The Poetry of Picture Books

Push your poetic skills, find the sparks behind stories, and explore the harmony between words and pictures when writing for children.

From T.S. Eliot to Naomi Shihab Nye, poets have always loved the freedom of writing for children and the picture book form offers endless opportunity for poetic play. So how can we use and develop our poetic skills to explore picture book writing? During this one-day course we’ll look at a variety of poetic techniques such as alliteration, repetition, imagery, rhyme, and metaphor, to see how they transfer to picture books. Throughout the day, there’ll also be a chance to respond to writing prompts and dive into your imagination to find the sparks that give life to stories.

Poems and picture book have many things in common, particularly a sense of structure and rhythm, but picture books are not simply illustrated poems. We’ll look at the all important page turn, and we’ll try to work out how writers find that magical harmony between words and pictures. There’ll be discussion and questions along the way, and we’ll also spend a little time thinking about how a finished text becomes a book.

1 x full day session, running 11am–5pm (BST), on 25 Oct 2025. This course will take place at The Bindery, 51 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8HN.

Concessions & Accessibility

To apply for a concession 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].

What to Expect

Please check the left hand side of this page for information on how this course works in practice, under the heading ‘Course Style’. If you’re unsure as to what any of the terms there mean, or if this course is a good fit for you, then please take a look at our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image Credit: @Derick McKinney

About Kathryn Simmonds View Profile

Kathryn Simmonds’s third collection, Scenes from Life on Earth, is published by Salt. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Poetry, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Poetry Review and The Irish Times and, along with her short stories, have been broadcast on BBC radio. Her first picture book, Be my Sunflower is published by Walker Books. She lives in Norwich with her family and has run a number of courses for The Poetry School.

"Participating in these courses has given me more confidence to continue to write and to experiment with different ways of constructing a poem."

- Spring 2025 Survey Response