Into the Gaps: Folklore as a Vehicle for Poetry

Once upon a poem, making your own mythologies poetic as folk.

Folklore winks at history and vanishes into myth, re-appears as fairytale; it’s hearsay, legend, tall tale and you never guess what my grandad used to say. Now, more so than ever, folklore is being dug up and spitshined, re-mixed and retold, spun into folk horror, fantasy, retelling and poem. Over the course of five fortnightly sessions Kym Deyn will guide you into the unreal-world of folklore, finding it, exploring it and using it as the basis for poems and sequences.

There’s a reason that telling a tale can be called spinning a yarn. Each session takes for its name one part of the weaving process:

In ‘Woolgathering’ we will look at the hazy divides between folklore, myth and legend, how to find and use folkloric tales, writing poetry from research, and how different writers approach the same folkloric figures.
In ‘Willowing’ we shake those tales around and see what falls out. We’ll dive into folkloric motifs, and into sparser tales that raise more questions than answers. We’ll look to answer (some of) these questions, finding moments of fascination and enchantment.
In ‘Spinning’ we approach narrative, borrowing tips and tricks from prose writers and the joys of folkloric poetic sequences.
In ‘Warping’ we’ll change and challenge folklore with our own weird and nasty business, put it up against modern life, make tellings and re-tellings vie against one another and explore how folklore figures in political movements.
In ‘Weaving’ we’ll put everything together, with a focus on creating character through poetic voice and digging deep into that fine line between the tale and its teller.

You will learn to ‘write into the gaps’ of folklore, not simply reworking what’s there, but embellishing and building. We will dive into modern retellings of all kinds, taking inspiration from novelists like Zoe Gilbert, as well as poets such as Jacob Polley and Fiona Benson. This course offers an overview of this rich tradition and gives you the tools you need to develop your own folkloric poems.

5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 2 October 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: @barnabas-davoti

About Kym Deyn View Profile

Kym Deyn is a writer and editor. Their debut collection folkish was published by Nine Arches in 2026 and was made a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Their pamphlets include Dionysia published by Verve Poetry Press, and Unfurl, a collaborative fiction experiment. They have been widely published in anthologies and journals for their poetry and prose, including Oxford Poetry, 14 Poems, and Strange Horizons, and are the recipient of a Jerwood Fellowship from New Writing North. They run The Braag CIC, a poetry and speculative fiction press.

"Every course I have done with the Poetry School has led me to discover new poets both in the assignments and the poetry of the other people on the course. I have been inspired to write new poetry and am in the process of getting some published. Overall a great experience."

- Spring 2026 Survey Response

The Poetry School