News

The current Magma (Spring 2012) has a feature by Polly on the masterclass with Kristin Linklater at Cove Park.

Horizon Review, Salt Publishing’s online journal has a new short story, ‘The Method’ by Polly Clark. Later this year Salt publishes In Their Own Words, an anthology of essays by poets about their poetics. It’s edited by Helen Ivory and George Szirtes and includes Polly’s essay ‘Afterlives’.

In memory of my involvement with the Poetry Society:

6th August 2011 – Saturday Guardian Review Diary

This week the petition for the reinstatement of the Director of the Poetry Society, Judith Palmer, topped its target of 1000 signatures. It took only days to do this, driven by poets through websites and Facebook. We poets get a lot of stick for our uselessness, and in the Guardian recently we were even lampooned for our poor dress sense at the Extraordinary General Meeting held by the Poetry Society to discuss the finances of the Society, including near £30,000 it has spent on legal and PR fees. What the press, and indeed the Poetry Society itself have failed to appreciate is the power of social media. Within days of the resignations that precipitated this crisis, we abandoned our normal use of Facebook as intensive writing-avoidance and organised an unprecedented campaign for transparency whose success caught everyone off-guard. A website for open discussion appeared in days, new developments were tweeted and blogged and 500 Poetry Society members were galvanised to demand an EGM.

These accomplishments seemed to leave the Board stunned, as if they’d gone to bed not thinking about us at all and woke up to find 500 poets in their bedroom asking awkward questions. The petition is signed by most of Britain’s best-known poets including the Poets Laureate of England, Wales and Scotland and is a monument to our grasp of social media. Far from being Tumps (Totally Useless Male Poets – Wendy Cope) and Flops (Flat-shoed Ladies of Poetry – Polly Clark) we have revealed the problems at the Poetry Society without even leaving our garrets.