The Poetry Society

This poem was written by Fred D'Aguiar and Sarah Howe in 2021 as part of the TIDE research project, as a collaboration between the University of Oxford, The Poetry Society and the National Portrait Gallery. It is written as a response to the painting in the National Portrait Gallery Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth with an unknown girl by Pierre Mignard, 1682. The TIDE project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 681884). The poem is performed by Jess Murrain and Phoebe Campbell.

Ilya Kaminsky reads at the launch of The Poetry Review 109:2, Summer 2019, held at The Poetry Café, London. Ilya Kaminsky will be giving this year's Poetry Society Annual Lecture / Liverpool University Allott Lecture on Poetry in a Time of Crisis on Monday 15 May 7:30pm. You can book to attend the lecture online here: bit.ly/AnnualLectureOnline You can book to attend the lecture in person here: bit.ly/AnnualLectureKaminsky

Kate Wakeling's new poem ‘and a tree’ was commissioned as part of The Poetry Society's annual Look North More Often programme and celebrates the 2022 Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. This is the 75th tree given to London from Oslo as thanks for keeping their king safe during World War Two, and is the 15th poem commissioned to celebrate this annual gift. In this podcast, 'and a tree' is performed by Treymaine Lemar Anderson, Caeculus Baker and Milena Madeiros Tabert, three Year 6 children from Soho Parish Primary School in Westminster. You can read the poem online now, and it is also displayed at the base of the tree in Trafalgar Square until 6 January 2023. You can also find a plethora of free festive KS2 teaching resources and poems written by primary school children in response to 'and a tree' on our website at bit.ly/lnmo. Happy holidays from everyone at The Poetry Society!

After the announcement of the death of Her Majesty the Queen on 8 September 2022, The Poetry Society invited Society President Roger McGough to write a response to the unfolding news. The Poetry Society is very grateful to him for writing a personal and immediate reflection the same evening, as he began to process this great change in our national life. The text of Roger McGough's poem God Rest the Queen is available here: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/god-rest-the-queen. The poem was commissioned by The Poetry Society in response to the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II on 9 September 2022. You are welcome to reproduce the poem for non-commercial use. Just quote the credit line © 2022 Roger McGough, for The Poetry Society www.poetrysociety.org.uk. If you do use the poem in your community, we’d love to hear about it. (For commercial use, please contact info@poetrysociety.org.uk)

Dzifa Benson speaks to Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall. Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall are both alumni of the Obsidian Foundation writing retreat. Their poems were published in The Poetry Review, Winter 2021. The Obsidian Foundation is a writing retreat, a week-long retreat of selected Black poets of African descent. The Obsidian Foundation's goal is to create a community of Black creative diversity where poets are fully self-expressed free from racism. Discover more on their website: obsidianfoundation.co.uk Clementine E. Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall discuss their experience on the Obsidian Foundation writing retreat, what it means to write in vernacular and how poetry can speak on behalf of a community. They read their poems: 'How To Eat Frogs' (Clementine E. Burnley), 'The Gold Price' (Zakia Carpenter-Hall), 'She Found God In Herself and She Loved Her Fiercely' (Zakia Carpenter-Hall) and 'A Swiss Lace Front Wig' (Clementine E. Burnley).

Spend 30 engrossing minutes in the company of the award-winning US poet Shane McCrae and Review editor Emily Berry as they discuss Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ as the trigger, when he was just 15, of McCrae’s poetry career; John Keats and the Gothic; George Herbert; and McCrae's conversion from free verse to metrical verse. ‘I can only recommend that everyone abandon the way they’ve been writing and see what happens if they write in a different way,’ he says. Fascinating on the ‘productive panic’ of building a collection, McCrae also gives wonderful readings of his poems published in the autumn 2021 issue of The Poetry Review: 'Explaining My Appearance in Certain Pictures', 'The Fungus Called Dead Man’s Fingers' and 'The Dead Negro in the Modernist Long Poem'.

Sinéad Morrissey's new poem ‘The Fourth King’ was commissioned as part of our annual Look North More Often programme and celebrates the 2021 Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. Here, it's performed by Isobel Chappell, Leon Ganje Day and Vasilis Vasiliou, three Year 6 children from St Saviour’s Church of England Primary School in Westminster. You can read the poem online, and on a banner designed by Marcus Walters on the tree in Trafalgar Square until 6 January 2022. You can also find a video interview with Sinéad, KS2 teaching resources, and poems written by primary school children in response to 'The Fourth King' on our website at bit.ly/lnmo. Happy holidays from everyone at The Poetry Society!

