estblished & origin - currently in it’s 3rd year.  It’s funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and established in late 2004 with their help. The programme began running in January 2005.

who’s it for?new poets from the survivors community in the broadest sense; who for a variety of reasons will have found it difficult either to express their potential or through lack of peer recognition, encouragement or mentoring. It’s to mentor and guide new poets with clear potential through the journey of writing, self-affirmation, self-criticism, the craft of poetry and finding an audience to receive this. It’s also to help emerging poets gain self-confidence and professionalism in performance, and the publication process. Where appropriate, the scheme encourages mentors – with additional office input when requested – to guide the poets through the process of submission and publication, when specific advice about which magazines best suit their talents can be furnished. Pointing the way to writing careers, in writers’ placements, is one we can address too.

what are the benefits? Self-confidence, great expressive potential, a far greater professional sense of their poetry and the poetry world in general; performance skills, publishing and self-placement skills – for instance, as creative writers’ placements.

timescales - We take nine months as a guideline. But it can  from vary from four months to – in special circumstances - a year.

the process - mentoring  Once we’ve matched a suitable mentor with a mentee, we then encourage both parties first to keep in touch with us on occasion, which both usually do. Beyond, this, the tempo of the relationship is left to the individuals concerned, and the time-frame is one which they in turn discuss with the Co-ordinator and Director. Contact is usually kept up via email and letter, and to some extent phone. We’ve found that though on occasion actual meetings can take place, this is on the whole quite rare, because of the distance needing to be travelled. The Co-ordinator and Director in fact have met all their mentees, which has been hugely rewarding. Many go on to further mentoring, and keep in touch. Some mentees from the first year are now contemplating larger collections.

The culmination is a launch at the Poetry Café at the Poetry Society’s premises, 22 Betterton street, Covent Garden. But the process doesn’t have to end there, as we’ve just seen.

how to apply?

Our next deadline is February 1st, 2008. That’s not long after the Christmas break. We will always consider later applications (and certainly let applicants know of their suitability), but these might be delayed by nine months. Just send up to 20 poems maximum (six to twelve is perfectly adequate) to :

Roy Birch
Survivors’ Poetry Mentoring Scheme
Studio 11, Bickerton House
25-27 Bickerton Road
London
N19 5JT

You can phone us on 020-7281-4654.

email:

royb@survivorspoetry.org.uk

or if you have queries - alternatively: email

info@survivorspoetry.org.uk

National Mentoring Scheme 2006 publcations now available for £4.00 + p&p, on line at:
www.survivorspoetry.com/SP_shop