Writers' & Poets' Attachments

Thanks to the UK Lottery funding from the Arts Council, the trAce Online Writing Centre was able to offer a limited number of attachments for literary practitioners, both in person at the trAce offices, or online.

We are sorry that we are no longer able to offer these attachments for free.

Writers previously working on attachment with trAce have learned new skills and become confident online writers.

To read about their experiences visit their Writers' Journals

The Wired Poets

Poetry Places

The Poetry Society selected trAce in 1999 as one of a number of Poetry Places. It was the only virtual site: other Poetry Places included Ladbroke Square in London; the oceanic mid-Atlantic Ridge; and the countries of Columbia and Catalonia.

As a Poetry Place, trAce established the Wired Poets project in which poets were teamed up with a mentor who worked with them online for three months and helped them to extend and develop their internet skills.

Poet Catherine Byron, whose Poetry Place is the Vale of the River Tas, South Norfolk, was also working with trAce to develop a web-based presentation of her piece. Her poem The Renderers was also a collaboration with the painter Eileen Coxon.

All of the poets in this scheme kept online journals and their learning progress can be followed here alongside that of other writers working with trAce.

The Wired Poets and their mentors were:
Martin Glynn: Mentor - Leonie Winson
Bill Herbert: Mentor - Andy Oldfield
Elizabeth James: Mentor - Simon Mills

trAce offered the Wired Poets:

• Free one-to-one support and mentoring, via email, for 12 weeks
• £200 cash to help with internet access costs

• Keep an online journal of the progress of learning during the period of the attachment (we trained them how to do this)
• Attend an Evaluation Day, when all of the poets and their mentors met up to evaluate the experience

Aims
The scheme aims to increase the level of internet awareness amongst British poets by working on a one-to-one basis with selected writers interested in developing their net skills.

How it worked
Each poet was teamed with a mentor who is familiar with the needs and interests of writers working on the internet. Partnerships were tailored to fit the poet's requirements, so that specific areas of interest could be catered for. Training and support was by individual arrangement, but was intended to focus on topics like:

• Building a website
• Creating hypertext
• Collaborative writing
• Writing in MOOs and other text-based virtual worlds
• Using specific software packages
• Exploring cyberculture
• General techniques