Writers Magazine

Reaching poetry audiences

The Poetry Book Society has just announced the launch of two major new websites, www.poetrybookshoponline.com and www.poetrybooks.co.uk, which will provide a substantial way for poetry readers to find out about poetry and to buy poetry books and CDs. It’s becoming ever harder to find a decent selection of poetry in bookshops, so these new sites offer a good way of finding out about the latest new poetry - and much more - and buying it.

The PBS’s Poetry Bookshop Online will offer all 90,000 poetry titles in print in the UK and Ireland, alongside the Poetry Archive recordings, SoundBlast performance poets’ CDs and poetry pamphlets. Recommendations and a new releases section will enable poetry lovers to find poetry books and CDs ranging from the latest new collection to the great classics, from old favourites to the perfect gift. It’s surprising to find that this niche poetry bookshop is the only one of its kind in the world, so, using the power of the web, it should attract a worldwide audience of poetry lovers.

The Poetry Bookshop Online will be updated frequently with new material about poetry, including news updates, coverage of poetry prizes, and listings of poetry events from organisations all over the UK and Ireland. The site’s Poetry Portal will offer regular reviews of new books, articles, interviews and poems, so it should be a good place to visit, read the reviews and take part in the latest debate inside the poetry world.

First up there’s Seamus Heaney’s ‘Encounters with poetry’, Peter Hughes’ ‘Small Press Beat’, Roddy Lumsden on Identity Parade, Katy Evans-Bush on the difficult relationship between Henry James and Oscar Wilde, and Philip Gross on how winning the T S Eliot Prize started a year of prizes and what it has meant to him. There’s more promised, in fact a regular stream of updates.

The new Poetry Book Society website is intended to be a haven for members, with the opportunity to buy from the online Bulletin at the members’ discount, special offers and a new free PBS membership for students. Non-members will be able to find out about the PBS and join online. It will also provide a home for the PBS’s projects: the T S Eliot Prize with its Shadowing Scheme and a new, just-launched reading group scheme; the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets; and the wonderful Old Possum’s Children’s Poetry Competition (which has just started, if you have any poetry-writing 7-11 year-olds in your vicinity). The PBS is also the only poetry book club in the world and its new site will enable it to offer a worldwide audience the best new poetry chosen by its Poet Selectors, nearly 60 years after it was founded by T S Eliot and friends to ‘propagate the art of poetry’.

The PBS is celebrating the launch of its new website with an enticing special offer for membership of an additional free book, Christopher Logues’s War Music – new members also get a copy of the multimedia anthology In Person, edited by Neil Astley, and two £10 vouchers, but hurry, as it's only there for the launch.

Poetry Bookshop Online

Poetry Book Society