Polly Atkin

I’m not sure I can put in words the impulse behind my writing. I suppose everybody starts writing to articulate something they cannot say out loud, and by the process of writing to make sense of it. It begins as a private activity but is always also a public activity: if we did not wish to communicate those thoughts we would not write them down. So then say my writing comes from this paradoxical need to reveal and conceal. I’ve written poetry since I was a small child, and with the definite aim of ‘being a poet’, though I have no idea where I got the idea that one could be a poet.
I’ve also written short stories, several aborted or abandoned novels, and at one point, a lot of songs. All these different kinds of writing are connected in my mind, as is my academic writing and research, and indeed, life. Everything I so, see and meet relates to my research. It's a tinderbox thing. The poems in Flax018 wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gone to Grasmere.

Biography

Polly Atkin was born in Nottingham, lived in East London for seven years and is now based between Lancashire and Cumbria. She is currently researching the construction of meaning around place for a PhD in English and Sociology at the University of Lancaster, under the AHRC's Landscape and Environment Scheme.

Publication history

• Bone Song, (2008, Aussteiger)

Her poems have also been published in The Rialto, Thunder Valley (Nº2 Productions, Grasmere),
Rubarb, Eclairs, and other Aphrodisiacs (Nº2 Productions), Bedford Square 2, The Delinquent, Orbis and The Eildon Tree

Reviews

The winning poem is superb - it never simplifies the subject and its use of language and metaphor weaves a textured and very moving piece. Antonia Byatt on ‘Seven Nights of Uncreation’

Readings

• Wordsworth Trust ‘Spots of Poetry’ outdoor summer series, 2008 and 2009
• Troubadour Poetry Café, London, 2009
• Troubadour Poetry Café Prize Reading, 2008
• Thunder & Bones: launch of Mark Ward’s collection Thunder Alley and preview of Bone Song, 2008, at The Dale Lodge Hotel, Grasmere.
• Queen Mary College, University of London, 2007 alongside East End poets Kit Wright, Shamin Azad and Tim Wells. Organised by Poet in the City for National Poetry Day.

Listen to Polly read Tumble, from The Crowd Without, Flax018

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Awards

• May 2009: shortlistetd for the Michael Marks poetry pamphlet prize
• December 2008: 1st prize Troubadour Coffee House Poetry Competition
• April 2008: ACE commission of ‘Seven Nights of Uncreation’ commemorating the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, 1807
• March 2008: shortlisted in The National Sonnet Competition
• May 2004: 3rd Prize, Strokestown International Poetry Competition
• June 2002: The Sarah James Poetry Prize, Queen Mary College

Workshops

Polly has lead informal creative writing workshops with all ages of students, including year 6 children, sixth-formers and undergraduates. This summer I am doing a day’s workshop on place and creativity for Lancaster University’s Continuing Education Department, and am leading a creative writing session in situ in Chamonix on The Wordsworth Centre literary field trip in May 2009.

I love seeing the impact of being allowed to think about things we're not generally given the space to indulge in.