Barbara Canham Turner Lecture

The Barbara Canham Turner Lecture:

‘It’s a long way from there to here’

Dr Julie Blake

Dr Julie Blake, MBE, University of Hull alumnus, is co-founder of the charity, Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition for schools and colleges, which endeavours to make poetry engaging and accessible for children and young people. Julie’s lecture will focus on her education and career journey: “If you had told me at pretty much any point in my life that I would now be leading a national transformation of the way young people encounter poetry at school, in the interests of joyful learning, I would have been mystified to say the least. I almost didn’t stay on at school at 16, almost didn’t take A Level English Literature, almost didn’t go to University, almost dropped out of University, tried quite hard not to become an English teacher, accidentally fell out of English teaching and here I am. Yet, when I look back, there were always invisible threads that somehow enabled me to weave this life in poetry. I’ll be talking about how I got from there to here”.

Julie graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Hull in 1988 and received a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to Education in King Charles III’s New Year’s Honours List in 2024. She co-founded Poetry by Heart in 2012 with the then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. In 2019 Julie was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge and she is currently a Visiting Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University.