Spark your creativity and take your first steps into the world of poetry!


Spark your creativity and take your first steps into the world of poetry!
Hone your craft, explore poetry’s inner workings, and look at techniques to help your poems achieve lift-off.
Explore strategies for launching your poems and learn how to prepare them for successful landings.
Explore a range of creative approaches to ekphrasis, with a focus on inclusive representation.
The 2020 Ginkgo Prize anthology contains all the winning and highly commended poems from the 2020 awards judged by Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage and Jade Cuttle.
The winning poets were Jane Lovell, Daniel Fraser and Emily Groves. Runners up were Nicola Healey and Sue Kindon and the AONB Best Poem of Landscape was Liz Byrne.
Click to download.
We’re delighted to announce the Poetry School MA in Writing Poetry Scholarship 2022 for an underrepresented poet. For a second year, Poetry School is offering a full fees scholarship award (£10,000) to the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry for an outstanding applicant who is currently underrepresented in the poetry world. By underrepresented poets, we…
Read MorePoetry School is proud to have partnered with tutors Steve Komarnyckyj and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, and PEN International’s Judyth Hill to publish Stanzas for Ukraine. Every fortnight we will publish a blog written by some of the most significant contemporary Ukrainian poets, who will reflect upon the more than 300 years of historical conflict their country has…
Read MoreWriting in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800, Wordsworth famously advocated poetry written in ‘the real language of men’. A couple of centuries and more on, with all of our debates about the relationship between page and stage, all of our continued discussions about poetic register, all of the critical sniffiness there can sometimes…
Read MoreGriot’s Well is a one year poetry development programme for Black and ethnically diverse poets over the age of 25. We’re excited to announce a new collaborative partnership with the brilliant Griots Well. We are offering their eight runners a free course as part of our upcoming Autumn term. The eight selected poets are part…
Read MoreOur Beginner’s course ‘Live Wires: Starting to Write’ with Becky Varley-Winter recently completed another term and Becky has put together a zine to showcase the students’ best work, which you can see extracts of below. The next iteration of this course will take place in our Summer 2022 Term (running 12 May – 14 July)….
Read MoreEkphrasis is one of those poemy words poets assume everyone knows, like villanelle, and pantoum; but my Mac doesn’t recognise it, flags it up, and takes me to Wiki – ‘an ekphrastic poem is a poem inspired or stimulated by a work of art’. I remember feeling so happy when I first discovered the word,…
Read MoreIf you are looking for a venue to facilitate your own teaching, workshops, meetings or other gatherings, the Poetry School has three flexible spaces for hire at very affordable rates. Rooms are available most weekdays and some weekends.
Situated in Docklands, the Poetry School is located in a central and convenient area for public transport and is within walking distance of several tube stations including Canada Water.