Blog
How to: Taking Criticism Well
Expert Poetry Tutor Natalie Whittaker’s guide on receiving criticism constructively!
Natalie Whittaker
‘Whose Story is it Anyway?’ Exploring Unreliable Narration with Elspeth Wilson
Expert Poetry Tutor Elspeth Wilson discusses narration and masking in your poetry
Elspeth Wilson
How to: Poetry Writing Tips for Beginners
Expert Poetry Tutor Dr Becky Varley-Winter offers priceless pointers for new poets!
Becky Varley-Winter
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Charlotte Shevchenko Knight on ‘Food for the Dead’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2024 ’How I Did It’ series. This year we asked poets shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind one of the poems from their chosen collection. Here’s Charlotte Shevchenko Knight on what inspired her to write the poem ‘life & no escape’ in Food for…
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Marjorie Lotfi on ‘The Wrong Person to Ask’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2024 ’How I Did It’ series. This year we asked poets shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind one of the poems from their chosen collection. Here’s Marjorie Lotfi on what inspired her to write the poem ‘Picture of Girl and Small Boy’ in…
Marjorie Lotfi
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Jasmine Cooray on ‘Inheritance’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2024 ’How I Did It’ series. This year we asked poets shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind one of the poems from their chosen collection. Here’s Jasmine Cooray on what inspired her to write the poem ‘The Well’ in Inheritance. Early Drafts Initially…
Jasmine Cooray
How I Did It: Forward Prizes – Kelly Michels on ‘American Anthem’
Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2024 ’How I Did It’ series. This year we asked poets shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind one of the poems from their chosen collection. Here’s Kelly Michels on what inspired her to write the poem ‘Hurricane Season in Virginia Beach’ from American…
Kelly Michels
How to: Feedback, Originality & Ownership in Poetry Workshops
Expert Poetry Tutor Natasha Hakimi Zapata unpacks the poetry workshop.
Natasha Hakimi Zapata
Open Call: Poetry School Commission – The Verve Performance Lecture
Poetry School are searching for an established/mid-career poet to create a new Performance Lecture at Verve Poetry Festival in Birmingham in February 2025. The featured poet will work with Poetry School to create a new Performance Lecture – a vibrant, innovative, cutting-edge, and thought-provoking piece of teaching-as-performance, fusing academic discourse with poetry and spoken word…
Andrew Parkes (Poetry School)
Ben, is that you? Sim Pereira-Madder reviews ‘The Lights’ by Ben Lerner
Finding Ben Lerner in his finest collection yet
Sim Pereira-Madder
A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Digital Pamphlet
Image credit: @artistseyes Earlier this year, we ran the course A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Innovative Poetry in the 21st Century, with visual poet, text artist, and curator, Michał Kamil Piotrowski. This video-based course explored different forms and techniques in 21st-century innovative poetry as inspiration for new experimental writing. Michał has now curated a digital pamphlet of…
Beth Evans (Poetry School)
‘Street Sauntering’ by Suzannah V. Evans — a blog on Flâneur-ing About: The Poetry of Streets
Suzannah V. Evans explains how her new course: ‘Flâneur-ing About: The Poetry of Streets‘ will help you write poetry as you meander through cities. I have an urge to begin this blog mid-sentence, perhaps with the word ‘So’ or ‘Alors’, its French equivalent, because then I could imagine the sentence appearing suddenly out from behind…
SuzannahVE
‘Tender Towards Innocence’ by Carmen Bugan: a blog on Innocence in a Troubled World
Carmen Bugan explains how her new course: ‘A Quest for Innocence in a Troubled World‘ will help you write poetry that faces up to this worrisome time. I borrowed the title of this piece from Seamus Heaney, who has said about Czeslaw Milosz: Tender towards innocence, tough-minded when faced with brutality and injustice, Milosz could…
Carmen Bugan
What Is Revolutionary Poetics? by Mischa Foster Poole
Here is Mischa Foster Poole talking about his course Revolutionary Poetics: Writing Against the Grain; Alternate art; busting open the poem to embrace new and experimental forms. (5) This is because the tools that we have to hand are provided by the hegemonic ideology, the mode of production that seeks to ideologically reproduce itself through the…
