Jaybird Live Literature (www.jaybird.org.uk) and Southbank Centre (www.southbankcentre.co.uk) are planning a large scale poetry commissioning project for Summer and Autumn 2013.

We are going to find one poet connected to each of London’s 33 boroughs* and ask them to create a new poem inspired or provoked by that borough.

We will then introduce each poet to an artist (visual, theatrical or digital) who will interpret the new poem and send it out into the world: launching it from a relevant borough location, from a space in Southbank Centre as part of the 2013 Neighbourhood Festival, and from the web.

We need poets, one of them connected to every London borough. Poets can be well established or just starting out, they can write in English or other languages, they can be native or adopted Londoners, they can be page or performance poets - but they must be able to respond to a specific commission creatively and professionally. It is unlikely that we will select poets who are still unpublished beyond magazine level, or who have as yet only given a couple of performances. A poet’s connection with a borough may be that s/he lives /d there, was born there, works/ed there or experienced some genuinely significant life event there. Please send us your recommendations – you can recommend yourselves or your favourite poets.

We also need artists. If you know of individual, partner or collective artists who have a track record of interpreting poems and text visually, theatrically or digitally for large audiences, please ask them to visit www.jaybird.org.uk for details of commissioning opportunities.

This new project will be managed by Julia Bird of Jaybird Live Literature; and Bea Colley, Participation Producer at Southbank Centre and one of the organisers of Poetry Parnassus in 2012. 

The deadline for recommendations is 18th February. For details of how to recommend, visit www.jaybird.org.uk

Please note that this is a funding-dependent project and that no commissions will be made until funding is confirmed.

* 32 boroughs, plus the City of London