We are really excited to announce the launch of our Poetry Champions project. From Stoke Newington to Winchester – poetry reading groups will be celebrating the Olympics by reading, reviewing and blogging about the Winning Words anthology and sharing their favourite poems. We will be publishing their reviews and Olympic themed stories from now until October when the project finishes.
And if your reading group is reading poetry or Olympic themed books this summer, get in touch to tell us your stories. It would be great to see how different reading groups are approaching poetry and the Olympics.
Here we introduce our Poetry Champions reading groups.
Stoke Newington Poetry Reading Group
The Stoke Newington Poetry Reading Group began in Stoke Newington Library in January 2011, and has since been growing steadily. We’re a very mixed group, and come to the poems from all sorts of different perspectives. A few members of the groups are poets, though most are just people who enjoy reading poetry, or want to find out more about it. It’s a friendly and informal group where all views are welcome.
Three of our recommended poems would be:
Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death
W.H. Auden If I Could Tell You
Henry Vaughan Regeneration
Please do get in contact if you’d like find out more about joining the group.
Winchester Poetry Readers’ Group
The Winchester Poetry Readers’ Group has come together for this Poetry Champions project. We were invited to take part by the county’s Literature Officer who is also part of the group. It includes the 2012 Hampshire Poet, local published poets and poetry enthusiasts, some of whom have read their work at our regular Poetry Cafe, and readers who were involved in an earlier blogging project called Reading Detectives. We’re delighted to be using our love of poetry in this Olympic linked initiative and look forward to sharing views with the other UK poetry groups involved.
Our three favourite poems are:
Louis MacNeice Snow
C.P. Cavafy Ithaka
Philip Larkin High Windows
The Not Scary Poetry Group
Our founder member set up the Not Scary Poetry Group almost three years ago. Among the poets we have read at the monthly meetings are T S Eliot, A J S Tessimond and Wendy Cope. Our founder also represented the group in poetry reading sessions at Southwell’s Library’s annual Poetry Festival.
Our three favourite poems are:
Owen Dulce et Decorum Est
Millay What Lips My Lips have Kissed
Eliot Little Gidding
Grays Library Friday Poetry Group
Our group of about 10 members has been meeting at Grays Library since January 2012 and is a read aloud book group. We find that every session is a unique experience because live reading very much depends on those there at the time. At meetings we read a short story and link in two poems which are always very varied – we read both modern and classic poetry. It is a fun, lively, interactive time spent bringing our own experiences to what we read and hear.
Some of our favourite poems are:
Grace Nichols Give Yourself a Hug
Maya Angelou Still I Rise
Robert Frost The Road Not Taken
The Derwent Delvers
The Derwent Delvers is an eclectic group of avid readers who live in William Wordsworth’s homeland. We come from a variety of backgrounds and have a great playground here in the Lake District. For the past six years we have met every month to share a book and our thoughts about it. Our reading material is varied, from poetry to prose in pretty much every genre available.
Our top three favourite poems are:
W.H. Auden Stop all the Clocks
Nina Cassian Temptation
William Wordsworth The Daffodils
About the Winning Words anthology
Faster, higher, stronger – winning words that inspire you on to Olympian goals. From falling in love to overcoming adversity, celebrating a newborn or learning to live with dignity, here is a book to inspire and to thrill through life’s most magical moments. From William Shakespeare to Carol Ann Duffy, our most popular and best-loved poets and poems are gathered in one essential collection, alongside many lesser known treasures that are waiting to be discovered. These are poems that help you to see the miraculous in the commonplace and turn the everyday into the exceptional – to discover, in Kipling’s words, that yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.
Whether you are looking for inspiration or expression, reflection or recognition, Winning Words is a book for every occasion, to let the spirit soar. The anthology is published by Faber.
About Winning Words
Winning Words is a UK wide project of the Forward Arts Foundation to link poetry and sport using the occasion of the London’s Olympic Games in 2012 to engage athletes the public and young people with the unique power of poetry.
The project is generously supported by Arts Council England, Bloomberg, Felix Dennis, Ronald Duncan Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation.
