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Welcome to the
Poetry Book Society
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce that Philip Gross has won the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry with The Water Table, published by Bloodaxe. Click here for more information.
The T S Eliot Prize Shadowing Scheme winners have also been announced. Click here for more information and to read their work.
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Poetry Live have invited 20 of our
leading poets to perform at Westminster Central Hall in a fundraising
event for the people of Haiti. Click here for more information.
The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry seeks to recognise excellence in poetry, highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life. Members of the Poetry Society and the Poetry Book Society are invited to nominate a (living) UK poet, working in any form, who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry in the past 12 months.
The Poetry Book Society
Founded by T S Eliot in 1953, the Poetry Book Society (PBS)
is an organisation devoted to developing and maintaining a readership
for poetry in the UK. The PBS offers the best new contemporary
poetry to its members.
The PBS is for everyone who enjoys poetry - dedicated readers,
occasional browsers and absolute beginners. We provide information,
advice and discounts on poetry books to suit your needs, whatever your taste. Every quarter we publish the Bulletin,
the definitive review of new poetry books in the U.K. Click
here to read a recent issue of the Bulletin. PBS members
can now read a fully navigable version of the Bulletin online
by logging in to the PBS Members' site (click on the link to
the left of this page to log in).
Want to find out more about what's going on in the poetry world?
Visit our News section to find out about
forthcoming events and competitions.
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PBS Poem of the month
Technique
A house is a good large object to visualise
‘Seeing With the Mind’s Eye’, Samuels & Samuels
Walk slowly round it, then picture yourself
in one of the rooms. Now move through
the rest of the house as if you were a camera.
The kitchen’s a back street in a labyrinth
of slums, impossibly hot, where the heroine’s
hopelessly lost but daren’t stop searching
though her kids both sense something’s
terribly wrong. In the back room a woman
sits on the stoop with her head on her knees
since a tornado’s wrecked every inch
of the cabin she had held together for years.
Now visualise the hallway (something like
a Hitchcock, one jacket on the coat-stand,
the key swinging in the door as if possessed),
then up to the landing where two children, girls,
are struggling in a plunging torrent to save the dog
and precious childhood toys caught in the fl ood.
Finally go back to the room you fi rst visualised,
the one with the mirror, then look outside
at the men circling the house, the one just leaving.
© Jane Draycott, from T S Eliot Prize 2009 shortlisted collection Over,
published by Carcanet. Reproduced by kind permission.
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| Poetry
Archive |
The PBS, via its online bookshop Poetry Bookshop Online,
is the exclusive distributor for this exciting new venture
in poetry. Eighty poets have been recorded reading their
own poetry and you can download samples or buy the complete
recordings on CD.
Click
here to find out more.
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The Poetry Book Society is funded
by
