News

05Sep 2016 by joew

Two new “Poems for…” collections available

poems for display in schools, Poems for...one world, poems on learning disability, poems on mental health, public poetry
The two collections were launched in Bristol in the Autumn of 2015. The charity United Response assisted. The mental health collection is called "Poems for...Self at Sea" and consists of 30 poems. It was funded by NHS Westminster. The learning disability collection is called "Poems for...Bridges to Learning Disability." This one consists of 20 poems and was funded privately. A significant number of authors contributed to each of collections, several writing from first hand experience, others from many years of close proximity. The poems were carefully selected. The poems are formatted in poster form and are available free of charge both in hard copy and online. The posters are small but can be enlarged. Alternatively, they are available as part of an attractive booklet produced by United Response. But these…
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24May 2016 by joew

Poems for…Bridges to Anatolia

poems for display in schools, Poems for...one world, Poems for...the waiting room, public poetry, Uncategorized
"Poems for...Bridges to Anatolia" is based largely - though not entirely - on the translation work over the years of the Turkish poet Mevlut Ceylan. Ceylan lived in London for many years and under the title "Core Publications" produced a significant number of booklets that feature and celebrate Turkish poetry. Each is translated into English, the vast majority by Ceylan himself. Some are anthologies, following a theme. Others feature the work of individual Turkish authors. Ceylan's quiet and patient work opens the life of one culture to another and in doing so reveals the distinctness of each but also and more importantly their common humanity. He has built and opened a bridge. The selection offered here took over two years to put together and consists of over twenty poems. It…
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13Nov 2014 by joew

“Poems for…” comes to London for Those who Wait

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CNWL NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK. It provides healthcare services across a wide swathe of north west London and various areas beyond. The Trust has just announced its adoption and funding of a pamphlet of poems and photographs now available free of charge across all its waiting rooms, for people to take away with them if they want. Two thousand copies of the pamphlet have just come back from the printers, and have begun to be distributed. The photographs it contains are striking - both poignant and strong. The poems have been selected from the various collections put together for the "Poems for...the wall" project over the years, described and available on this web-site. They include a significant number of bilingual poems,…
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10Feb 2013 by joew

6 Burmese poems join the “Poems for…One World” collection

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The six poems being published here are all contemporary and have been carefully selected. Several of them have been published already. Two have not. The UK Foreign Office have played an important part in the whole process, though not in the selection. How to view and download the poems For the full collection of six poems, click here. Then scroll down through the six. The poems are also available for individual downloading. Log in on the Home Page (registering first if you haven’t already done so) and then go to “Downloading the Poems” in the left hand margin.  Once there, open up the “Poems for… one world “ collection and you’ll find each of the Burmese poems near the top of the list of contents, under B for Burmese. Click…
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14Jun 2011 by joew

The Royal College of Nursing is backing the “Poems for…the wall” project

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Based in London, the Royal College of Nursing sends its monthly newsletter by surface mail to each of its 400,000 members. This month's issue will be recommending the "Poems for... project.  So a large community of people will be put in touch with us. The newsletter refers to a longer piece on the project that will go up on the Royal College's website simultaneously. The piece is headed "The Art of Nursing." It links to a poem called "These are the Hands" by Michael Rosen. In 2008, while he was the UK's Children's Poet Laureate, Rosen was commissioned to write the poem in celebration of the NHS's 60th birthday of that year. Soon afterwards, Michael Rosen gave his permission for us to publish it. And soon after that, we had…
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17May 2010 by joew

60 new “Poems for…One World” now available for downloading

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You will find thirty different languages represented in the collection. These include : Mandarin, Japanese, Tamil, French, German, Italian, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Ewe, Igbo, Tigrinya, Somali, Afrikaans and /Xam. The last six named are languages spoken in Africa south of the Sahara, either presently or in the past. But this time there is also some variation on the collection's main theme of creating free and open speech between language and language. For instance, the new collection includes a poem called "These are the Hands" by Michael Rosen, the UK Children's Poet Laureate between 2007 and 2009. He was commissioned to write the poem in celebration of the recent 60th birthday of the UK National Health Service. Michael agreed that we could add the poem to our collection and offer…
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23Nov 2009 by joew

New Poem Collection Goes Online on This Site

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We have already reported on a day held in Rochester in July of this year, which brought together children from several schools in the region of Medway (see"Two Hundred school children celebrate diversity in Medway"). The purpose of the day was to celebrate diversity and to explore some of the richness of our different cultures, as well as the tensions that arise as a community absorbs difference and forms and re-forms around it. Various arts were deployed on the day, but the chief medium was poetry and the time was hugely productive in that regard. The new collection consists of almost 40 poems produced either in preparation for the day or during it, 15 of them competition winners. (Competition judges were Rogan Wolf and Stephen Watts). Most of the poems…
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18Aug 2009 by joew

Michael Rosen poem celebrating the NHS joins “Poems For…” and goes Multilingual

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Photograph: Graham Turner 2008 was the 60th birthday of the NHS. As part of the celebrations, the NHS commissioned Michael Rosen, still then the official Children’s Poet Laureate, to write a poem. His “These are the Hands” is meant to be for children but is appreciated by all age-groups. With its subject a health service that’s for everyone, here is a poem that’s for everyone too. This year, Michael has enthusiastically agreed to his poem being placed under “Poems for…” colours and published on this website, available for downloading. In future it will simply join the “Poems for…Waiting” collection - to be downloaded along with all the other poems. For now you can download it from the link above simply by opening it, saving it to your own computer and…
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