Just finished reading Jeanette Winterson's fine book Why be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (published by Cape). She writes particularly well about poetry, about its importance in her life and how it has supported and enabled her to make some sense of her experiences. In Chapter 4 she comments:

'A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is.That is what literature offers -  a language powerful enough to say how it is.

It isn't a hiding place It is a finding place.' 

Thank you to everyone who took part in Saturday's final ESRC seminar. Anthony, Andrew and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. The discussions about why Poetry Matters and what the agendas are for future research, teaching and publication will now contnue in earnest. Please make sure you contribute to these discussions by commenting in the comment box below and on the wiki and by talking to your own colleagues and students about the ideas which the series is generating. Copies of presentations and papers will be posted on the Seminar 4 pages of this site (and the wiki site) as they come in. 

Keep in touch and keep spreading the words!

Happy New Year everyone. Here's a new poetry website that I think will be of interest to some of you:

http://poetryadvocates.wordpress.com/

Details of our final Poetry Matters event are now available:

http://poetrymatters.posterous.com/pages/esrc-seminar-series-poetry-matters-s...

 Please confirm your attendance with me as soon as possible - if you have not already done so - and by Tuesday 10th Jan at the very latest so we can organise our catering.

A number of us will be staying in Leicester on Friday 20th - if you are intending to do this and want to meet up then let me know and we can arrange to have supper together. 

Hope to see you all for what promises to be a very lively final event.

Best wishes for a peaceful and poetry-filled 2012

Sue

Flights are being booked, speakers and workshop leaders are tinkering with their abstracts and we are gearing up for the final Poetry Matters seminar - seminar 4 at the University of Leicester on Saturday Jan 21st 2012. The timings and other details about the day are now posted on the Seminar 4 page of this site.

If you have a colleague who is either teaching poetry in a primary or secondary school, researching an aspect of poetry pedagogy or leading poetry workshops with young people and you would like to bring them along please let me know as soon as possible so I can reserve them a place. (We can pay second class public transport costs.)

If you are coming to Seminar 4 on 21st Jan 2012 and need to book somewhere to stay on the Friday night beforehand then please refer to the list on the Seminar 3 and 4 pages. Please be aware that the School of Education is just 5-7 minutes walk from Leicester Railway Station and is at the London Road end of University Road, nearer the Station, and not on the main University of Leicester campus.

Poetry indulgence for a Saturday afternoon. Two collections now vying for attention. But which to read first: Carol Ann Duffy's 'The Bees' or Billy Collins' 'Horoscopes for the Dead'? Bought the latter from the excellent London Review of Books bookshop.