Face-to-Face Courses

Write more poems

Face-to-face teaching has been at the core of our educational programme since 1997. Running three terms a year both in our London classrooms and regional centres across the UK, our face-to-face courses and workshops have helped countless poets find encouragement for their work and allowed their poetry to flourish.

On our face-to-face courses, a group of students meet on a regular basis with their tutor to read their own work, discuss poetry, and – session by session – develop new skills and confidence as poet. We offer a breadth of approach to learning poetry, with some courses focusing on form and technique, whilst others look to provide inspiration for generating new writing or offer close readings of certain poets or movements.

The longest courses we offer stretch over three terms (general, covering a wide variety of skills and subjects) and the shortest courses we offer are one-day workshops (specific, looking at specialist subjects and techniques).

All our Face-to-Face Courses

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Tutor: Leah Umansky

Poetry Surgery with Leah Umansky

In-depth 1-2-1 discussion on your poetry with Leah Umansky

Start Date: July 1, 2020
End Date: July 1, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face, Online • Location: Poetry School, London

Sold Out!

Tutor: Liz Berry

Try a Little Tenderness: Masterclass

If we must first write from the heart in order to write poems for the heart, how do we begin this tender work?

Start Date: September 12, 2020 10.30am
End Date: September 12, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

£95.00 *

Tutor: Liz Berry

Transformative Poetry

Transform yourself and the world around you through the power of poetry.

Start Date: September 26, 2020 12pm
End Date: December 5, 2020 ( 71 Days )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: The Pen Museum, Birmingham

£75.00 *

Tutor: Meena Kandasamy

Writing Love in a Second Language

Explore the effects of living, and writing, between multiple languages.

Start Date: September 26, 2020 10.30am-4.30pm
End Date: October 17, 2020 ( 22 Days )
Type: Face-to-Face, Online

£100.00 *

Tutor: Ben See and Guest Tutors

Where Words Meet Music

Put a spring in your step with this brand new 6-week course exploring the relationship between words and music.

Start Date: September 29, 2020 7–9.30pm
End Date: November 3, 2020 ( 36 Days )
Type: Events, Face-to-Face • Location:

’The Ladder is always There’ – What makes a Feminist Poem?

£95.00 *

Tutor: Jacqueline Saphra

’The Ladder is always There’ – What makes a Feminist Poem?

Spend some time reading and discussing a huge range of feminist poetry. Expect to be surprised, infuriated, and inspired.

Start Date: October 1, 2020 6.45pm
End Date: November 26, 2020 ( 57 Days )
Type: Face-to-Face, Online • Location: Poetry School, London

£95.00 *

Tutor: Jennie Osborne

Voices of the Sea

Join us on a voyage into the blue as we dive to the Marianas Trench, spot white whales, and attempt to clean up the Pacific trash vortex.

Start Date: October 6, 2020 7pm
End Date: December 1, 2020 ( 57 Days )
Type: Face-to-Face, Online

‘The Gaps Between the Stories’: White Space, Redaction, & Erasure

£75.00 *

Tutor: Tamar Yoseloff

‘The Gaps Between the Stories’: White Space, Redaction, & Erasure

Explore visual techniques and play with omissions, erasure, and negative space to expand your poetic practice.

Start Date: October 17, 2020 10.30am-4.30pm
End Date: October 17, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

£150.00 *

Tutor: Hannah Lowe

X-Lit: Ways into Memoir

An intensive weekend exploring life writing with acclaimed poet and memoirist Hannah Lowe.

Start Date: November 7, 2020 10.30am
End Date: November 8, 2020 ( 2 Days )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

Window, Mirror, Knife, Disaster, & Reinvention: Poetry of Glass

£75.00 *

Tutor: Judy Brown

Window, Mirror, Knife, Disaster, & Reinvention: Poetry of Glass

Wipe off your monocle, have your glass armonica tuned, move the tomatoes into the greenhouse, and smash the glass ceiling with Judy Brown.

Start Date: November 14, 2020 10.30am
End Date: November 14, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

£75.00 *

Tutor: Ali Lewis

Stealing, Copying, & Arguing

Get light-fingered and argumentative with other artists to take your own writing to new places.

Start Date: November 21, 2020 10.30am-4.30pm
End Date: November 21, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

Euphony: Poetic Sound & the Subconscious

£75.00 *

Tutor: Martha Sprackland

Euphony: Poetic Sound & the Subconscious

Listen to your poems’ concerto of sounds as a way to explore their subconscious drives.

