POET CAMP Book Club
Poet Camp Book Club
A progressive and generative book club! Each quarter we’ll read a different book together.
Here’s how each round will go:
MONTH 1
(OCTOBER)
Read!
Book club book is announced! Joy! Excitement! Those who sign up will receive a set of questions that we’ll use to frame our thinking the rest of the time we spend with this book.
MONTH 2
(NOVEMBER)
Write!
We’ll read! We’ll ponder! We’ll post favorite quotes in a book club members only Poet Camp page. Sarah will send a few prompts inspired by this book to encourage you to generate work inspired by our reading.
MONTH 3
(DECEMBER)
Share!
We’ll gather together on Google Meet for an evening of sharing our thoughts about the book, and a read-around of poems inspired by the book we’ve read.
Our next Book Club book is…
From Bookshop:
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tale of two young scholars researching the secret love affair of two Victorian poets that’s an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. “Gorgeously written … A tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review
Winner of England’s Booker Prize and a literary sensation, Possession traces the lives of a pair of young academics as they uncover a clandestine relationship between two long-dead Victorian poets. As they unearth their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.
Order your book from our Bookshop Page here (or click through the image above)
*Sue Roberts will be our guide and prompt writer this season! She’s shared these quotes to give you a hint of the delights this book holds. Whether you’ve encountered it before, or this is your first time, I think you’ll find it the perfect fall read!
“There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.”
““My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage.”
“…words have been all my life, all my life–this need is like the Spider’s need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out–the silk is her life, her home, her safety–her food and drink too–and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….”
We’ll write poems inspired by our own mysteries revealed, time travelings, and of the ways we seek out the truth.
A.S. Byatt webpage (She died in 2023, but the site has many interesting things about the books she wrote, her life and lots of videos and articles about her life and work.)
Patricia Lockwood on AS Byatt’s Possession
The Booker Prize award announcement
*Prewrite & discussion questions go out October 1.*
*Prompts go out November 1.*
*Discussion & Readaround in December live on Google Meet – Date TBD!
If price is a barrier to your joining, please just fill out the form labeled “scholarship,” and I’ll add you to our list.
No questions asked! <3
I’d be so grateful if you’d share this with anyone you think might be interested.