Writing Kinships & Emotional Landscapes

Kinships can shape us as people and the emotional landscapes in which we live; join as we explore those rich relationships and notions of belonging in your writing.

Who or what kind of natural and chosen kinships do you count on or feel shaped by? As a writer, how do you understand and capture your emotional ties through poetry – be it your connections with family, siblings, friends, teachers or peers – which may be nourishing, challenging or complicated, and transform your consciousness?

In this generative workshop, we will explore how to excavate these emotions on the page, drawing from poems by Jess Traynor, Zeina Hashem Beck, Warsan Shire, Natalie Linh Bolderston and more, works that crystallise the anchoring roots and impact of our kinships, challenging our notion of empathy, closeness, and the need for belonging, and the need to find a coherent voice and poetic form to render the richness and fluidity of such emotional landscapes.

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, please visit our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image credit: @atccommphoto

About Jennifer Wong View Profile

Jennifer Wong studied English at Oxford and has a PhD in creative writing from Oxford Brookes University. She has held residencies and taught creative writing at universities. She will be a visiting lecturer for the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong in 2026. She is the author of several books including Letters Home (Nine Arches Press), Time Difference (Verve), and Light Year (Nine Arches Press) will be forthcoming in February 2026. She is also an editor of a new Rebecca Swift Foundation women’s poetry anthology forthcoming in 2026.

"Poetry School has opened my eyes to what writing real poetry is about, has definitely raised my standards and delighted my heart."

– Summer 2025 survey response

The Poetry School