Street Poetry 

Poetry Can seeks poems about streets

Streets, roads, avenues etc have long been a source of inspiration to poets, see, for example, On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh and the equally magical Raglan Lane by Brendan Kennelly. (page 54)

Poetry Can asked the poet Sara-Jane Arbury to write a series of poems about one of Bristol’s favourite thoroughfares, Park Street. Sara-Jane wrote her poems after spending a couple of weeks walking up and down Park Street talking to the people who work, shop, socialise and walk there. (click here to read poems)

Poetry Can would like to collect poems about the streets that in some way are important or significant to you.  It may be the street where something momentous happened - where you fell in love or where your heart was broken, or it may be a street where you live or lived, or a street where amazing characters live or it may be one you just love to walk down. It may be the street on which sits the pub or the club or the shop or the cinema of your dreams, or it may be a street that fills you with dread, but whatever the reason it must be a street you think is worthy of a poem.

Please send your poems to: streetpoetry@poetrycan.co.uk

Over the next year we will publish the best of them on the web site. And who knows, by the end of the year we may have an A-Z of the magical, poetic streets from all around the world and your street may be in it.      

Please note:

• You may submit as many poems as you wish
• Each poem may be in any style, of any length, but must take as its theme a named street, road, avenue, lane or thoroughfare etc.
•  Each poem should be sent by email to: streetpoetry@poetrycan.co.uk
  PLEASE include your name, address, telephone number, email     address, plus the titles of your poems.
• Poetry Can cannot return your poems.
  If you require a receipt please request a reply
  No changes can be made to a poem once it has been submitted
• Poetry Can accepts poems for this project from anywhere in the world
• Poems should be in English and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere
• All poems must be the entrants own work
• No poem should be a translation of another poet’s work
• The project is open to poets of any age 
• Poetry Can will publish a selection of poems on the Poetry Can website as it receives them through the year.
• Poetry Can will not enter into correspondence re. submissions, nor will it provide feedback on, or critique of, poems.
• The copyright for each poem remains with the poet   

Thinking of writing a poetry show to take on the road?
Here's a bit of useful first-hand advice from Paralalia - David Johnson and Peter Hunter - who received an Arts Council grant to take their multi-media poetry show, Tales from a Paralalia Universe, around England in 2007.

Tales from a Paralalia Tour