The Magical World of Objects: Poetry & Things
Object brilliance; making poetry through the portal of thinginess.
From the bedside clock in the morning, to the kettle, to the stationery on an office desk, so much of life is built around our interactions with things.
In this course, we’ll aim to get this rich part of life, with all its emotional potential, into poems. Things can be a rich way of writing about people – everyone has their sacred objects, the things that conjure the person. This may be a grandfather’s coat, a mother’s lipstick. Or, reaching back further and wider, we might write about Elizabeth Bishop’s pen, or Torvill and Dean’s ice skates. Objects can be a great route into monologue – what could a table or a pair of glasses or a diary say, if it could speak, and what if it were connected to some historical figure of note, what would it witness? Objects, too, can witch us back to our personal pasts – a train set or a soft toy from childhood, a lanyard from a job we left five years ago, a present from someone we once loved – can offer a way for a poem to focus really rich emotional content.
Whatever happens, happens in a world surrounded by books and keyrings, ashtrays, and curtains and in this course. we’ll explore the rich potential of looking at the world from this angle, allowing us to step into the huge things that poems themselves do, and are.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 7 May 2026. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
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: @alexeydemidov
About Jonathan Edwards 
View Profile
Jonathan Edwards’s first collection of poems, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2019. He received the Troubadour Prize in 2022. Jonathan has read his poems on BBC radio and television, recorded them for the Poetry Archive, and led workshops in schools, universities and prisons. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales, and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Cardiff University.
"Discovering new worlds, new ways of seeing and new ways of being."
Determination & Necessity: Writing Poetic Urgency
Retropoetics: Four Billion Years of Inspiration
The Ocean is not a Metaphor – Decolonising the Sea