SPIN poetry Poets on Fire
Supportive Poets Ironing Network
I have taken over the blog of Poets on Fire, a blog
dedicated to promoting live poetry throughout the UK.
These updates will now take place through Twitter, so if you have a reading or
event to promote, in England,
Ireland, Scotland
or Wales, you
can continue to let POF know (poetsonfire@hotmail.co.uk) and I will put a
message out on twitter. You can also connect with us on twitter at the new
twitter account: @SpinPoetryPof
However, the focus of this blog will now be the SPIN
project, or: Supportive Poets Ironing Network. SPIN is an experiment which will
launch in February and is dedicated to British poetry. Poets on Fire focuses on
poetry out loud. SPIN will focus on poetry on the page.
What is SPIN?
If you are a poet, no matter how long you have been writing,
or what level you are at, you will need advice on your work, a fresh eye. There
are plenty of places where you can get feedback on your work, and if you are an
experienced poet you will need advice from poets who are just as experienced as
you are, or more so. The question is, why should we have to pay for this
advice?
What if you had a group of friends who were all on the same
level as yourself, when it came to poetry? What if, as a group, you sent each
other your work and received a hundred words or so of feedback? And all you had
to do was return the favour, so for every poem you sent out, you would just
need to give feedback to one other poem. And imagine these poems were
anonymous, so no offence could be taken if you expressed an opinion the poet
himself (or herself) had not anticipated?
Now imagine the group included not just your friends but all
the poets from your town or city. Would it still work? Would it be better?
Now imagine the group included every willing poet in the UK?
That could be 124 people from Norwich,
27 from Port Talbot, 90 from Sheffield
and 42 from Dundee. Would it still work? Would it be
better?
What could we achieve with just a little effort?
SPIN aims to find out.
From February, every member of SPIN poetry (membership is
free, requires only an email address, and you will be accepted once you have
introduced yourself via email and indicated your willingness to participate in
the project and give and take in equal measures) will be able to send poetry in
for critique, and respond to someone's poem in return, and get their own
critique back in a matter of weeks. Members will be able to submit a maximum of
three poems a week but wont be under pressure to submit at all once they have
joined. Although members will never see the names of the poets whose work they
are reading, you will probably find out soon enough who is involved in this
project, as SPIN will promote readings and publications of our poets like proud
parents, although the Poets on Fire tweets should mostly have that covered.
The better you get at poetry, the harder it is to receive
worthwhile feedback, especially as a favour. The admin (me) at SPIN will ensure
you receive feedback from poets of a similar level. Email
spinpoetrypof@yahoo.co.uk to join or to find out more (or to offer to be a part
of the admin).
SPIN on that,
Carl Griffin