Start Date: November 28, 2020 10.30am-4.30pm
End Date: November 28, 2020 ( 1 Day )
Type: Face-to-Face • Location: Poetry School, London

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HOW FACE-TO-FACE WORKS

Tutor and students sit round a large table for a typical Poetry School course session or workshop and the meetings are friendly and relatively informal.

In each session, you might be given Exercises (specific writing tasks to inspire your own poems or ideas) or Feedback (comments on your work by tutors and / or other students); you might be Reading (close attention to published poems, looking for examples of technique, style, theme or form), Writing (working towards creating new poems throughout the duration of the course or workshop) or a combination of all these. Some courses will include tasks for you to complete at home.

Our face to face courses are designed to suit all levels of experience: some activities are open to all, and others are structured with beginner, intermediate or advanced poets specifically in mind. Similarly, our activities aim to offer a breadth of approach to learning poetry, with some focusing on form and technique, whilst others look to provide inspiration for your writing.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

Content will vary course to course, but on all our face-to-face courses you can expect the following:

reading, writing and thinking about poetry in different ways
exposure to new writers, voices, forms and styles
the confidence to write more and devote more time to writing
generating new work
discovery of new areas and subjects for research
better understanding of how to make choices (length, theme, tone, etc)
enhanced critical skills
practical advice on further development

Many of our teaching poets are also performers, makers and artists, as well as teachers, and like to teach more than just poetry in their classes. One of the great advantages of face-to-face teaching is that is doesn’t always have to happen in a classroom. From time to time, we also like to run workshops where as well as writing poems, you might be going on a walking tour, exploring a priceless archive, painting pictures, eating exotic foods, making theatre props or even swimming in the wild.

We pride ourselves on the standard of our teaching and the poetry produced on every one of our courses. Many of our students have gone on to successfully submit their course work for publication in magazines and journals, and had success in competitions. But don’t take it from us: read some of our many student testimonials.

COURSE FORMATS

Generally speaking we offer 3 main types of face-to-face course:

LONG COURSES are more than 10 weeks and run over several terms. All our long courses start in the Autumn, but can be joined mid-way (subject to availability). Long courses are quite general and will encompass a large variety of ideas and techniques suitable for particular skill levels.

SHORT COURSES are commonly 10 weeks or less, once a term, with regular sessions running weekly or fortnightly. Short courses tend to focus on a particular subject, theme, form or technical aspect of poetry, often open to all levels.

WORKSHOPS are weekend, one or half day sessions. One day workshops are intensive writing and learning experiences that last 5 hours (with an additional 1 hour lunch break).

If you’re unsure which class, level, or style of course might be best for you, you can contact our administration team on [email protected] for help with any course queries you might have.

FAQ

The activity I want is fully booked – what can I do?

Lost property?

Lost property will be kept in the office at 81 Lambeth Walk. Please call or email us if you believe you have left something in the classrooms.

What should I do if I can’t make a class session?

What is your refunds policy?

If you cannot attend a course a full refund will be made as long as cancellation is received four weeks before the course start date. After this period, we are only able to give you a refund if the course has sold out and we are able to fill your place. Refunds cannot be given if you were unable to attend a course or did not log on to the online chats. Please read our Terms & Conditions for more information.

How do I teach for the Poetry School?

Please send us details of your publication record and teaching experience and the ideas you have for courses and workshops you'd like to teach. If your ideas for the programme are a fit for ours, we will start to make joint plans. Download this 'Teaching for the Poetry School for the First Time' hand out which might be useful.

The Poetry School

Face-to-Face Courses

Write more poems

All our Face-to-Face Courses

Poetry Surgery with Leah Umansky

Try a Little Tenderness: Masterclass

Transformative Poetry

Writing Love in a Second Language

Where Words Meet Music

’The Ladder is always There’ – What makes a Feminist Poem?

Voices of the Sea

‘The Gaps Between the Stories’: White Space, Redaction, & Erasure

X-Lit: Ways into Memoir

Window, Mirror, Knife, Disaster, & Reinvention: Poetry of Glass

Stealing, Copying, & Arguing

Euphony: Poetic Sound & the Subconscious

HOW FACE-TO-FACE WORKS

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

COURSE FORMATS

FAQ

The activity I want is fully booked – what can I do?

Lost property?

What should I do if I can’t make a class session?

What is your refunds policy?

How do I teach for the Poetry School?

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