Technique 3.0 [How to Discover or Disown It]

What training do you do to sustain and maintain yourself as a poet? Explore the essential work of writerly ‘technique’, in an all new edition of this ever-popular course.

* This course will take place on video-conferencing platform ZOOM *

‘Technique – our eyes don’t fill with wonder when you speak’ – ‘Technique’, Prefab Sprout

With this course you will develop, test, alter, discuss or discover your own poetic ‘technique’. Technique, in this instance, being seen as different from ‘form’ but not utterly un-connected. That is, everything else about ‘being a poet’. We might ask, as we might ask an athlete or musician – what training or practice do you do to sustain yourself as a poet? How do you plot your training and programme? How do you fit that into your life? And what makes your training / practice different from everyone else? What goes on ‘behind-the-scenes’ of your poems?

For example, many poets find it difficult in our busy 24-hour culture to get any writing done at all. Can you harnass the rythmns and the ‘image-text-&-sound’ of this frantic world to your writing? How are you affected by the repetition we all experience? How do you develop the inklings and rustlings of the inner-self and mind, which might be the ‘pre-matter’ of a potential poem? Do you live and act ‘like a poet?’. How/when do you write your poetry? In notebooks, on laptops, dozens of crumpled notes and the backs of receipts? Forwards, backwards, piece-meal. Early morning, late at night, in snatches? How are you affected by the repetition we all experience? Are you prolific? Does it come slowly? How do you change that?

Does your actual self/life influence your writing or is it more distanced? Do you use ‘found texts’, over-writing, procedures or do ‘versions’ to alter your natural voice? Can you harnass and employ AI? Do you mix different types of writing in one poem? Do you just wait for ‘inspiration’? Or is there a way to climb back up to the previous originating point of your most inspired work and ‘stay there’?

What are your current tendencies in your work – in lineation or formal/informal laying out of the poem, over-adherence to particular traits and tropes? Or not enough? What about influences? Helpful or harmful? Where do you see/position yourself, and operate within, the ‘poetry firmament’ and how, therefore, do you define your practice? And if we are going to mention form, are the forms you tend to write in sympathy with your thought? Do they fit with the content or what you’re trying to say? What might be your particular ‘unresolvable dilemma’ that might be ‘the gift that keeps on giving’?

The group will share and compare each others’ experiences. This is largely a practical course, with exercises, discussion, ‘homework’, presenting and critiquing your work, alongside the examination of sample poems; we will also look at texts – critical and otherwise – that give us potential new techniques, and therefore new pathways, into our own writing.

10 weekly Zoom sessions on Thursdays, 7–9pm (BST), starts 14 May 2026.

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 further information on how our courses function.

Image credit: Suzy Hazelwood

About Matthew Caley View Profile

Matthew Caley’s 7th collection, To Abandon Wizardry, is published by Bloodaxe in November 2023. Since his debut, Thirst [Slow Dancer, 1999] was nominated for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, his work has been widely anthologised and appeared in many magazines, websites and journals. He has given many readings both here and abroad.

In addition to being a regular tutor/mentor for The Poetry School in London, he has recently held Poetry/Creative Writing posts at St Andrews University [twice], at The University of Winchester, and Royal Holloway University London. He gave the StAnza 2020 Lecture in March. Trawl, a video-piece made in collaboration with Steve Smart and Alex South and commissioned by StAnza 2020, was shown there and at poem-film Festivals in Berlin and Texas. He published a pamphlet of loose versions of 19th/20th Century French poets Prophecy is Easy, with Blueprint Press, in 2020. He is a member of the scientific and organising committee for the International Semiotics and Visual Communication conference – Cyprus University of Technology and has three times given key-note talks there.

He previously taught in Art & Design for many years, collaborated with artist and musicians, co-edited and wrote for a book on the pop song in cinema, and before that was involved in design for the arts and music industries, co-designing, amongst other things, the packaging for Prefab Sprout’s debut LP Swoon.

‘Chief among British poets Caley takes seriously the vision of synesthetic abundance laid out in Mallarme’s essay ‘Crisis and Verse’…[ ] Caley is a great poet of transposition and vibration… [ ] Caley at his very best, an offhand philosopher and bard of the demi-monde, gently blowing our minds.’ – Dai George POETRY WALES

"Participating in Poetry school courses, ensures that I make time to write and revise my own poems; reading the work of others closely enough to provide thoughtful feedback strengthens my understanding and appreciation of the work. The tutors are engaging and knowledgeable."

– Autumn 2025 Survey Response