Ben Rogers of The Poetry Society speaks to this year's National Poetry Competition judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long in a wide-ranging conversation that contemplates the perpetual dynamism of reading, where to find inspiration, poems as little creatures, the nature of poetic truth, and how and when to end a poem. The National Poetry Competition is open until 31 October, open to all poets worldwide aged 18+ at www.npc.poetrysociety.org.uk

In their funny and thought-provoking conversation by telephone, celebrated American poet Mary Ruefle and Review editor Emily Berry discuss starting poems and first lines; working to commission and no longer facing the blank page; writing letters, writing prose, humour and sadness and not being afraid of the latter; pins, paper clips, swimming and getting comfortable with what we don't know... Poetry is to be experienced as a phenomenon on earth, Ruefle says, “[it] is not be understood… it’s a little scary but it’s a matter of letting go”. She gives wonderful readings of her poems in the Review summer 2021 issue: ‘Lament’, ‘Conflict’, ‘My Life as a Scholar’ and ‘Empathy of Cod’.

In the latest Poetry Review podcast, Gail McConnell talks to Emily Berry about loss, parenthood and the resource of language in her debut collection The Sun is Open. Published this September, the book works with archival material related to the life and death of McConnell's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their home in Belfast in 1984. “Language does the work if you let it,” she observes of this "fraught undertaking". Together they discuss poetry form and performance – typography, breath, sound and “the event of the poem” – and the poets and thinkers who have influenced McConnell’s thinking: Bob Scanlan of The Poets’ Theatre, Jay Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Denise Riley, Ciaran Carson, D.W. Winnicott and others. McConnell gives astonishing readings of her poems published in the Review: excerpts from ‘The Sun is Open’ and ‘Untitled / Villanelle’.

This is a podcast created by The Poetry Society. This podcast features the Top 15 winning poems read by the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020. The top 15 winners represent some of the very best young poets in the world. This podcast includes strong language and themes including racism. For more information about the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award please go to foyleyoungpoets.org.uk.

In a searching, wide-ranging and often very funny exchange, Selima Hill talks to Review editor Emily Berry about being both a prolific writer and a private person, about secrecy and rebellion, embodiedness and encodedness. Her writing process is, she says, less about cutting (“which sounds so violent”) and rather like “lifting your hair – loosen, loosen, then tighten, tighten, tighten – spread it as far as you can, then tighten”. They discuss relationships with family, men, audiences, Eastern European literature and animals, including Hill’s pet giant land snail. She also describes how her diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, her experiences in psychiatric hospital, and periods of muteness have affected her writing. Hill gives vivid readings of all of her poems published in the winter 2020 issue of The Poetry Review, including ‘Standing on his doorstep’, ‘Jelly’ and ‘Berries’, which will appear in Men Who Feed Pigeons, published by Bloodaxe this September.

An audio recording of the Welsh translation of the National Poetry Competition 2020 winning poem 'The Fruit of the Spirit is Love (Galatians 5:22)' by Marvin Thompson. Welsh translation and audio recording performed by Grug Muse. You can read the text accompanying this recording at https://bit.ly/nationalpoetrycompetition

Join Review editor Emily Berry and poet and novelist Luke Kennard, for an exhilarating unravelling of the prophetic voice and its uses for poetry, the liberating restriction of the poem sequence, and prose poetry as “a space in which to be convolutedly honest” – with passing references to Baudelaire, Chekhov, Ted Hughes, James Tait, Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson, contemporary morality, and anger as a motivating force. Luke also reads his three poems in the autumn 2020 issue of The Poetry Review, from his future project inspired by the Book of Jonah.

Rachel Long, whose brilliant debut My Darling from the Lions (Picador) has been shortlisted for the Forward, Costa and Rathbones Folio prizes, talks to Review editor Emily Berry about dreams and the usefulness of the non-material world to poetry. They also discuss influences on Rachel’s writing including Selima Hill, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and the Bible, humour, ‘little-black-dress’ titles, trauma and power. Rachel reads her poems first published in the Review: ‘The Red Hoover’ and 'Mum's Snake', an excerpt from her sequence 'A Lineage of Wigs'. (Rachel Long photo: Amaal Said)