‘The Road Not Taken’: Reading & Writing Robert Frost
Listen closely to language and explore the effects of poetry's metrical engine in your own work.
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.’ – Robert Frost
John F Kennedy famously said that Robert Frost, ‘bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse’. From his mastery of traditional verse forms and metrics, to depictions of rural New England, to his command of American colloquial speech, arguably no poet is more essential to an understanding of American poetry than Robert Frost.
In this course we will closely examine several of Frost’s poems, listen to him read his own work, and gather insights from his interviews and biography. We’ll look at Frost’s use of trimeter, iambic pentameter, and blank verse, consider his unmistakable tone and use of the dramatic monologue, and consider themes such as duplicity, isolation, nature, and existential questioning, and then try our hand and our own poems.
This course is for anyone interested in investigating Frost more deeply and learning from one of the true masters.
5 fortnightly Zoom sessions on Thursdays, 7–9pm (BST), starts 8 Oct 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 some further information on how our courses function.
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About Jodie Hollander 
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Jodie Hollander’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, Poetry, PN Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry London, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Best Australian Poems of 2011, and The Best Australian Poems of 2015. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was published with Liverpool University Press & Oxford University Press. Her second collection, Nocturne, was also published with Liverpool & Oxford University Press in 2023 and was longlisted for the Laurel Prize in nature writing. Hollander is the recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship in South Africa. She is also the originator of ‘Poetry in the Parks,’ in conjunction with several National Parks and Monuments in the US. In 2024 and 2026, Hollander was the first poet in residence for the Elmet Trust in the Calder Valley, where she wrote and taught out of the childhood home of Ted Hughes. In September of 2025, she was the visiting poet at Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
"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."
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