This National Poetry Day, we commissioned a film of artists and poets to perform a piece that they felt represents what refuge means to them.

Nikita Gill took poetry to a prison library where she rediscovered that poetry, art and language belong to us all. To make art through the most difficult times of your life is both therapeutic as well as an act of resistance. This is what I learned when I took books filled with poems of hope…

Julie Blake, co-founder and director of Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition, tells us how to treat a poem. ‘What I suggest one… should… do with a poem is treat it as a poem. To treat a euphonium as a euphonium you play it; if you put flowers in it, it becomes a…

Matt Goodfellow is shortlisted for the 2023 CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) with Let’s Chase Stars Together (Bloomsbury Education). He explains how poetry transforms lives, including his own. It’s interesting that so many poets working in schools have a background in teaching, including myself. I was a full-time primary school teacher in Manchester for eight…

MODRON is a new Welsh online magazine that offers poems, articles, and community pages featuring ecologically themed projects in the arts and culture sectors. Founded by Kristian Evans and Zoë Brigley, it uses the nimble online format to respond quickly to new writing about ecological catastrophe and climate emergency. With the release of issue 2,…

This Valentine’s Day, we’re sharing a new introduction to Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair written by Leo Boix. The theme for National Poetry Day 2023 is ‘refuge’ and in this introduction Leo Boix finds refuge in the sensuality and corporeality of Nerudas poetry, he finds refuge in books and poetry, and…

Inspired by 5 years of The Lost Words book by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris we invited children to write an acrostic poem about their favourite plant or animal and the responses were just awe-inspiring. We had thousands of incredible entries from schools nationwide and are very grateful for all your time and effort. A…

We asked Jackie Morris, the award-winning co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells – and illustrator for this year’s National Poetry Day – about writing and the creative process. She’s written a powerful piece about the place creativity should hold in our lives and the cross-pollination of Science and the Arts.  ‘A poem cannot stop a…

We feel incredibly lucky that Jackie Morris painted the illustrations for this year’s National Poetry Day campaign. Here Jackie writes a bit about the process.  Each of the small images was created using sumi ink. There are many kinds of sumi ink and the one I used was Japanese, made from pine soot resin and…

We asked one of our favourite people and poets, Andrew McMillan, to recommend some poetry collections on this year’s National Poetry Day theme – ‘The Environment’. Here Andrew guides us through the environment he’s in and some poetry collections to seek out. I’m lucky that my office sits on top of a brand-new environment that…

Pádraig Ó Tuama breaks down the poem ‘reconciliation’ by Jónína Kirton, a poem featured for National Poetry Day 2022. ‘Reconciliation’ comes from Jónína Kirton’s book An Honest Woman (Talon Books, 2017) and this analysis also appears in Pádraig’s upcoming book Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (Canongate Books, 2022).   Read ‘reconciliation’ here.

Valerie Bloom MBE won the 2022 CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) for her latest collection, Stars with Flaming Tails (Otter Barry Books, 2021). In this blog, Valerie considers the importance of poetry and how it needs to reflect who we are and show the world as it is. I was born and grew up in…

Each year the CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) celebrates the best new published poetry for children. Ahead of the announcement of this year’s winner at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Friday 8 July, one of the judges – NPD ambassador Nikita Gill – reflects on the importance of the CLiPPA, and on why…

The shortlist for the 2022 CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) will be announced very soon on Wednesday 4 May at Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University. Ahead of that announcement, chair of the judges, Philip Gross shares his reflections on what the shortlist says about contemporary poetry for children here (without giving the shortlist…

Headteacher Sonia Thompson describes what taking part in the Shadowing Scheme for the CLiPPA meant to her school and its pupils. I first heard about CLPE some years ago and signed up for the CLPE newsletter. The CLiPPA (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award) caught my eye, because at St Matthew’s we love teaching poetry, and we…

This is an extract from ‘Keep Ithaka Always in Your Mind: On the Journey and the Value of Poetry’ by Jacqueline Saphra which appears in Why I Write Poetry edited by Ian Humphreys (Nine Arches Press). Jacqueline describes the value of poetry and how it provides us with a kind of nourishment. The value of poetry to…

My National Poetry Day villanelle, ‘May 8th, 2020’ takes its title from the 75th Anniversary of World War Two’s Victory in Europe Day. In my poem, I have depicted Britain as a nation of love and harm. This is a duality that is felt by myself and many other Britons of Colour. This emotional tension…

In 2019, we joined forces to challenge stereotypes and celebrate the delights of the different regions that together compose the United Kingdom.   BBC Local Radio stations, prompted by National Poetry Day’s Truth theme, invited listeners to tackle lazy cliches by sharing truths about the places where they live, the kinds of truths that deserve…