Well I’ve got the winter workshops lined up at last. Drumroll please! The first one is a masterclass on linebreaks (well you knew that was coming, didn’t you!), held on Saturday 26th July. We’ll be looking at the different things you can do with linebreaks – drama, pacing, rhythm, meaning, tension, enjambment, parsing – you …
Tales from the trenches: co-editing [redacted] magazine
Well I’ve just finished finalising selections for the next issue of [redacted], which I’m co-editing with the outgoing poetry editor. I’ve come to a couple of conclusions, which may or may not be of interest to anyone else (but hey, it’s been a while since I posted anything, so what the heck). 1. More women …
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Joanna Preston Interviews … Joanna Preston
Today I’ll be interviewing poet, editor, chicken-lover— —Er, can we please be clear that that is ‘lover’ in the sense of ‘being very keen on, but not at all in a sexual sense’ please? Yes, of course. Let me see. Poet, editor, chicken-keeper —is that ok? Yes, thank you, much better. I already get quite …
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Tragedy (when you lose control and you got no soul)
I’ve just spent a week trying to work out, to my own satisfaction, the difference between ‘unknowable’ and ‘unnamable’. I know. It’s simple – the first means ‘you can’t know it’ and the second ‘you can’t name it’. But there’s so much more to it than that. It’s to do with a poem I’ve been working …
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Some Reasons why Creative Writing Classes Might Actually Be Good Things
There’s been an outbreak of anti-Creative Writing Course rhetoric causing a few ripples in the UK. This most recent bit has been kicked off by comments allegedly made by Hanif Kureishi at the Bath Literature Festival a couple of weeks ago. Go read his comments (in the Independent, or the Guardian, whichever you prefer), and …
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A Dark Feathered Art 