52 - the books!

"Write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going." The 52 project began on New Year's Day 2014. It was a year-long experiment in using new media intelligently to raise the game of British poets. Thousands of people wrote from the weekly prompts on our blog www.fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com. 540 people joined a closed Facebook group to discuss and refine their poems. The reach of the project was global. 69,000 site visits and tens of thousands of poems later we have won prizes, been widely published and over-running the best poetry publications in the UK and elsewhere. Now we step offline and into the real world, with two hard copy books. For £10 you can read an anthology bringing together 52 of the very best poems from this starry group. Donate more than that, and you're helping to make our weekly writing prompts into a chunky workbook, for release in late 2015. The workbook will include all the prompts from British poet Jo Bell, the begetter of 52 - and (if they're willing) from guest poets including David Morley, Philip Gross and Kate Noakes. We want this book to thrive so that anyone can start to write a poem a week, with lively and well-informed guidance and great poems to illustrate each task. Your first £10 goes directly to the cost of producing the smaller book and sending it to you (the £10 donation has slipped to the bottom of the list, right). Any further donation makes possible the larger workbook, with its hefty fees for reproducing poems (see the video) and payment for the people who chase them up.Rewards include a copy of the anthology for everyone who gives, plus mystery books delivered to your door, and even (for the truly generous donor) a one-to-one tutorial with the doyenne of 52!