October celebrations in the LRC

This month in the LRC we are celebrating Black History Month, National Poetry Day & National Libraries Week.

Black History Month

The month of October is Black History Month in the UK.  Black History Month provides an opportunity not only to celebrate achievements but also offers a chance to raise awareness of the events from history, identifying lessons which can be learned from the past.

 

Peterborough Regional College 

National Poetry Day

This year is the 25^th Anniversary of National Poetry Day which takes place on Thursday 3rd October. National Poetry Day is the UK wide yearly celebration of poetry, to inspire everyone to enjoy, discover and share poems. Each year there is a different theme and in 2019 the theme is Truth.

Peterborough Regional College

National Libraries Week

Libraries Week is a celebration of the nation’s much-loved libraries. Libraries Week 2019 will take place between 7^th - 12^th October.

In the LRC we will be celebrating with the following events:

LRC Reading Group

Wednesday 9th October 12.00 - 13.00

FE/Access

‘Find it fast’ sessions

Finding resources for your assignments

Tuesday 8^th October 12.30 – 13.00

Thursday 10^th October 13.30 – 14.00

UCP

Wednesday 9^th October 13.00 – 14.00 library drop-in

Study excellence sessions

In 2019 the theme is the role of libraries in the digital world. During this week we will be highlighting eBooks which are available for you to use.

LRC Loyalty Card

Take up our six book challenge and join the LRC Loyalty Card scheme to read six books and a chance to win a fantastic prize.

I hope that you will find a book that you would like to borrow from one our displays.

National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day

Andrew McDonnell

Today is National Poetry Day and so the LRC marked the occasion with a poetry reading from one of the University Centre Peterborough lecturers - Andrew McDonnell. Andrew is an English lecturer at UCP and has a book of poetry coming out next year.

Andrew McDonnell reads his poetry
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

National Poetry Day display

We also asked staff and students to send us some poetic song lyrics which we added to our National Poetry Day display (on the butterfly).

National Poetry Day display
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

A common poetic device used in songs is personification. This is where a writer describes something which isn't alive with human characteristics. In Sting's Fields of Gold, "the sun in his jealous sky" describes the sun as if it has a male gender and ascribes the emotion of jealousy to the sky. Of course the sky isn't jealous of the sun (as far as we know!), but describing it this way creates more of an atmosphere and sounds more interesting. This idea can be used in descriptive written work as well as poetry. Can you think of other music lyrics which use personification?

Poetry and Puffins - LRC celebrates National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day

The Learning Resource Centre is celebrating National Poetry Day by holding a poetry competition. We have been encouraging students and staff to try writing Twitter poems – i.e. a poem that is no longer than the length of a text or tweet. Ironically, Twitter announced this week that they are piloting increasing their character limit to 280. A poem which is exactly 140 characters is known as a “twoosh”.

You can search for these mini poems by using a range of different keywords such as Twihaiku or micropoetry or the phrase "twitter poe*". (Putting "" marks round the two words keeps the words together as a phrase and the * allows for poet, poetry, poem and poems in your search).

 You can also search for these mini poems on Twitter using the keywords above as a hashtag (i.e. #micropoetry).

Poems

It has been said that Brian Bilston is the Banksy of the poetry world. Have a look here at some of his Twittle poems (as he calls them).

https://brianbilston.com/category/twittle-poems/

A couple of other short poems of his you may want to read in an odd spare moment are

You took the last bus home
No you cannot borrow my mobile phone charger 

Chester exploring the National Poetry Day display in the LRC
Photograph: Peterborough Regional College

Puffin news 

Finally, for those of you wondering what name has been given to the LRC mascot – it is Chester. There was a lot of discussion about whether the name should begin with P but in the end Chester had the most votes.

As it is National Poetry Day we close with an attempt at our own Twitter poem as we felt we shouldn't expect of others what we wouldn't try ourselves. We are sure your poems will be much better.

 There’s a puffin

Doing nothing

In the LRC

At PRC

There is nothing

Like that puffin

In the LRC

At PRC

Ok……..we won’t give up the day job!