‘The Doors of Perception’: Pop Culture & Poetry
Explore new approaches in your writing through the lens of pop culture!
We are always looking for ways to connect to others, and to ourselves. For many, that’s through story, or writing. What connects us to story is our connection to the self. Everything is layered in story: history, myth, poetry, television, movies, and theatre. Pop culture has long been a source of inspiration for poets – it’s a means of opening a door into a room you weren’t previously able to access; a space where you can align yourself with another’s story. That’s where everything begins. What better way to connect with your readers, than taking inspiration from the popular culture surrounding us?
Whether it’s epic fantasies like Game of Thrones, explosive character dramas from the DC or Marvel universes, or the carefully-constructed personae of pop stars like Tina Turner and Beyonce, popular culture is a means to see ourselves reflected and refracted, and can inspire new ways of expressing and structuring our personal stories. This course will use pop culture to inspire your poems and your thinking, opening doors to new spaces, places, and approaches you may not have been able to see your way into before.
In this course, we’ll sidestep false dichotomies of “high” and “low” art to see that poems and pop culture are frequently inspired by the same everyday sources, while timeless themes, characters, relationships, visual languages, and world building techniques appear in both artforms. We’ll read from poets including Ada Limon, Tiana Clark, Eve Ewing, Dorianne Laux, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, January Gill O’Neil, Melissa Fite Johnson, Hanif Abdurraqib, Khadijah Queen, and Diane Seuss. Come join us for an exploration of pop culture to lift you into brighter days!
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 22 January 2025. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image credit:@girlwithredhat
About Leah Umansky 
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Leah Umansky is an educator, curator, collagist, and writer in New York City. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Of Tyrant, (Word Works Books, 2024) and two chapbooks, Straight Away the Emptied World and the Mad Men-inspired Don Dreams and I Dream. Umansky earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work can be found in The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, USA Today, POETRY, and American Poetry Review. She has taught workshops to writers of all ages in such places as The Poetry School (UK), Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Visible Ink Program. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com, @lady_bronte on Twitter, or @leah.umansky on IG.
"Poetry School brings the best tutors and keen students together and it enables us to improve, learn and talk about our passion for this creative art."
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