Aug 19, 2019
3 min

Queering Ecopoetry: Being Seedy & Flowery Language

In praise of pansies and flowery language (sometimes). I haven’t done a blog hurrah yet, but: I’m currently in a period of supported writing after my second-attempt successful application to the Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice funding stream. The funding means I can spend real time, rather than snatched pockets of time, focusing on: critical reading about queering ecopoetry; time writing and crafting new poems; developing existing poems with mentoring;

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Jun 11, 2019
3 min

Dissertation, Publication, Projectification

Ekphrasis for All! (See Max Literacy update below) (No, projectification is not a word – but I just needed to finish the ‘-ification’ thing, OK?) CWTP MSc Dissertation A quick update on a few things – most notably that: I’ve passed my Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP) MSc Dissertation! The dissertation focused on ways in which CWTP might be used in a museum or gallery setting, so there was a huge amount to think about – particularly materiality, working with ob

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Apr 4, 2019
1 min

Trello Submissions Template

I’ve started using Trello as a way of keeping track of my poertry submissions to competitions and journals – and have found it a really useful way of doing so. As such, I thought I’d make a template to share for others to use, if you’re so Trello-inclined. It’s very important you click on the right hand Menu –> More –> Copy Board, then save it as a PRIVATE board for your own system. Otherwise, everyone will be able to see/use it! This is a *public template* to start your own.

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Feb 6, 2019
2 min

Extrasensory Perceptions: Fortean Poetry

Though let’s be honest, it’s seriously slippery. Some upcoming and ongoing projects: I’m delighted to be running a weekend of Fortean Poetry for The Poetry School on May 11th and 12th at their base in Canada Water, London. How can our writing explore the edges of our understanding – or even beyond it? How might we engage with phenomena or experiences beyond the ‘normal’ in our poetries? Hope to see you there… (Feel free to connect telepathically, via ESP or EVP if any of thes

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Oct 13, 2018
3 min

Varder ‘er at Chelt Lit Fest

Polari Writing with the Palones of Chelt Lit Crawl A busy couple of weeks with Cheltenham Literature Festival workshops, amongst other things… Last Saturday, I hosted What If You Couldn’t Polari ‘I Love You’? at the Lit Crawl event, a fun & poignant session We started looking at Polari – a quick intro – a bijou clipette of literary-infused Julian and Sandy, got a bit of conversational chat, mixed it in with the special ‘lingos’ from our lives, then created a group poem of wha

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Aug 28, 2018
1 min

Kit-Kats & Satellite of Love

Just back from a double whammy of festivals – Green Man and Shambala. Knackered! Both were very splendid happenings indeed. Will post more fully about those once I’ve recovered – but in the meantime, here’s a Kit-Kat inspired poem up on Poetry 24 a while back and I forgot to post here. I’m also performing at Satellite of Love on September 12th at the Greenbank Pub in Easton, Bristol – do come along. Event information is here. #Bristol #GreenMan #POETRY #Shambala

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Jun 27, 2018
1 min

National Writing Day & A Poem A Week

Today, I’m in Nova Hreod Academy in Swindon for National Writing Day. This morning we created Recipes for Poetry on a Sunny Day, en masse, with the poetry-generator-coding-machine (which is the young people’s brains, really). I love bringing in these Surrealist approaches to writing, which smash elements together in peculiar ways and make duly peculiar images. Soon I’ll be lugging my bag of newspapers and magazines into a found poetry and cut-ups session, which is always goo

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Jun 7, 2018
2 min

Weimar Win & More

A still from The Desktop Metaphor Some good newses to celebrate & projects to update! Firstly, the filmpoem by Helmie Stil of my piece The Desktop Metaphor won the Jury Award at The Weimar Filmpoetry Festival! There’s more information about that here – and you can watch the piece at that link too. Helmie did a wonderful job with the poem; I love the film’s style and rhythm. I’ve also just agreed to be the writer-facilitator on the Cheltenham Literature Festival project, Beyon

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Dec 15, 2017
1 min

Avant-Gardes & Manifestos

From January 23rd, I’ll be hosting a five-week fortnightly course, Letting Your Avant-Garde Down, at Hours here in Bristol. I’m delighted to be working with The Poetry School, who are a great force for making poetry happen, and bringing people together to discover and delight in the process. There’s an interview with me here about the course – do come along and we’ll explore together what ‘the avant-garde’ (if there is such a thing) can do for your writing, and what you can b

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Sep 27, 2017
1 min

Four In a Forest: A Bedtime Story

Earlier in September, I was invited by Knowle West Media Centre to write a ‘bedtime story for an artists’ at their Artist Hotel sleepover. I borrowed guided relaxation techniques from solution-focused hypnotherapy (thanks, Emma Edwards / Shine for tips on doing so safely), animal creation myths, and lovely rhyming bedtime stories: a bit of A A Milne lyricism, a splash of Dr Seuss sass, with some Channel 4 reality formats thrown in… The story used the animal characters and dre

