Category: Poetry in Schools
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Poetry in Public Space
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I’ve been running this project for years now. Demand for its material has come from schools, healthcare settings and libraries all over the world. Since Covid, however, that demand has effectively evaporated. For a while, of course, public space changed its nature. It became dangerous and, as a precaution, places like waiting rooms, class rooms…
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Poems for the Wall
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I haven’t mentioned this project here for a while. I started it over twenty years ago, now. Both of the following two statements are true : it remains what it has always been – very much a one-man-band ; but also, and from the beginning, it has received help and support from a wide range…
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Poems for Rising Ten
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I run a project called Poems for the wall. A new collection for the project is now complete. It is called Poems for Rising Ten and is for children approaching the end of their time in primary school. There are 25 poems in this new collection, each one accompanied by art work. In most cases,…
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Poems for Public Display
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I never stop yearning for good poetry to reach past its traditional catchment areas – those shelves in the bookshop marked “Poetry,” the university literature department, the dedicated arts festival, the shy, solitary and possibly eccentric brain – and find a valid place for itself in the public square, the waiting room where we all…
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A Poem Exhibition in Clifton Cathedral
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About three months ago, I organised an exhibition of poem-posters in Clifton Cathedral. This is a bold and wonderful Roman Catholic building in Bristol, designed and built in the 1960’s and 70’s. The exhibition took place on a balcony there, built above the font and overlooking the altar. As soon as I am able, I…
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National Poetry Day
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The UK’s National Poetry Day took place on Thursday 4th October. The given theme was “change” – which seemed topical enough. I took real and enormous pleasure in spending some of the day in St Katherine’s School in Pill, on the outskirts of Bristol. I was acting as poet-in-very-temporary-residence, a public position with a slightly…