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Poetry Issues
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Scottish Poetry Library Poetry Issues
What could be simpler, more welcoming or home-ly than inviting everyone for tea and poems in your library on 7 October?
Read on to get teachers' and librarians' notes on four of the poem cards this month, and get ahead with planning lessons, displays and activities.
What should I buy…?
Check the shortlist for the Forward Prize so you'll be prepared come October, when the winners are announced. We'll have Seamus Heaney's Human Chain to recommend when it's published next month, and you can check previous months' recommendations as well, in our expanded New Books section.
Featured titles |
Simon Armitage: Seeing Stars
ISBN
9780571249909
Faber, £12.99, hbk
Simon Armitage claimed in the PBS Bulletin that 'at some deep, sub-conscious level, we all want to begin a poem with the line, "The elf said to Kevin..."' His compelling poems have always sounded a bit like effortlessly-told stories, and his increasing interest in prose fiction and memoir, in documentary and radio, in an American poet called James Tate and perhaps in reworking Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into modern English, all seem to have contributed to the different prose poem voices of Seeing Stars. More... |
Penguin Classics
Selected Poems of Lord Byron, ed Wolfson & Manning, ISBN 0140424504, £12.99, pbk
Selected Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed Calder, ISBN
9780140435481, £12.99, pbk
Is there a public library that hasn't got some of the familiar black spines of Penguin Classics peaking out from shelves and units? That's because this backlist holds plenty of well-edited and affordable editions of poetry, prose and anthologies. We certainly wouldn't want to be without Penguin Classics editions of some Scottish names including Robert Louis Stevenson and Byron. More... |
Other recommendations
If you've got main poetry titles covered, but want
to add extra sparkle...
A Light Song of Light
by Kei Miller
Kei Miller's mesmeric second collection is an explosion of energy, a song in praise of survival and life and home, rhythmic, readable and beautiful. More...
ISBN
9781847771032
Carcanet 2010, £9.95 pbk.
And For That Minute: Incident at Adlestrop Station
by Leonard McDermid
This was the joint winner of this year's Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for poetry pamphlets. It is the perfect high summer read - a homage to the poem 'Adlestrop' by Edward Thomas, capturing a moment of summer heat, birdsong, nothing happening. But context is all... More
ISBN 978-0-9558414-4-6, Stichill Marigold Press, £7 pbk
The North End of Eden
Christine De Luca
An inclusive and linguistically seductive collection of poems about place, land and home. Shetland is the homing beacon, but the poems range from India to Quebec. More...
ISBN 9-781906-817329, Luath Press, £8.99 pbk
National Poetry Day 2010: 2 months to go...
Join us in a nationwide library At Home on National Poetry Day - just tell us when and where, and we'll help invite everybody.
If you work in a school library, bookmark our Education resources for NPD, and send on to your colleagues.
Coming this month: an order form for NPD poem postcards will arrive shortly at your school (for teachers), and we'll email the order form to the named contact in each library authority (librarians). Just complete and return by post or fax for 1 September.
Coming in September: the poem card texts in large print, for study and discussion purposes, will be emailed out to each of our library contacts (the person who orders the poem postcards for each local authority). Ideas on how to use the four poems suitable for primary age will be available from September.
Coming in October: the poem the poem cards will be available as A4 poster PDFs to print out, the poems will be available on e-cards.
And if you would like the poem texts and some notes to help you start planning now, read on...
National Poetry Day resources
Home Sweet Home
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Just email now from your library or school account, and we'll mail you all the poems, and the notes on the four poem cards suitable for senior school and adult readers.
Why the secrecy? To help keep the poems a surprise for your readers or pupils until National Poetry Day, when everyone picks up their cards... so these advance notes are strictly hush-hush to help you plan displays, events and teaching.
Happy preparation!
- email Lilias to get the poems and the first four sets of notes
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Make sure everyone knows what you're up to on National Poetry Day. Tweet, flickr, blog and remember to upload poems and photos connected with your area to the Southbank Centre's UK-wide GPS project.
And here's clever (and free): if you have colour printer, scissors and some wonderful images and text from your NPD work, use www.bookleteer.com to design a rather flash free Storycube or Ebook booklet template with your own images and text, then print out and make up (or pay them to do some nice prints in bulk). You just need to create an account to get started.
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Some event and activities formats that work and don't cost, for all ages, to accompany your At Home tea. And if you fancy making your idea of home in gingerbread, here's your building material:
- last month's National Poetry Day activities sheet Word | PDF
- Make a gingerbread NPD Home - recipe to download Word |PDF
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You'll want a few poems up your sleeve, for displays, reading aloud and inspiring ideas about all kinds of home. From animals' homes, to imaginary worlds, find poems straight away on these sites:
Everyone has a story to tell! Once everyone's fired up by poems and memories of 'Home' on National Poetry Day, follow up with Tell-A-Story Day on 29 October. The Scottish Storytelling Centre can help you out...
Search the SPL
catalogue for…
There's a poem or anthology for almost everything under the sun. Search for sun, sunshine, or for that matter sundial or sunflower, on the SPL catalogue. (There seem to be quite a few entries for rain too, but rain is a rich part of Scottish culture too.)
 Search
the SPL catalogue or search
ScotBib by year
Or search 'subjects in alphabetical order' and enter the name of your town or area.
And did you know you can use the ScotBib feature in our catalogue
to see Scottish poetry titles listed by year of publication?
Benefits for Library
Friends
Get a Library Friends subscription for £40
per year and receive:
- Copies of all Poetry Box tip sheets to date on joining
- 10 copies of Poetry Reader, our biannual newspaper with
poetry news, SPL updates and reading ideas - individual subscribers
receive 1 copy
- Full New Scottish Titles list for the last six months,
listing all the Scottish poetry publications we are aware of, including
ISBN and price and a brief description of each publication (only
Library subscribers receive this full information listing for the
most recent six month period)
- Subscribe
to SPL Friends
Who'd like Poetry Issues?
Please tell any library colleagues you think will be interested!
What do you think of Poetry Issues?
Send comments on this issue and suggestions for the next issue to Lilias
Fraser, SPL's Reader Development Officer.
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Issue 13, August 2010
What should I buy…?
Poetry to buy for your library this month.
National Poetry Day: 2 months to go
Start planning with our first batch of poem notes for teachers and librarians...
NPD resources
Events format sheet, recipe sheet, sources to search for poems
Search the SPL
catalogue…
a handy tool to find poems by subject.
Become a Friend!
Benefits for SPL Library Friends
Who'd like Poetry Issues?
Subscribe now to receive your regular e-newsletter.
BOOKMARK THESE!
Bookleteer storycube and books
You just need to log in to start making your own book or cube templates to print off
Education resources for NPD
CPD sessions for primary teachers - and bookmark this page for schools resources around the NPD 2010 poem postcards
Our Poetry Map of Scotland
See if there's a poem about your area
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Reading
Room published by the Scottish
Poetry Library. A registered charity (No. SCO23311) | Search
catalogue