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Aug 7, 2017
1 min

Osteochondritis Dissecans

“desecrated spaces, the rivers of me, these capillaries drying up at their tips” Last Wednesday, I ran the last workshop (of four) at M Shed museum, around their excellent Skeletons exhibition. As well as spending time with loads of brilliant young writers, from three schools and those who’d come to the summer holiday workshop – I felt like I’d gotten to know those bones rather well. Being as I like to model reading out writing I’ve just written, I did a lot of it before an

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Jun 26, 2017
1 min

(Mis)Behaviour at Green Man

I’ll be leading some witty, silly, Petty Protest at Green Man Einstein’s Garden this year, as part of their theme of (Mis)Behaviour. We’re going to be drilling down into the most pedantic and peculiar pet-hates, forming instant campaign groups with the perfect acronyms, and equipping ourselves with some poetic & comedic tools to make the best placards possible – then heading out with out whistles to cause a bit of a commotion around the festival site… Then you can go back out

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Jun 2, 2017
1 min

Poetry Please & Filmpoem

Two Good Things: My National Poetry Competition second prize winner, ‘The Desktop Metaphor’ was featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Poetry Please’ on the theme of ‘Work’ last Sunday – you can listen here. The poem was also turned into a splendid filmpoem by Helmie Stil (above!) and you can watch the filmpoem here. It’s been great for the poem to have a bit of a media flurry – the different responses to and aspects of the piece readers have found. The filmpoem brings out a wonderful da

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Apr 6, 2017
2 min

National Poetry Competition 2nd Prize!

or, Putting on Your Proper Poet Hat It’s with huge delight I can now celebrate that I was awarded second prize in The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition (NPC) 2016, with my poem The Desktop Metaphor. Last Wednesday, we went to a prize-giving at the Savile Club in Mayfair – which was also the announcement for the Ted Hughes prize, which was originated and officiated by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy – and won this year by the brilliant Holly McNish, for Nobody To

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Mar 18, 2017
1 min

Bony Orbit – Videopoem

A videopoem I made, based on some 1940s footage of How The Eye Functions, is now up on Atticus Review here, and embedded directly from YouTube below. The piece was started over a two-day poetry filmmaking workshop in Bristol towards the end of last year – I recommend going on workshops/courses like this, to give youself spacetime/timespace to tinker and start something (not always easy to find otherwise). It’s my hope to create more videopoems in the coming year – there’s a w

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Jan 30, 2017
2 min

Rialto Pamphlet Competition – Shorlisted!

Some exciting news: I’ve been shortlisted in The Rialto pamphlet competition 2017! It’s their first pamphlet competition and a really exciting honour to be included in the final ten poets. It also means I’ll have a poem from the pamphlet in their next issue – very exciting. A word about resilience and writing: last year I submitted a lot of work, to a lot of different publications and competitions. They very rarely ‘land’. And it can – and does – become very disheartening at

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Oct 18, 2016
1 min

People, Places, Life at M Shed

In February 2017, I’ll be running a seven-week creative writing course at M Shed Museum, Bristol harbourside. Here’s a little film I made to tell you more about it: And if you’d like to book, go to the WEA website here. There’s info about the M Shed on its website here too. See you there! #AdultLearning #Bristol #creativewriting #education #WEA #POETRY #MShed #museums

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Aug 25, 2016
1 min

Growing Bolder Video

Here’s a short film made by me, about the excellent Growing Bolder project – funded by Bristol Ageing Better – and the performance we did at Avenue House care home (in Redland, Bristol) on 7th July. Enjoy! There are more examples of videos I’ve made on the Word Rocket YouTube channel here. And if you’d like me to make a film of your project or event – please get in touch. #olderpeople #POETRY #growingbolder #bristolageingbetter #performance #writingforwellbeing #Writing

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Jun 17, 2016
1 min

NOT TODAY

Last week in my group with Off The Record, we looked at Andrew McMillan’s poem ‘TODAY’ from his great collection Physical (which you should buy too)… Having read and reflected on it, we then thought about a space we know really well – and let our mind’s eye (‘floating camera’, as it were) loose around the space, writing about it (as McMillan’s poem does) in direct address (‘you’) and future tense (‘you will…’). I thought I’d share my piece of writing that came from this exerc

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Jun 2, 2016
1 min

Visual Verse: Pachycephalosaurus

I’m one of the featured writers this month, on the excellent Visual Verse… You can read my curious poem here – and then submit your own work, inspired by the same image. It’s a great project to nurture writing inspired by images, something I really enjoy doing and put to use in workshops I run. (One of the brains behind Visual Verse is also the brain behind The Curved House – which you should check out too: they do wonderful work on visual literacy.) #Hats #POETRY #VisualVers

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CALEB PARKIN

Poetry. Play. Possibilities.

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(A quick, quarterly update with projects, poems and useful resources)

NEWS

Subscribe Form (A quick, quarterly update with projects, poems and useful resources)

Subscribe Form
(A quick, quarterly update with projects, poems and useful resources)