I’ve really had my poetry thinking stretched over the last year with a commission from Mslexia magazine.

I was invited to write a quarterly piece for their craft section: on different kinds of approaches to making poetry – experimental form, practioners, hybrid approaches. My column is called Playing With Poetry – and so far I have written on the Oulipian constraint N+7, looking at wonderful examples from Lee Ann Brown and Harryette Mullen, Erasure, in which I write about M NourbSe Phillip, Nicole Sealey and Mary Ruefle. In the third piece I begin to write about visual art that is also poetry and vice versa. Each article ends with a prompt or suggested exercise. Links to the first two are here.

Erasure article- Sophie Herxheimer, for MslexiaDOWNLOAD

N+7articleforMslexiaDOWNLOAD

In the current issue, my article concerns the poem as elegiac object – and I look at works by Anne Carson and Kimberly Campanello. I am grateful to Debbie Taylor, the editor of the magazine, for extending the commission for another year. I just submitted article number 5 – featuring ‘upper case women’ from Barbara Kruger to Astra Papachristodoulou, whose visual poetry is currently on show at The National Poetry Library. This issue will be out in the autumn, along with a spate of teaching – details and links after this tiny view of the Shropshire hills.

From October 14th, I’ll be co- tutoring a residential week at the beautiful thatched Totleigh Barton – Arvon’s Devon HQ – with multiple prize winning poet and all round wonder woman, Fiona Benson. Our course will help you go into the impending darkness and fetch out the poems.

I am also co-teaching in London and online with two other brillant writers I like and admire:

On 8 Wednesday evenings from October 9th, myself and poet and translator Astrid Alben will be taking turns to teach creative writing to a range of art practitioners interested in expanding into poetics, face to face at City and Guilds Art School in Kennington. It’s gonna be fun!

And on 10 Tuesdays from 10-5, Emily Haworth Booth (recent winner of the Mslexia first novel prize coincidentally!!) and I will be expanding our regular online course for The Royal Drawing School – Where Drawing Meets Words.

One last gig I am excited for is at a favourite London spot: The Southbank Centre – the details are not yet ready to divulge, but it looks like I’ll be running a free public workshop in late October, so keep an eye out.

In other news: poet Tom Jenks who runs the experimental poetry press zimZalla is planning reissuing INDEX, my prophetic deck of collage poems, in the spring – we are considering a new version – or at least a set of bonus cards. So I’ll sign off with three new cut ups in pastels for summer.

Thanks, as ever, for reading my blog.

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