Swaddywell Pit near Helpston, Northants

'Besom ling and teasel burrs': John Clare and botanising

20 September 2014

A symposium taking place on Tuesday (23 September 2014) at Cambridge University Botanic Garden will unite artists, writers, scientists and literary scholars to look at the poet John Clare’s close engagement with the natural environment as a botanist as well as poet.

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Drawer of ammonoids from the Woodwardian collection, the founding collection of the Sedgwick Museum, dating to the late 17th and early 18th century

We ask the experts: why do we put things into museums?

26 November 2013

Our lives are bound up with objects. Museums are evidence of our deep preoccupation with the things that surround us, whether natural or the product of human endeavour. Why do we keep stuff, what do we learn from it – and what does our fascination for objects from our past tell us about being human today?

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Benjamin Zephaniah and Mohammad Razai at last year's event

Poetry please

23 September 2012

The Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Competition, set up last year to encourage new work propelling social change, is now open to a wider range of aspiring poets. Entrants are asked to submit their work by 17 October 2012.

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Poet Clare Holtham and Uzbek chieftain in Afghanistan, early 1970s

For lust of knowing what should not be known

12 November 2011

Clare Holtham (1948-2010) had a huge enthusiasm for learning. After a troubled childhood, which led to a spell of homelessness, she became an intrepid traveller and independent-minded student at Newnham College, Cambridge. A book of Clare’s poems called The Road from Herat, launched today at Newnham, reflects a life lived to the full. It included working on the buses and a rapid marriage to an Uzbek chieftain.

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Morag Styles.

The Case for Children’s Poetry

11 October 2011

Morag Styles may be the only Professor of Children’s Poetry out there. Having recently taken up her new role, here she explains why poetry for the young matters – and why it is time to stop treating it as the poor relation of the adult form.

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