Paul’s poem sequence “Brother Coal” has been published in this week’s TLS.
Poetry Course
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Paul will be teaching a poetry course in Sheffield with co-tutor Frances Leviston in July. Writing as Re-Writing will run for all five Tuesday evenings in July 2012, from 6.30pm-9pm, at The Rude Shipyard, Abbeydale Road, Sheffield S7 1FE. The course is aimed at poets already committed to their work who are looking for a challenge. Details below.
Update 8/6/12: this course is now full!
Writing as Re-Writing: About the Course
Everyone knows re-writing is part of revision – but what role does it play in composing new work? On this course, we will consider the ways poets use existing texts to generate new poems of their own. In each workshop, we will look critically at canonical and contemporary poems, discuss key ideas and technical approaches to re-writing, and undertake writing exercises designed to generate new poems. By reflecting on exemplary poems and on the drafts you produce, we hope to lead you towards a deeper understanding of your work and its relationship to literature and tradition.
Tuesday 3rd July
Adaptation
Taking stories from literature, folklore or mythology and
adapting them to your own purposes.
Tuesday 10th July
Translation
Creating new versions of poems from other languages (no
foreign language skills required!)
Tuesday 17th July
Appropriation
Manipulating and combining existing texts to create new
poems.
Tuesday 24th July
Conversation
Writing poems that open up dialogue with the work of
another poet.
Tuesday 31st July
Re-Visitation
Returning to your own earlier poems and using them as
inspiration for new work.
Course Support
To keep up momentum between workshop sessions, participants will gain access to a private blog where they can comment on each other’s works in progress and discuss issues raised.
Course Cost and Sign-Up
The course costs £150, payable by cheque in advance. To sign up, please use the contact form to send me a brief explanation of your experience with poetry and one sample poem.
Course Tutors
Frances Leviston’s first book of poems, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her poems have appeared in the LRB, the TLS, The Times, the Guardian, and various anthologies. She works as a creative writing tutor for organisations including the Arvon Foundation, and reviews new poetry for the Guardian.
Paul Batchelor’s first book of poems, The Sinking Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2008. His work has appeared in anthologies such as Identity Parade (2010) and The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry (2010). He has won the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition and the Times Stephen Spender Prize for Translation. He is a reviewer for the Guardian and the TLS, and a Poetry Book Society pamphlet selector. http://www.paulbatchelor.co.uk
Arthur Welton Award
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Paul has won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. The money will support work on his second collection of poems.
BBC Proms
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Paul appeared at Proms Plus Late at the Royal Albert Hall to read some of his latest work. The reading was later broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Mentoring for the Wordsworth Trust/Eden Arts
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Two poets mentored by Paul in a Wordsworth Trust/Eden Arts venture have achieved some notable success, writes New Writing Cumbria – see the full article for all the details.
Writer in Residence at Manchester University
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Paul will be Writer in Residence at Manchester University in the Spring semester of 2011.
Penguin Book of Irish Poetry
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Paul’s translation ‘Suibne in the Trees’ appears in the new Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty.
Poetry Archive Recording
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Paul’s recording for the Poetry Archive, including readings of ‘Keening’ and new poem ‘To a Halver’, can now be heard online. Click here to listen.
Identity Parade
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Paul’s poems have been published in Identity Parade, a new anthology edited by Roddy Lumsden, which ‘offers the work of 85 highly individual and distinctive talents whose poems display the breadth of styles and approaches characteristic of our current poetry’.
Times Stephen Spender Prize
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Paul has won the 2009 Times Stephen Spender Prize for Translation with ‘The Damned’, his version of a passage from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno. The judges were Susan Bassnett, Edith Hall, Karen Leeder and George Szirtes. Click here to read Paul’s winning translation and commentary on the poem.