How to Grow Your Own Poem

Do you want to write a poem? This book will show you 'how to grow your own poem'...

Kate Clanchy has been teaching people to write poetry for more than twenty years. Some were old, some were young; some were fluent English speakers, some were not. None of them were confident to start with, but a surprising number went to win prizes and every one finished up with a poem they were proud of, a poem that only they could have written - their own poem.

Kate's big secret is a simple one: to share other poems. She believes poetry is like singing or dancing and the best way to learn is to follow someone else. In this book, Kate shares the poems she has found provoke the richest responses, the exercises that help to shape those responses into new poems, and the advice that most often helps new writers build their own writing practice.

If you have never written a poem before, this book will get you started. If you have written poems before, this book will help you to write more fluently and confidently, more as yourself. This book not like other creative writing books. It doesn't ask you to set out on your own, but to join in. Your invitation is inside.

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'The best book I've read about how to practise writing poetry' - Hollie McNish

'This determinedly unintimidating manual should prove valuable to teachers and aspirant poets. Clanchy's classroom is a giving and forgiving one: she expects her students to perform, but potentially only for themselves' - Sunday Times

'This primer on writing is a literary Haynes manual, helping you to jump-start your stuttering thoughts into a smoothly purring poem. The no-nonsense Clanchy knows exactly who you need to read and how you should go about it' - Daily Telegraph

'This utterly delightful and encouraging handbook is an energising mixture of anthology, advice and exercises to spark creativity' - Daily Mail

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Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher and journalist. Her poetry collection Slattern won a Forward Prize. Her short story ‘The Not-Dead and the Saved’ won both the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize. Her novel Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Her BBC 3 radio programme about her work with students was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes prize. In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature, and an anthology of her students' work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim. In 2019 she published Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, a book about her experience of teaching in state schools for several decades, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing; and in 2020 published How to Grow Your Own Poem, which Hollie McNish described as ‘the best book I’ve read about how to practise writing poetry’.

Do you want to write a poem? This book will show you 'how to grow your own poem'... Kate Clanchy has been teaching people to write poetry for more than twenty years. Some were old, some were young; some were fluent English speakers, some were not. None of them were confident to start with, but a surprising number went to win prizes and every one finished up with a poem they were proud of, a poem that only they could have written - their own poem. Kate's big secret is a simple one: to share other poems. She believes poetry is like singing or dancing and the best way to learn is to follow someone else. In this book, Kate shares the poems she has found provoke the richest responses, the exercises that help to shape those responses into new poems, and the advice that most often helps new writers build their own writing practice. If you have never written a poem before, this book will get you started. If you have written poems before, this book will help you to write more fluently and confidently, more as yourself. This book not like other creative writing books. It doesn't ask you to set out on your own, but to join in. Your invitation is inside.

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