The Poetry Hub of Bath Spa University strives for excellence in all fields of Poetry. In the writing, the reading, the practice and application of poetry. Auden said the principal role of poetry is to ‘protect language’. We go further. We believe poetry can augment, expand and provoke language, force it to grow. We want to stimulate passion for the literary arts.
It's our goal to promote poetic literacy, to support and empower emerging and established poets, and to bring the best practitioners of the craft into the community. We believe that Poetry is the food of the spirit. The Poetry Hub is a living archive which seeks to maintain and cherish the spirit of poetry.
Tim Liardet is twice nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize, awarded one Poetry Book Society Choice and four Poetry Book Society Recommendations, an Arts Council England Writer’s Award, and a Society of Authors work-in-progress award for his eleventh collection in 2020.
Emma Jones is winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Best Collection, The Fellowship of Australian Writers First Prize Anne Elder Award, and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award.
Gerard Woodward is twice Nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize, awarded two Poetry Book Society Choices, plus Man Booker shortlisting, Sunday Times Short Story Award, Jerwood Fiction Prize and O. Henry Award for his esteemed work in prose.
Lucy English is Co-director of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, has two collections with Burning Eye Books (Prayer to Imperfection, 2014, and The Book of Hours, 2018), and is a BBC Radio 4 Poetry Slam finalist.
All poetry teaching at Bath Spa University emphasises the importance of the poetry publishing market.
We invite poets and poetry editors from journals and prominent publishing houses to talk to our students. Over one hundred and sixty poets have visited Bath Spa University to read and answer our students' questions. We feel it's a crucial part of a poetry student’s development to see how major poets project their own work in a public space.
Bath is a poetry-friendly city. Over the years we have helped to feed the community with high quality poetry.
We' re proud of the many Bath Spa University alumni who have become published poets. We're equally proud of the past and current poetry students who continue to place individual poems in distinguished journals.
Our poets have been shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Prize, the Melita Hume Prize, awarded an Eric Gregory Award, the Bridport Prize, the Templar IOTA Shots pamphlet competition, the UNESCO Bridges of Struga Award or been a winner in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize Competition.
BA Hons (Creative Writing) takes you through the stages of artistic excitement to the forms into which that excitement can be channelled. You'll begin by learning how crucial the reading of poetry is to the development of your own method, and progress to taking on every form that is available to the writing of poetry. Finally, you'll get to grips with the exciting business of collection-building.
Our module in performance poetry and spoken word began in 2004 and is still offered as an option for our undergraduate Creative Writing students.
For those wishing to go one stage further, the MA in Creative Writing will enable students to develop, explore and challenge their expertise in the writing of poetry. MA students will belong to a community of aspiring poets who share exactly the same learning values as they do. The reading of poetry will quadruple. Many students, at this stage, begin to publish their first poems.
Students wishing to progress even further in their expertise will pursue the culmination of poetry study in Bath Spa University’s Poetry Hub: the Creative PhD. The Creative Writing PhD in Poetry explores the cross-pollination between an original idea of your own creation and the writing of a collection of poems which – in the most affirmative terms –reflects that idea.
Students exploring performance poetry at Bath Spa University are encouraged to experience live poetry.
Bristol and Bath have a range of lively spoken word events that students attend and analyse. Taking this experience into their final year modules, our students develop portfolios of spoken word poetry, their own recordings, and professional publicity material.
Performance Poetry and Spoken Word
Graduates from the MA in Creative Writing have published collections with Tall Lighthouse, Oversteps, Seren, Smith/Doorstop, Mulfran Press, Templar Poetry, and New York Quarterly – among other poetry publishers.
Others have placed poems in individual journals and publications such as Poetry Review, PN Review, The Best Australian Poetry, Under the Radar, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, The Edinburgh Review, The Warwick Review, The Long Poem Magazine, The London Magazine, Stand Magazine, The New Welsh Review, Smiths Knoll, Tears in the Fence, Magma, The Interpreter’s House, Orbis and Staple, among many others.
