Spring 2022
POETRY NEWS The Newspaper of The Poetry Society www.poetrysociety.org.uk
FREE THIS ISSUE National Poetry Competition Anthology
WHAT THE PRES DID NEXT... Roger McGough’s gigs and rejigs
IMAGINE, MAKE Naush Sabah on Birmingham’s lively poetry scene
PROTEST POETRY Vanessa Kisuule shows the way
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Jump for joy Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2022 is launched 5 & 14
National Poetry Competition: early venture, first prize
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ongratulations to Eric Yip (right), who has won first prize in the 2021 National Poetry Competition with his powerful and vivid poem, ‘Fricatives’. Judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long praised the “two, or three... worlds” of the poem, and how it confronts, thrashes with and navigates “the murky and treacherous waters of language, race, migration, and of being heard when ‘Nobody wants to listen / to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.’” Astonishingly,
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Eric only started writing a couple of years ago and this is his first poem published in a literary journal – it’s sure to be the first of many. Read our interview with Eric on page 3. Second prize went to Jed Myers for ‘I Picture Him Driving’, “a poem with a great deal of human love and sorrow in its heart”, wrote the judges, its “choppy tercets” inviting us into the “deeply sensual mess and grace” of the Italian meal shared by the father and the speaker. Emma Purshouse won third
prize with ‘Catherine Eddowes’ tin box as a key witness’ – a poem full of “horror and pity”, spoken in the voice
of a sugar tin owned by Eddowes, the fourth woman to be killed and mutilated by Jack the Ripper. “A deft and deeply effective way of sayingnot-saying the unspeakable,” commented the judges. Our seven commended winners were: Kizziah Burton, ‘We Were Learning to Not Look Away But To Look Through It Like a Wind Eye’; Jo Haslam, ‘A lyke wake for auntie’; Lindsey Holland, ‘A Riddle of Hamsters’; M.R. Peacocke, ‘Out of School’; Martin Reed, ‘Durleigh’; > Ctd, p. 2
“I was somewhere, then I went home, where all things are” About Us has lit up Caernarfon, Derry-Londonderry, Hull, Luton and Paisley with poetry, writes Natasha Ryan
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n October The Poetry Society launched About Us, a collaboration with video design company 59 Productions and social enterprise Stemettes, writes Natasha Ryan, Poetry Society Education Officer. Part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a major arts programme taking place throughout 2022, About Us has brought together poetry, design, science and music to explore the many ways life across the universe is connected. With our partners, The Poetry Society developed an ambitious learning and participation programme culminating in a multimedia light show, including young poets’ prize-winning work, which is touring to Paisley, Scotland; Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland; Caernarfon, Wales; and Luton and Hull, England, from March to May 2022.
From the project’s inception, it was important that each town or city the show visited played a role in co-creating its content. Local choirs are singing the soundtrack in each venue, and video portraits of town residents also feature. Most importantly for us at The Poetry Society, poems by local schoolchildren are
celebrated on enormous plinths throughout the daytime during the show’s run. These poems have been created in workshops that have taken place in around ten schools in each area. The aim has been to put young writers at the heart of the community, allowing them to see their words shaping the About Us experience.
Councils, community organisations and local poets helped us to make sure that the poetry workshops reached different communities and postcode areas. Celebrating different languages as part of the project, including Welsh in Caernarfon and Gaeilge in Derry-Londonderry, was also a priority. > Ctd, p. 2
Left: About Us, created by 59 Productions, The Poetry Society & Stemettes, in Paisley, 1 March 2022 (photo: Justin Sutcliffe); centre: About Us, Paisley; right: About Us in Derry-Londonderry, 14 March 2022.