Poetry Live From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poetry Live, also known as Poetry Live! for GCSE, is a series of annual events in venues across the UK where poets perform their poetry to English school children.
Poetry Live! has its origins in large conferences Simon Powell used to organize in the UK for A-level English students. At first distinguished academics and critics gave talks about novels, plays and poetry but then the idea emerged that it might be better to have the writers themselves talking about their work. Soon large audiences of A-level students were seeing and hearing regular contributors such as Beryl Bainbridge, Hanif Kuresihi, Martin Amis, Jim Crace, Andrew Davis, Doris Lessing, Edna O’Brien, Richard Eyre, Willy Russell, Arnold Wesker, Alan Bleasdale, Melvyn Bragg, Germaine Greer, Peter Hall and Margaret Drabble. However it was the poets who really struck a chord with our huge (2000 plus) audiences. The next step was to offer days with poets such as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, James Fenton, Tony Harrison, U A Fanthorpe, Benjamin Zephaniah, Simon Armitage, Glyn Maxwell, Gillian Clarke, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead and Andrew Motion.GCSE Poetry Live! grew from this. While it was pleasing that so many A-level students wanted to see and hear poetry for themselves, they were students who were already committed to studying literature and poetry in depth. It was interesting to see if live poetry on a large scale could work for fifteen year olds. Almost everyone of that age takes a GCSE in English so potentially it meant getting to a very wide audience, not just the academically successful.If teachers feel up to bringing a whole year group (and they do) it means that everyone gets the chance to hear poetry rather than just read it. And from the hundreds of letters and e-mails we get every year, we know that in every audience there are budding poets who wonder “Could I do that?” But the main thing is that a seemingly high proportion of young people, who according to their teachers ‘couldn’t stand poetry’, now realize that they quite like it. That makes it much easier to start thinking about poetry afterwards in the classroom and at home. Now some 75,000 pupils a year come to about 50 events all over the country. All this has been achieved without a penny of public subsidy and is run from a small office in north Wales with four full-time employees. [GCSE Poetry Live][1] is now well-established in many school’s academic programmePoets reading at this year's (2009/2010) events across the UK include: [Carol Ann Duffy], [Simon Armitage], [Gillian Clarke], John Agard, [Imtiaz Dharker], Grace Nichols, [Daljit Nagra], [Moniza Alvi] and visiting poet from Kenya [Mwangi Kaffy] [edit] ReferencesRetrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_Live"Categories: British poetryHidden categories: Articles that need to be wikified from April 2010 | All articles that need to be wikifiedPersonal toolsLog in / create account NamespacesArticle Discussion VariantsViewsRead Edit View history ActionsSearchTop of Form Bottom of FormNavigationMain page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia InteractionHelp About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia ToolboxWhat links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Cite this page Print/exportCreate a book Download as PDF Printable version This page was last modified on 27 July 2010 at 00:39. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
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Poetry Live! has its origins in large conferences Simon Powell used to organize in the UK for A-level English students. At first distinguished academics and critics gave talks about novels, plays and poetry but then the idea emerged that it might be better to have the writers themselves talking about their work. Soon large audiences of A-level students were seeing and hearing regular contributors such as Beryl Bainbridge, Hanif Kuresihi, Martin Amis, Jim Crace, Andrew Davis, Doris Lessing, Edna O’Brien, Richard Eyre, Willy Russell, Arnold Wesker, Alan Bleasdale, Melvyn Bragg, Germaine Greer, Peter Hall and Margaret Drabble. However it was the poets who really struck a chord with our huge (2000 plus) audiences. The next step was to offer days with poets such as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, James Fenton, Tony Harrison, U A Fanthorpe, Benjamin Zephaniah, Simon Armitage, Glyn Maxwell, Gillian Clarke, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead and Andrew Motion.GCSE Poetry Live! grew from this. While it was pleasing that so many A-level students wanted to see and hear poetry for themselves, they were students who were already committed to studying literature and poetry in depth. It was interesting to see if live poetry on a large scale could work for fifteen year olds. Almost everyone of that age takes a GCSE in English so potentially it meant getting to a very wide audience, not just the academically successful.If teachers feel up to bringing a whole year group (and they do) it means that everyone gets the chance to hear poetry rather than just read it. And from the hundreds of letters and e-mails we get every year, we know that in every audience there are budding poets who wonder “Could I do that?” But the main thing is that a seemingly high proportion of young people, who according to their teachers ‘couldn’t stand poetry’, now realize that they quite like it. That makes it much easier to start thinking about poetry afterwards in the classroom and at home. Now some 75,000 pupils a year come to about 50 events all over the country. All this has been achieved without a penny of public subsidy and is run from a small office in north Wales with four full-time employees. [GCSE Poetry Live][1] is now well-established in many school’s academic programmePoets reading at this year's (2009/2010) events across the UK include: [Carol Ann Duffy], [Simon Armitage], [Gillian Clarke], John Agard, [Imtiaz Dharker], Grace Nichols, [Daljit Nagra], [Moniza Alvi] and visiting poet from Kenya [Mwangi Kaffy] [edit] ReferencesRetrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_Live"Categories: British poetryHidden categories: Articles that need to be wikified from April 2010 | All articles that need to be wikifiedPersonal toolsLog in / create account NamespacesArticle Discussion VariantsViewsRead Edit View history ActionsSearchTop of Form Bottom of FormNavigationMain page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia InteractionHelp About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia ToolboxWhat links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Cite this page Print/exportCreate a book Download as PDF Printable version This page was last modified on 27 July 2010 at 00:39. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Contact us Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers
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