A New Belfast Poetry Map (2011)

A New Belfast Poetry Map introduces us to views of the city through the eyes of familiar and first time writers. This unique poetry collection swings around Belfast’s lampposts draped in memories, dressed in dialect and swathed in a patchwork of pasts. Reminiscences and observations entwine themselves throughout this collection to stitch an intricate tapestry of the city. Language of a myriad of colours and yarns from many communities weave together stories and voices from all parts of Belfast.

If you would like to follow a walking tour of poetry through the City Centre, you could follow our itinerary by clicking HERE.

Paper back edition with CD, £7 (+p&p).

A New Belfast Poetry Map is available both from New Belfast and No Alibis Bookstore (see above for contact details)

Write up There (2009)

This audio collection merges the new work of well established poets with new writers from communities all across the city of Belfast. Contributors rise voices, families, hopes, the past, expectations, ambitions, and questions…This collection takes us on a journey, from our histories, through anecdotal domesticity, challenges to democracy and unraveling emotional complexities, towards our tomorrows.

CD with booklet £7 (+p&p), additional copies £5 (+p&p).

Write to be Heard (2008)

The poems in this audio collection have been selected for their particular relationship with the city of Belfast through its locations, people, thoughts and feelings.  Within these words and sounds we are taken to parts of the city we know well and those we have never visited and discover that, wherever we are, we all deal with the same issues, delight in the same things and aspire to the same future.

CD with booklet. £7, £5 for additional copies (+p&p)

Century City (2006)

This innovative collection is a fully fledged adult poetry comic. Poetry submissions from contributors were illustrated and transformed into comic strips by professional graphic and visual artists.

21 poems were illustrated by 13 artists resulting in a powerful collection of lyrical and visual narrative which would appeal to anyone over the age of 14.

Free, (£1 p&p)

BT1 - A New Poet’s Code (2005)

This anthology evidences a deep sense of community among its contributors.  These voices of seasoned poets and new writers come together to give a sense of locality and currency to the poems. 

Although disparate in style and content, together they create a coherent whole exploring all streets and avenues of the human state.  This is an anthology that will make you laugh and cry – all on the same page!

(no longer available)

Ringing the Changes   (2004)

This anthology features a mix of community and public poetry based on the theme of music, with over ninety contributions organised into sections based on musical aspects: Harmony, Melody, Pitch, Resonance, Rhythm, Timbre and Toning.

The anthology also includes a CD of thirty five contributors poems recorded live at the “Between the Lines” Literary Festival, along with added text files and Braille insert for the visually impaired.

Paper back edition with audio CD and Braille insert, £3 (+p&p)

The Lonely Poets Guide to Belfast (2002)

This anthology is based on the Lonely Planet Travel Guide format. Within the anthology readers are invited on a poetic tour around Belfast through the eyes of its inhabitants, with facts, travel information, contacts, and tours of different areas.

Contributors to this anthology include such well recognised names as Padraic Fiacc, Janet Shepperson, Jacqui McMenamin, Ray Givans, Deirdre Cartmill and Jani X alongside some of the first poems to be published by emerging voices of the time such as David Smylie, Robert Rainey, Stephen Gharbaoui, Lindsay Hodges and Mark Cooper.

Paper back edition, £3 (+p&p)

You Can’t Eat Flags for Breakfast (2001)

This anthology features contributions from thirty established poets, including Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian and Tom Paulin alongside local politicians and over seventy public contributors.

“In this book, with its unique collection of established poets, politicians and ordinary people, addressing the conflict of the last thirty years and looking to the future, you will see- literally – a community in dialogue with itself. Poems instead of bullets. Metaphors instead of insults. Hopes instead of hatred. It has never been done before and I doubt it will ever come around again…” - Martin Lynch

Paper back edition, £3 (+p&p)

You Are Here (2011)

You Are Here is a unique “poetry map” of Belfast by our youngest citizens. Twelve local poet facilitators worked in thirty schools inspiring pupils from six to sixteen to create and shape their own words and their own sense of place.

Very often we think of place only as a location or a destination. However, in this collection of poems, that sense of place is as much about the people within the city, the experiences they have and the things they learn, as it is about geography or the shape of buildings.

Paper back edition with CD, £7 (+p&p)

Re:New Belfast (2009)

The audio poems within this case are explorations of the story of Belfast, its face and features, past, present and future. 

This collection uncovers the views of Belfast though the eyes of some of its youngest citizens and asks what we still have to do as well as celebrating what we have already achieved.

This particular anthology and process has resulted in a large number of group poems demonstrating the skills of the children who have collaborated, discussed and debated in order to produce words that represent them all.

CD with booklet. £7, £5 for additional copies (+p&p)

Right Here, Write Now (2008)

In 2008 the theme of Poetry in Motion Schools was based around the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from which the convention that governs the rights of children has developed.

This was the first year that Poetry in Motion Schools had tackled an audio anthology and it resulted in immediate, vibrant and moving connections to the children who wrote the poems: a rich texture of the heard word.

CD with booklet. £7, £5 for additional copies (+p&p)

The Class of Belfast (2006)

As Belfast City Hall celebrated its centenary, its youngest citizens were busy contemplating their place in the city and observing the world they know best.  The resulting anthology collects a myriad of views and thoughts and feelings on how it is to be a child of Belfast. 

Fifty six schools took part in this project and the work produced offers snatched and diverse glimpses of a rapidly morphing world as a city moves towards a new future at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Paper back edition, £3 (+p&p)

Write across Belfast (2005)

This anthology, featuring the work of children from thirty seven schools, spans poetic forms and content from the most entertaining nonsense poetry to poems that explore social and political contexts through the eyes of our young citizens.

Poetic form features strongly in many of the poems in this anthology: a handy tool for any teacher who wants to explore beyond the acrostic and use new and original writing frames for the classroom.

Converging Lines (2004)

This anthology collects poems on diverse themes. Many of the poems focus on the issues of identity or conflict from global conflict to personal squabbles, exploring citizenship issues within poetic composition.

This collection of over 260 poems was created and illustrated by children and young people from forty three schools all connected by the waterways within the city.

All these “Converging Lines” finally come together, reaching the sea at Belfast Lough, as the fast flow of verse from our schools comes together in this anthology.

Paper back edition, £3 (+p&p)

Rhyming Round Belfast (2003)

For this anthology nineteen local poets, including John Bradbury, Sinead Morrissey, Medbh McGuckian and Janet Shepperton, worked with children in fifty three schools.  The resulting collection explores issues of the real world (including identity, the environment and city life) and of the imaginary (dreams, monsters and myths).

This is a varied and exciting collection of work, which would be a useful resource for any teacher approaching poetry in the classroom and an inspiration to any child.

Paper back edition, £3 (+p&p)