Live Canon are Paul’s publishers. Created and run by the force of nature that is writer, director and editor Helen Eastman (who somehow manages to do all this and raise a young family!), they are an intriguing hybrid of poetry press and theatre company. Their ensemble of actors perform poetry, mostly from memory, in theatres, in schools and in all kinds of public spaces. They run an annual International Poetry Competition, a First Collection Competition and have just launched a Children’s Poetry Competition. In 2016, they produced their 154 anthology, in which each of Shakespeare’s sonnets is paired with a piece written in response by a contemporary poet. Copies of this book have been made freely available to schools and libraries. It was launched with a six-hour non-stop reading marathon at the Victoria and Albert Museum. To hear, and see, members of the Live Canon ensemble performing both contemporary and classic poetry on film, see their YouTube channel here.
Barbara Marsh, poet, musician and teacher, has been guiding and mentoring Paul’s work with extraordinary patience since 2009, and has been a vital source of support and inspiration. Widely published in anthologies, her brilliant debut collection, To the Boneyard, is published by Eyewear, and is available here. Barbara was one half of a wonderful band, The Dear Janes, whose website is here. Barbara was the winner of the highly prestigious Troubadour Poetry Prize in 2015. Her classes, at City Lit and other colleges, and her one-day poetry workshops and masterclasses simply cannot be recommended highly enough.
NJ Hynes is Paul’s predecessor as the first winner of Live Canon’s First Collection Competition, with her extraordinary collection, The Department of Emotional Projections. She was Poet in Residence at Greenwich Station in 2015, and you can see a short film about her residency here. And here are two of her poems performed by members of the Live Canon ensemble; ‘Currents’, performed by Mairin O’Hagan, and ‘On Wednesday’, performed by Eva Traynor.
Gillie Robic is another cool Live Canon poet, and a runner up in their First Collection Competion, with her splendid collection, Swimming Through Marble. Gillie is also a voice-over artist and a puppeteer, and used to work with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop (she worked on Labyrinth!!! With David Bowie!!!!!) Here’s Roseanna Frascona performing Gillie’s poem, ‘Starlight’.
Claire Trevien is a poet, author of The Shipwrecked House, Asteronymes and her debut pamphlet, Low-Tide Lottery, a teacher of workshops and mentoring programmes, the editor of Sabotage Reviews and the organizer of the annual Saboteur Awards. She was also co-editor, with Tori Truslow, of Verse Kraken, the first magazine in which Paul had a poem published! Yay! Her blog is full of extremely useful information about marketing, particularly (though by no means exclusively) as applied to poetry and books, and takes account of the reality that not all poets are gregarious loudmouths (only the ones of whom you’ve heard…). Particularly informative and helpful posts have included ‘How to Market Your Book from the Safety of Your Sofa’ and ‘Networking for Introverts’.
Sheenagh Pugh, brilliant poet and novelist, whose books include Short Days, Long Shadows, and The Beautiful Lie, also has an excellent blog here, with occasional interviews and book reviews.
Jo Bell is an excellent poet (whose collections include Navigation and Kith), fomer Canal Laureate, star of a well known telly advert, and a thoughtful and engaging blogger.
Another good poetry-and-stuff blog (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2012) is Baroque in Hackney, by Katy Evans Bush, excellent poet and author of Me and the Dead and Egg Printing Explained.
Some more links:
The British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society