WHO WE ARE

Poetry School is a national arts organisation providing inspiring tuition and opportunities for poets and poetry audiences. We were founded in 1997 by poets Mimi Khalvati, Jane Duran and Pascale Petit. Since our earliest days, our courses and activities have encouraged poets and poetry to flourish.

With teaching centres across England, as well as online courses, development initiatives, poetry projects and the world’s biggest social network dedicated to poetry, CAMPUS, we are unique in our ability to reach and develop aspiring poets wherever they may be, both in the UK and internationally. The Poetry School is a registered charity and a proud part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisation 2018-2024.

We ‘make poetry happen’. We want to to enable and inspire you to develop your poetry from its beginnings through to an advanced level. Our programme of courses, activities, creative and professional development for adults is affordable, diverse, and open to all. This programme includes:

• An extensive programme of courses, workshops and seminars, taught by professional poets around the world.
• An accredited Master’s degree in Writing Poetry, delivered in both London and Newcastle, in collaboration with Newcastle University.
• CAMPUS: the social network for poets. CAMPUS is home to a large community of poets of all levels, as well as a treasury of free resources, essays, conversations and interactive events.
• ‘The Poet in the World’ – our projects, residencies and initiatives exploring new and exciting ways for poets to engage with audiences, and creating opportunities for them to develop outside the traditional classroom setting.

Whether online, in the classroom, on stage or out in the world, the Poetry School is the place where poetry happens.

ACCESSIBLE. We are committed to creating opportunities for poets of all levels and backgrounds to improve your craft and poetic practice, to develop your professional skills and experience, and to connect with readers. For us, excellence and inclusivity go hand in hand.

QUALITY. Our educational resources, activities, and projects are at the very highest quality and cover an extraordinarily broad range of subjects, meaning there’s something for everyone at all levels. All our educational programming is poet-led, and our courses and workshops are designed by poets, for poets.

COLLEGIATE. We believe poets develop best within a diverse, expansive, and social community of readers and writers. We hope to help foster lifelong poetry friendships as well as provide valuable teaching.

SUPPORTIVE. Positive experiences are critical to learning and development. In our classrooms, events and on CAMPUS, we create conditions to nurture a culture of constructive critical support.

INDEPENDENT. We are non-factional and operate independently of other poetry institutions and publishers (but we love to collaborate with them.)

INNOVATIVE. Though as poets we are writing in a tradition, we encourage experimentation in poetry in order to vitalise both individual writers and the art form itself. The Poetry School is not about teaching ‘poetry by numbers’.

PROGRESSIVE. We want to drive the agenda of contemporary poetry, to challenge tired ways of thinking and to find places where new conversations and collaborations can happen.

SUSTAINABLE. At the Poetry School, continuous relationships are important to us. They are vital in the creation of the transformative journeys from a writer of poems, to aspiring poet, to being a poet in the world.

Information about our financial, governance and compliance history can be found here.