Jo Shapcott is one of Britain's leading poets. Her awards are too numerous to mention, but her most notable recent success has been winning the Costa Prize in 2010. We are delighted to welcome her as our National Poetry Day poet in residence for 2011. Jo sent us this blog on the eve of National Poetry Day - we are now able to illustrate it with some snaps from the day itself. Read her specially commissioned poem for National Poetry Day here.  Her day started with a 6:50am appearance on the Today programme... and then?

The lead up to National Poetry Day started for me on Monday at Poet in the City’s event on Czeslaw Milosz with sizzling contributions from Fiona Sampson and David Constantine, in particular.  Milosz is a great reminder of how important poetry can be, should be, a serious counterpoint to the white noise of everyday.  Poems can be playful too, of course, and in dark times it’s cheering that the theme of this year’s National Poetry Day is games. On the day itself, it’s up early for me (probably not so playful at 6.30am) when I’ll jump out of bed for another Poet in the City event, their legendary poetry breakfast, this year with Patience Agbabi.  I happen to be in London all day – but there are loads of events all over the country.

From there it’s a quick sprint to a school in Southwark, to talk poetry with the students, and to hear about Winning Words, the Forward Foundation’s initiative to bring poetry back to the Olympics: after all, it was there for the Ancient Greeks, who prized intellectual activity as much as sport.  Games are more than sport, of course: I’ve always responded strongly to the ludic in poetry, the sheer blag of the surreal, the postmodern poke in the eye.  I’m a gamer as well as a poet: in the early 2000s, the days of the heavily pixilated Lara Croft, I wrote, together with Don Paterson, a weekly column on computer games. 

Next stop for me on National Poetry Day is the South Bank Centre, for the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award.  This is a long-standing Poetry Society competition which always pulls out poems which stop me in my tracks.  One of this year’s judges, Glyn Maxwell, put it beautifully:  ‘The best young poets remind me how to have no fear, how to make awe seem cool, how to know nothing again, like the best poets do.’

I’ll stay at the South Bank Centre the rest of the day for more games at National Poetry Day live, and to hear poets like Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage and Imtiaz Dharker. The one thing I can guarantee I won't do on NPD?  Write a poem . . .

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