New Year’s resolution – keep Poetry healthy!

Still stuck for a new year’s resolution?  How about subscribing to an extra literary magazine, buying another collection/pamphlet, perhaps crowd-funding an event or renewing your membership of The Poetry Society?

Not yet a member? T.S Elliot must be spinning in his grave! He helped set up the society in 1909. Or, to paraphrase another great American wordsmith (record holder for speaking 350 words per minute): Ask not what Poetry can do for you, but what YOU can do for Poetry.

For the modest price of £23 per year, you can enjoy that warm glow of maintaining the heart beat of poetry in the UK, as well as a hamper of literary goodies. For £44 per year, you get a subscription to the quarterly Poetry Review thrown in too. What’s not to like?

For me, the warm glow is enough. But I’ve enjoyed the benefits too. The society has over 100 Stanza groups in the UK where you can enjoy the company and technical feedback of other poets. Clapham used to be my Stanza group. Now I’m a member of the Brighton group. There’s one near you, almost certainly.

My poem Sp/lit was recently commended in the society’s 2019 Stanza Competition. You can read Sp/lit, along with the winning and commended poems at the following link. Just select 2019 and scroll down the right hand side of the page to find them all: 2019 Stanza Competition poems

If you live within reach of London, the Poetry Society’s refurbished headquarters off Long Acre, Covent Garden, is a great venue for its many events and activities, together with the Poetry Café where you can meet, eat and speak to your heart’s content. I recently went there for Poetry@3, a popular monthly Open Mic event hosted by the warmly Welsh and very welcoming Paul McGrane. It’s for poets who like to play in the afternoon. So handy for travel, if you don’t live in London.

This Christmas, I went up to the Big Smoke again for the lighting up of the 100ft Norwegian spruce in Trafalgar Square. Is no-where safe from the Poetry Society’s influence? A specially commissioned poem, ‘The Gift’ by Clare Pollard, inspired by local school children, was part of the ceremony, touchingly performed by youngsters to a crowd of warmly wrapped people.

Other benefits to membership include, discounted poetry surgeries, a free copy of the quarterly Poetry News, packed with essential reading, including a double page dedicated to young poets. And more than 20 different projects currently putting Poetry into the public arena up and down the country, from National Poetry Day, and The Annual Lecture, to the Canal Laureateship, Poetry and Podcasts, and vital archive work.

So, for the cost of a festive round of drinks, you get to support a heritage that goes back  . . . well, exactly when did poetry first start? Cuneiform, spoken, printed or virtual, all we can say for sure, is that it’s been going a very long time. Let’s hope it stays that way!

For more information about membership, please visit: The Poetry Society

Six reasons to join The Poetry Society

If you’re still not a member of The Poetry Society, here are a few good reasons why you (and your bank account!) might decide to join in the party. It costs as little as £20 a year.

In no particular order – the infamous Stanza Bonanza! 

All over Britain, groups of poets get together at Poetry Society Stanza groups to share work, inspire each other, produce anthologies or perform together in friendly internecine shoot-outs.  Here is last month’s Stanza Bonanza between Clapham – aka Original Poets – (front from left: Tom Vaughan, Nicole Carrell, Tessa Lang, Mark Fiddes, Claire Booker; back far left: Hilaire) and Reading (back from 2nd left: Susan Utting, Louise Ordish, Shelley Connor, Gill Learner, Alan Hester, Ted Millichap).

Our Bonanza frolics took place in The Poetry Place – another great reason to support the Poetry Society. This bijou building (ok it’s cramped and steamy in summer but a refurb is on the way) is bang smack in the cultural heartland of London’s Covent Garden. Virtually every night there’s an event to enjoy or an exhibition to ponder. The Café provides tasty vegetarian food and a place to write or hang out in. Upstairs there’s a venue for workshops, parties and hard-working Poetry Society staff (also boxes and boxes of poetry books – the nicest possible kind of tripping hazard).

Every member receives a copy of Poetry News, packed with news and views. As a member, you can enter the Member’s Poems competition four times a year. Winners are published in Poetry News and receive a juicy parcel of poetry books. My poem ‘Deadline’ is twinkling away happily in this summer issue. If you’d like to read it, along with the five other winning poems on the theme of Smell, please click: www.poetrysociety.org.uk/membership/members-poems-2/

More than £16,000 is give out each year in prize money by the Poetry Society, which runs The National Poetry Competition, The Ted Hughes Award, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year, Slambassadors and numerous others.

Members also have the option of receiving Poetry Review – one the most respected poetry magazines in the English speaking world.  If you hope to be published in its august pages, perhaps take advantage of the Poetry Prescription service available to Poetry Society members at a very reasonable fee. Poets with great track records are available in the four corners of Britain (or by Skype) to read and report back on examples of your poetry. I can highly recommend it from personal experience (thank you Katy Evans Bush!).

Joining the Poetry Society gives a nice warm feeling too, as you’re directly supporting its original, eclectic projects. From canal-sides, supermarkets, football pitches and former battlefields, to schools and arts venues, projects range from ongoing programmes to one-off commissions of new work. The Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree, The Canal Laureateship, Poems on the Underground, National Poetry Day – all wonderful examples of how the Poetry Society is raising poetry’s profile with people of all ages.

Convinced? Still not sure?  For the full deal, click on: www.poetrysociety.org.uk/ and give some serious thought to joining, supporting, engaging with and using the opportunities that the Poetry Society has been providing to poets and poetry lovers since 1909.  You know it makes sense!