Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Help Us Celebrate National Poetry Day UK on Oct. 6!


This week, I’m completing an online course, “William Wordsworth: Poetry, People, and Place.” Offered by Lancaster University in partnership with the Wordsworth Trust, the course has submersed me in Wordsworth’s poetry for the past three weeks. I’ve analyzed several of his poems; listened to academic experts; learned about manuscripts and how it was only in the Romantic period that writers and poets began to hold on to the various drafts; written short essays for critique by other participants; assembled and reassembled poems; and studied how the geography of the Lake District influenced Wordsworth.

If I extrapolate from the number of comments, I would guess that up to a thousand of us are taking this course, and from all over the world. Wordsworth in particular and British poetry in general has a sizeable fan base. And it’s no surprise that poetry is vitally important in Britain.

Next week – Thursday, Oct. 6 to be precise – Britain celebrates National Poetry Day UK, and Tweetspeak Poetry is joining with the Forward Arts Foundation to participate. The foundation is an organization that celebrates excellence in poetry and works to widen poetry’s audience, and National Poetry Day is one of its official initiatives. It also sponsors the annual Forward Poetry Prizes. The theme of this year’s poetry day celebration is “Messages.”

Poetry is indeed serious business in Britain. London Transport even posts poems on the Underground, or Tube.


To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

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