The participatory part of this project is now closed. Though you can still be inspired!
You can find the Maligned Species ebooks for sale in the Bookshop, at £2.99 each.
Below are the ecologists, poets, podcast team and visual artists who were commissioned in the Maligned Species project – which was supported with public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Click on the appropriate words to hear ecologist and poet podcasts, read ecologists’ prompts, and biogs of everyone involved.
The stages of the project are archived at the bottom of this page.
ECOLOGISTS
- Brett Westwood on Spiders – listen, read, about, comment
- Matthew Oates on Stinging Nettles – listen, read, about, comment
- John Handley on Grey Squirrels – listen, read, about, comment
- Nigel Brown on Frogs – listen, read, about, comment
POETS
- David Calcutt – listen, about
- Emma Purshouse – listen, about
- John Siddique – listen, about
- Tom Wentworth – listen, about
- Liz Lefroy – listen, about
- Jonathan Edwards – listen, about
- Keith Chandler – listen, about
- Andrew Fusek Peters – listen, about
- Nadia Kingsley – listen, about
PODCAST TEAM
EBOOK COVER ARTISTS
- Giancarlo Facchinetti – about, his Poetry on Spiders ebook cover
- Peter Tinkler – about, his Poetry on Stinging Nettles ebook cover
- Rhys Bevan Jones – about, his Poetry on Grey Squirrels ebook cover
- Paul Kielty – about, his Poetry on Frogs cover
Fair Acre Press is delighted to announce:
A poetry-writing project open to all, aged twelve or over, based around the concept of the UK’s least popular plants and animals:
SPIDERS FROGS STINGING NETTLES GREY SQUIRRELS
The challenge is to write a poem (or poems) for possible inclusion in the 4 forthcoming Fair Acre Press poetry ebooks. And if your work is chosen, you will get a free copy of the ebook your poem appears in.
With every ebook that is sold, Fair Acre Press pledges to donate money to an associated ecology organisation.
This project is open to everyone – to use now, and in the future – to support your poetry-writing and is free to enter!
Poems for Maligned Species ebooks welcomed throughout January 2016!!
You may well have already written a poem – if so, hooray !
If you haven’t – you have until the end of January (and read below for inspiration) !
Please do send your poems in to: [email protected] at any time during January 2016 – and we will choose which poems to include in the four poetry ebooks, which will be on sale from February for £2.99
WHEN YOU SEND YOUR POEM(s) IN:
- You will be agreeing to its publication in an ebook, and its publication in a printed book in the possible future.
- It will be accepted as truth by Fair Acre Press that the name on the poem is the person who has written the poem,without infringing any copyright laws – here is a link to help clear up some of these complicated copyright issues
- If you are aged 12 to 18 – please say this in your email – as we will need an adult’s agreement to publish your poem
- Include your name, email address, and also, if you have it, a web page link
e.g. mine is www.fairacrepress.co.uk/about
– as we will link your name to the web page within the ebook, so readers can find out more about you, if they like your poem
- Any poem should not have been previously published, as it should have been written during this project
- Poems should be about these species, in the U.K.
Any feedback about the project – good, or bad – would be extremely helpful – especially comments written on the web pages – thanks x this will help prove to the Arts Council England that we have successfully ‘engaged with the public’ and will help us secure funding for future projects.
WE WILL:
- write to you to let you know if we are including your poem(s) in any of the four ebooks
- send you a copy of the ebook your poem(s) are featured in – as a thank you !
- donate profit from the sale of the ebooks to Shropshire Wildlife Trust (Grey Squirrels), Buglife (Spiders), Plantlife (Stinging Nettles), and Froglife (Frogs)
Inspiration for your poems
But before you start writing, we will provide you with inspiration!
We have lined up podcasts and blogs from 4 ecologists and 9 poets -to give you ideas, inspiration, and scientific facts about the four maligned UK species
We hope that you will research round your poem, and put scientific facts into your poems, but in a ‘poetic way’ – not an easy task. And that’s why we will help over the weeks – with the podcasts and blogs, from:
Maligned Species Ebooks
Then YOU will be given the opportunity to submit your poems for possible inclusion in the 4 forthcoming Fair Acre Press poetry Ebooks in January 2016. The ‘Submissions Instructions’ will be posted on January 1st 2016, and added to this page soon after.
One Ebook will be launched each Friday in February 2016
Anyone who has a poem accepted for one of the E-Books will receive a complimentary copy of the E-Book, with our thanks
The Ebooks will be available to buy, from this website at £2.99
We have chosen a low price as we would like to encourage as many people as possible to buy the E-Books and enjoy your poems. We hope you will enjoy them, and if you do – might tell others about them
We are supporting, through this project, the following ecology organisations:
- Buglife
- Froglife
- Plantlife
- Shropshire Wildlife Trust
Subscribe to the Fair Acre Press blog/newsletter
#MalignedSpecies
The Maligned Species project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England
We hope you enjoy the challenge
We look forward to seeing your poems!