Mischa Foster Poole
‘He Do The Police In Different Voices’ by Stephen Komarnyckyj: a blog on Alternative Histories
Stephen Komarnyckyj explains how his new course: Writing Alternative Poetic Histories will help you write poetry that faces up to this difficult moment in history I began to think about the role of poetry during what might be a global war during a Skype call with my cousin in 2022. He was in his cellar…
Steve Komarnyckyj
What Is Poetic Theft? with Louis Glazzard
Here is Louis Glazzard talking about his course Poetic Theft: From Inspiration to Transformation; A transformative workshop series about harnessing your inspirations to expand your writing. In Pursuit of Originality… Everything I’ve ever created has been inspired by something. Well, almost everything. When I first started writing I was obsessed with being original. In fact,…
Louis Glazzard
Wallpaper: Poems & Houses with Laura Scott
Here’s Laura Scott on her upcoming course, Poems & Houses; House & home; poetics of our storied buildings. My house and the ghost of a doorway In my house there’s the ghost of a doorway. I can’t remember when I first noticed it, but I do remember the gentle shock of running my hand over…
Laura Scott
Science & Poetry: The Laboratory of Verse! with Mario Petrucci
Here’s Mario Petrucci on his upcoming course, Science & Poetry: The Laboratory of Verse; Fissile material; experiment with scientific stanzas and supercharge your poetic skills. Science as a metaphor As someone versed in quantum physics, I’m fascinated by metaphor, the way everything (as in the quantum world) can become everything else. That’s the engine-room of my…
Mario Petrucci
Review Essay – Half Other by Peter Wallis
Nicola Healey reads the new poetry collection by Peter Wallis: Half Other, ‘a reminder of the significance of lateral relations in our lives’ whole’. ‘I was not born alone’: Twinhood and Illness Peter Wallis’s first full collection, Half Other, takes inspiration from his life as a twin, focusing on the lengthy ill health and hospital…
Nicola Healey
New Poets Collective – Quick Course Guide
In addition to our Summer programme this year, we are running a series of exciting courses tutored by fresh voices from The New Poets Collective. Have a look at the below quick guide to this fantastic line up and make sure you book your place quickly to avoid disappointment! In-Person Courses Poems as Constellations with…
Poetry School
Dear Rwanda: Creating a Poetry Souvenir
Here’s Isy Mead on her upcoming course, Poetry Souvenirs, keepsakes from over there; capturing the foreign without the fake. Rwanda, or ‘The Land of a Thousand Hills’, has a beauty beyond imagining. It is characterised by ubiquitous hillside terraces and spreading banana groves, by stunning, bright-green tea-fields to the south, and green and gold safari…
Isabella Mead
Wilder Swimming – Blog by Penny Boxall on ‘Tales from the Wetlands’
A blog by Penny Boxall on her upcoming course ‘Tales from the Wetlands Studio’ The first time I went to Estonia, I was surprised at the extent to which tales and folklore are woven into the landscape there. Friends told me you must not sit on the sandy beach until the first thunderstorm of the…
Penny Boxall
The Freedom of Writing
Michal Kamil Piotrowski on his course: ‘A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Innovative Poetry in the 21st Century’ Hello! In this post I will write a bit about experimental poetry. But first – what makes poetry experimental or innovative? In my opinion, the most important aspect is that, unlike traditional poetry, it concentrates on the future, it…
Michał Kamil Piotrowski
Rebecca Levi on ‘The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)’: Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets
Here’s Rebecca Levi on her upcoming course, ‘The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)’: Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets‘ December, 2018. Santiago, Chile. My friend’s kitchen. It was an old house with an inner courtyard, home to three, sometimes five women, plus a cat (female, obviously). A soft house, as if…
Rebecca Levi
Identity Poetics: A Century of Englishness
Christopher Madden reads the latest anthology edited by John Greening and Kevin Gardner, and the new poetry collection by Aaron Kent. Contraflow: Lines of Englishness 1922-2022, Ed. John Greening & Kevin Gardner Every anthology poses two fundamental questions: ‘Why this?’, and ‘Why now?’ For John Greening and Kevin Gardner, the editors of Contraflow: Lines of…
Christopher Madden