans 13.8 billion years. If you’re interested in the intersection between poetry and STEM, check The Poetry Society website on 21 October for more details. We’ll also keep you updated via the Young Poets Network newsletter, so be sure to sign up at bit.ly/ypnebulletin s

Young Poetry News Tell us about Zindabad please!

Cia Mangat Zindabad is a mainly print zine (pronounced ‘zeen’, like ‘magazine’) for people who identify with ‘diaspora’, meaning those who have spread or been dispersed from their ancestors’ homeland. I started Zindabad in winter 2020 – I’d always been interested in zine culture (i.e. DIY, self-published booklets) and I missed the community of poetry spaces. I used to work with an online zine called Risen, but since the pandemic had brought everything online I really wanted to experiment with using print instead.

YPNews What has Zindabad taught you?

CM I’ve learnt so much about the process of editing other people’s work! It’s so much more than just spotting people’s spelling mistakes – editing should be a conversation with the other writer that ultimately moves towards making their work as shiny as possible, rather than just wanting to ‘correct’ bits of it.

YPNews Any tips for others?

CM I think there are as many ways to make zines as there are zines out there – go online and look! If you type ‘zine’ into a site like Issuu.com you’ll find free, online zines that you can glean inspiration from. A few of my favourites are Eponym, Menaces (both run by FYPs!), Sweet Thang, gal-dem, and Sula Collective s zindabadzine.co.uk

Photographs by Cheryl Moskowitz.

Zindabad (above) and publisher and Foyle Young Poet Cia Mangat (photo: Emily Twinam)

Seen & Heard

In a conversation by telephone that’s full of surprises, celebrated US poet Mary Ruefle and Review editor Emily Berry discuss starting poems and first lines, writing letters, humour and sadness, and not having decided to be a writer – yet! Ruefle gives wonderful readings of her poems: ‘Lament’, ‘Conflict’, ‘My Life as a Scholar’ and ‘Empathy of Cod’. Yours at poetrysociety.org.uk/listen

Congratulations to Arlo Parks , Foyle Patron and winner of the 2021 Mercury Prize for her debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams. Good to hear event host Lauren Laverne acknowledge her as both musician and poet.

Benjamin Zephaniah has been hosting series two of the BAFTAwinning spoken-word show Life and Rhymes from the fairy-lit bandstand in Battersea Park. The four-part, halfhour show features poets including Hazel Mehmet, Big Scoop and Deanna Rodger, plus a quickfire open mic, and will be broadcast on Sky Arts.

Great Noises that Fill the Air is a new BFI DVD compilation of music and poetry performances filmed between 1978 and 1996, featuring Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke and more: shop.bfi.org.uk

Poet Warda Yassin has worked with young writers to create a crowdsourced poem exploring the people and history of the Sheffield to Tinsley Canal. It will appear on walls along the canal in spring 2022, as part of The Poetry Society’s Waterlines project in collaboration with the Canal & River Trust. bit.ly/wordfishing

Notice of 2021 AnnualMeetingGeneral

Notice is hereby given that the 2021 Annual General Meeting of The Poetry Society will be at 6.30pm on Tuesday 30 November 2021 for the purposes described below. This meeting will be

Classifieds

Read, write and enjoy poetry in the best company – join your local Poetry Society Stanza or set one up. Details at poetrysociety.org.uk/stanza

•Twitter and Instagram were alight with poetry fans posting about the joys of the Sealey challenge: a project to read a poetry book or pamphlet every day throughout August. The Poetry Society asked some friends to recommend a book each day and the combined and eclectic reading list is available at bit.ly/tpssealey

Poetry features in two new art exhibitions. A Still Life: Paul Coldwell in Dialogue with Giorgio Morandi, at the Estorick Collection, London, features new prints, sculptures and poems created during lockdown by PS member Paul, hung alongside the museum’s enviable Morandi collection (6 Oct-19 Dec). Shilpa Gupta’s acclaimed For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit, on display at the Barbican, London, is an immersive installation and soundscape featuring the work of a hundred poets from the eighth to the twenty-first century, all incarcerated for their work, writings, or beliefs (7 Oct-6 Feb).

