In our second August challenge written by Foyle Young Poets, Meredith LeMaître asks you to write new poems that take us into a fairy tale world… The challenge: write a poem or poems inspired by a fairy tale, myth or legend. As long as I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales and folklore – whether […]
In the third installment of our arts careers profiles, we speak to Stuart Bartholomew (Publisher and Director of Verve Poetry Press and Verve Poetry Festival) and Bobby Nayyar (Programme Manager at Spread the Word). Hear from today’s profilees on their various paths into the arts, from call centres to Waterstones booksellers, leading to where they […]
Every August, Foyle Young Poets take over Young Poets Network and set four weekly writing challenges. In the first August challenge of 2020, Lydia Wei is challenging you to write poems that imagine historical or fictional characters in surprising new situations. Read on and enter by Monday 14 September 2020. The challenge: write a poem […]
Young Poets Networker Miriam Culy explores the theme of physical pain in poetry, and shares how writing has helped her cope with her own chronic illness. When you learn about poetry in school, you often look at poems on love, nature or war, and perhaps God, beauty or death. You don’t very often look at […]
In the second feature in our series of arts careers profiles, we hear from Annette Brook (Communications Manager at the Royal Society of Literature) and Ali Lewis (Associate Editor at Poetry London). They speak about their varied paths into working in literature, and offer some excellent advice for young people thinking about arts careers. Name […]
Every year, The Poetry Society welcomes two American interns to our office in London. Yanisa Campusano was just settling in to the Betterton Street life when the lockdown hit. In the midst of global crisis, Yanisa carried on her internship digitally and, fascinated by how poetry has flourished during this pandemic, has written us this […]
From the outside, working in the arts can sometimes seem mysterious, impenetrable, or even impossible. It’s not a career path that gets brought up much at school: as Sarah Howe remarks, “‘poet’ never showed up on the computerised careers service as an option” – and ‘arts administrator’ is nearly as rare. In the hopes of […]
Here at YPN, we’ve often published features exploring the life and works of poets who have had a big impact on English literature – from William Blake to Elizabeth Bishop, Edith Sitwell to Robert Browning. In this latest feature, Stephanie Sy-Quia explores the life and works of Sarojini Naidu, an Indian poet and activist, in […]
Following the success of last year’s challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, this year we’ve teamed up again, asking you to co-translate a poem by Suhrab Sirat, a poet in exile. MPT editor Clare Pollard introduces the challenge… “We launch this challenge during Refugee Week 2020. Around the world, we see governments who would seek […]
With more time to pay attention to the spaces and the people around us, we’re asking you to write odes to the little things. The challenge: write an ode to something that seems at first to be insignificant. What is an ode? The internet tells us that an ode is ‘a lyric poem, typically one […]