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    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
    • Hear from Alumni
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2025
    • Poetry Prize 2024
    • Poetry Prize 2023
    • Poetry Prize 2022
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
  • Resources
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    • Films & Virtual Events
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  • Summer School 2020
  • Rachel Donati

Rachel Donati

Where are we? 
Weald. It’s a small village in Kent.

What are you working on? 
For poetry I’m finalising the poems and sequence for my pamphlet The Human Bone Manual. Getting ready for submissions – that wait.   

What’s that over there? 
My German industrial 50s school desk complete with teen tippex from someone named Ingrid (I reckon that was done in the 80s though, don’t you?). Plenty of found feathers in my Nanna’s green decanter (all a bit Bat For Lashes circa 2006). Various books and notebooks, in the background a funny face mobile hitched to the light switch – it keeps falling off the ceiling where it’s supposed to spin pleasingly. G.N.H pencil – I always take the pens and pencils from hotels I attend. 

What’s that sound? 
I Miss Electronica playlist, Flat Beat’s currently playing. I’m missing the rub of London’s concrete, so I’m getting drowned in a wall of sound instead for a similar kick.  

Time for a break…?  
I might go to Soho - drink negronis - gossip with friends. Or lovingly cook some home food for the kids who’ll then say they’d prefer the baked beans, actually.  

Was there a particularly enlightening moment during the Summer School?  
Stephen Sexton telling me about brhymes.com, talking risotto, and understanding my poetry was a pretty good moment; Leontia Flynn thinking sub in one of my poems was a subcontractor cleaner (it’s a submissive in a D/s scene); Padraig Regan opening my eyes to ekphrasis so my ‘Dolly’ is now an ekphrastic poem; good conversations with Charlie Lang about voice and social access to poetry (or not); talking politics of poetic form with Tara McEvoy; Nick Laird thinking my block poems were just computer formatting(!); hearing the other poets’ work and getting to know them; a great deal of hilarity over the evening sessions, occasional feisty talk. All good.  

What's next for your writing? 
I write every day - So,  more writing. I’ll start to collect ideas for writing new poems over summer (I recorded Neapolitan home sounds last year and I’ve still yet to use them). Hoping to join a particular Poetry School class in September to keep with poetry family. Reading more poetry crit (Nick told me to). Commercially – looking at ways to work on projects that have social mobility/enterprise at their heart (I work as a creative director/copywriter) it’s something I care about and deserves more attention and focus. 

Summer School 2020
  • Summer School 2020
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