Two poems by PS member Gary Bills are displayed on billboards in Birmingham, as part of Birmingham City University’s Inspired Festival. Bring on more poetry billboards!

held online, to enable as many members as possible to attend safely.

1. To consider and adopt the General Council’s Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021.

2. To elect the General Council.

3. To appoint Auditors to hold office until the conclusion of the next Annual General Meeting.

Casey Bailey has been nominated to join the Board of Trustees, replacing

Poetry News is published quarterly by The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX, UK.

ISSN 1353 7237.

Editor: Mike Sims. Tel: 020 7420 9880 or msims@poetrysociety.org.ukemail

Ian McMillan and BBC Radio 3’s The Verb released a new manifesto for writing in September, drawn from hundreds of conversations with guests on the programme about how best to creatively capture our precarious times. bit.ly/verbmanifesto

PS member T.G. Thomas has made a surreally stylish film of his poem ‘Sequence’. Free to view online at bit.ly/sequencetgthomas

The Gloucester Poetry Festival and Cheltenham Poetry Festival programmes feature a wealth of online events throughout autumn, including readings, workshops and open mics (gloucesterpoetryfestival.uk and cheltenhampoetryfestival.co.uk). Winchester is combining online events throughout September with a weekend of live readings on 8-10 3EuropeanAndwithPoetry(riponpoetryfestival.co.uk).acrosses,Poetry(winchesterpoetryfestival.org).OctoberRiponFestivalpresentsbooklaunch-liveperformancesandworkshopsthecathedralcity7-10OctoberDerbyFestivalisalsoinOctober,detailsatbit.ly/derbypoetfest.Londoners,lookoutforthePoetryFestival,18Nov-Dec(europeanpoetryfestival.com).

outgoing trustee Mairi Johnson who has completed her term. Two trustees are seeking re-election: Andrew Neilson and Ann Phillips. As there are no more people standing than places available, no vote on this will be required. Full details available on The Poetry Society website – visit bit.ly/tpsagm2021ToattendtheAGM, please be sure to book your place in advance at bit.ly/tpsagm2021. If you require

To advertise here, contact Ben Rogers, tel: 020 7420 9880 or expressedinvaluableThanksbrogers@poetrysociety.org.ukemailtoRachelPierceyforherassistance.Theviewsin

Poem badges, with designs (see above) selected from an open submission, will be among the giveaways at the Printed Poetry symposium organised by Dr Angie Butler at Arnolfini, Bristol, on 14 October. The badges by Derek Beaulieu, Julie Johnstone, Matthew Robertson, Sara Elgerot, Josephine Corcoran and Jim Young will be included in a bag screenprinted with a poem by SJ Fowler and a response by artist Sarah Bradicich. The bag also contains a poetry pencil by Jeremy Dixon; a notebook printed with a visual poem by Lina Nordenström; and a print, ‘Babble’, by Ben Jenner. All the submitted designs of one, two or three-word poems and visual poems will play in a showreel backdrop at the Printed Poetry Symposium. More at cfpr.uwe.ac.uk

Hooray for Helmie Stil’s film of Wayne Holloway-Smith’s NPC-winning poem ‘The posh mums are boxing in the square’, now shortlisted for the Weimar poetry film award 2021. Good luck, Helmie!

Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate , PS vice-president – and a member of the band LYR, on stage in London on 27 October. bit.ly/omearalyr s

assistance to do so, please mayZoom.helpsentplatformmembership@poetrysociety.org.ukemailTheAGMwillbeheldviathedigitalZoom.ThoseRSVP-ingwillbefullinstructions.WearehappytoanyonewhoneedssupportusingAnyoneunabletoattendvirtuallyrequestaproxyvote.ApoetryreadingfollowstheformalbusinessoftheAGM,withachancetomeetstaffandtrustees,andputfacestonames. s

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