Online Poetry Reading Group Launched By Poetry Book Society

Press Release - Monday 10 Jan 2011

The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce that it has today launched a major new initiative, an online poetry reading group which will be open to everyone.

Using its new Poetry Bookshop Online, http://www.poetrybookshoponline.com/, the reading group will be free to join and is aimed at a wide audience of poetry readers.

The PBS has been running the Poetry Book Society since its foundation by T S Eliot and friends in 1953, focusing on bringing the best new poetry to keen poetry readers with its Poet Selectors' quarterly selections. Now this new venture will enable the organisation to attract a whole new audience of poetry lovers to its new website.

Each month, The Online Poetry Reading Group will offer two Choices - these will be contrasting books, ranging across time and format to include a varied and more mainstream selection of poetry anthologies, single author collections and classics. Reading groups members can enrol online and will be sent a monthly email announcing the new Choices. From there members can easily access the specially commissioned articles about the books.

The first two Choices will be Ruth Padel's article on The Forward Book of Poetry 2011 and Gwyneth Lewis's article on Seamus Heaney's Human Chain. Reading Group members will be able to order the books (and any other books on the site) at a discount of 20% for seven days. The books will arrive in time for them to read them and join in the online discussion which will start the following month.

Go to The Poetry Book Society to find out more.


For further information please contact: Chris Holifield or David Isaac at the Poetry Book Society, email chris@poetrybooks.co.uk or david_isaac@poetrybooks.co.uk