Sue Dymoke is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Education at Nottingham Trent University. You can find out more about her poetry and research at suedymokepoetry.com.
Anthony Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. More about his poetry and research can be found at anthonywilsonpoetry.com
Richard Bromhall is an arts and education producer in Nottingham. He recently completed his PhD in contemporary English Literature at Nottingham Trent University. More about his work can be found at richardbromhall.com
You can contact us about this research at: sue.dymoke@ntu.ac.uk
Our previous research: We have worked together previously on a several key poetry research projects which investigate poetry writing development, where poetry happens and explore the challenges of teaching and learning poetry (see details below). The results of the research led us to want to explore how young poets develop as writers and draw on the support of others in the writing community.
- In our recent work we have become increasingly interested in how young poets can become part of a writing community or make their own. This issue is explored in our theoretical paper Wilson, A. and Dymoke, S. (2017) Towards a model of poetry writing development as a socially contextualised process, Journal of Writing Research. 9 ( 2), 127-150 Open Access Journal – download and View | https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2017.09.02.02
- The Poetry Matters seminar series (2012 -2013) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) was convened by Sue and Anthony with Andrew Lambirth. It was the first of its kind, bringing together poets, teachers, arts organisations and researchers to learn from each and generate new research questions and ideas about poetry pedagogy and practice with young people across the 5 – 19 age range. It led to new collaborations, poetry initiatives and publications including Making Poetry Matter: International Research on Poetry Pedagogy (Bloomsbury 2013).
- Making Poetry Happen: Transforming the Poetry Classroom (Bloomsbury 2015) builds on the research and shared workshop experiences from the Poetry Matters seminars. This second book explores the impact of these practices in classrooms and includes chapters written by poets, primary, secondary and post-16 teachers and teacher educators. It contains useful guidance, practical ideas and poet/teacher reflections about teaching poetry across the 5 -19 age range. We were delighted that this book was shortlisted and highly commended in 2017 in the UKLA Academic Book Award
“Poetry is a form of music that stirs connections. It’s the human experience in discovery. It opens up ideas that you didn’t know existed until you tried to put them into words. Writing poetry is a way of striving to see as deeply as possible, as accurately as possible.”
Thinking about Poetry by James Berry
from: A Story I am In: Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books.
Young Poets' Stories 