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Online Courses

Learn poetry anywhere in the world

Our online programme of poetry courses and workshops makes learning poetry accessible to everyone, all from the comfort of your kitchen table. We offer online courses three terms a year and free learning activities all year round, both via CAMPUS, our social network for poets, giving you access at any time, from any place.

Year on year, we offer one of the largest programmes of online poetry courses in the world, covering a huge array of subjects and techniques, and available to you with as little as an Internet connection. Much like our face-to-face teaching, each online course is facilitated by one of our experienced tutors, who will provide quality writing assignments, reading material and personalised feedback on your poems, but in this instance, all via a virtual classroom.

Up to a fifth of all our online course students are based outside of the UK, from America and Canada to India, Germany, Singapore, Mexico, Uzbekistan and Australia. And the majority of our online courses are suitable to all levels of poets, employing a peer-to-peer model of education that draws strength from the diversity of voices from our students across the globe.

All our Online Courses

The Poetry of Survival (Online International Course)

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Tutor: Clare Shaw

The Poetry of Survival (Online International Course)

Learn how language can nourish, make sense from chaos and enable us to survive troubles and traumas.

Start Date: May 8, 2017
Type: Online • Location: The Poetry School, London

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Tutor: David Tait

Fortnightly Feedback with David Tait

Reinvigorate those discarded poems with feedback from David Tait and fellow students.

Start Date: May 8, 2017
End Date: July 14, 2017 ( 68 Days )
Type: Online

Drop the Dead Poet: Making Poetry From The News (Summer 2017)

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Tutor: Sarah Hesketh

Drop the Dead Poet: Making Poetry From The News (Summer 2017)

Perhaps now more than ever, our poetry should engage with news and global events.

Start Date: May 8, 2017
Type: Online

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Tutor: Joey Connolly

Thinking Studio

Explore how it feels to think – to hope, to notice, to change – and in so doing paint a vivid and familiar picture of how it feels to be human.

Start Date: May 8, 2017
Type: Online

Fair Field: How to Write Like a Medieval (Online International Course)

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Tutor: Tom Chivers

Fair Field: How to Write Like a Medieval (Online International Course)

Don your favourite whimple and explore dragon-slaying, courtly romance and fabliau with neo-medievalist Tom Chivers

Start Date: May 9, 2017
Type: Online

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Tutor: Melissa Lee-Houghton

The Unsent, Unanswered Letter

Investigate how the desire to address an other can unlock conversations with the self.

Start Date: May 9, 2017
Type: Online

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Tutor: Catherine Smith

Love and Lust (Summer 2017)

Be empowered to ‘make it new’ in writing about this most primal, universal force.

Start Date: May 10, 2017
Type: Online

The Zoo of the New: Writing Childhood and Family (Online International Course)

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Tutor: Victoria Kennefick

The Zoo of the New: Writing Childhood and Family (Online International Course)

The poems and prompts on this course will inspire you to revisit your child-artist and recall moments that will catalyse future creative expression

Start Date: May 10, 2017
Type: Online

Frame, Shot, Scene, Sequence: Powering Poetry Through Film

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Tutor: John Challis

Frame, Shot, Scene, Sequence: Powering Poetry Through Film

Explore what we as poets can borrow and learn from film’s often lucid, surreal yet recognizable language.

Start Date: May 15, 2017
Type: Online

The Art of Memory: Poetry of the Past and Present

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Tutor: David Clarke

The Art of Memory: Poetry of the Past and Present

Investigate how poetry can engage with memory, both individual and collective, in order to reflect on the past and produce innovative work aiming towards the future.

Start Date: May 16, 2017
Type: Online

£104.00 *

Tutor: Will Harris

Keeping Our Wits

Sharpen your wits with a look at 17th century poetry through contemporary eyes and at contemporary poetry through 17th century eyes.

Start Date: May 17, 2017
Type: Online

Bending Form: An Exploration of Possibilities

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Tutor: Shazea Quraishi

Bending Form: An Exploration of Possibilities

Take a playful approach to the possibilities of form and learn to free your writing processes.

Start Date: May 18, 2017
Type: Online

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Tutor: Adam Crothers

Ugliness Studio

An intensive studio course on bad language, bad form and bad taste

Start Date: June 5, 2017
Type: Online

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Tutor: Annie Finch

Women's Sonnets Studio

Explore how women have claimed the sonnet as a vehicle of self-expression, and write your own sonnets.

Start Date: July 3, 2017
Type: Online

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How Online Works

Online courses take place in CAMPUS, our digital platform for poets. CAMPUS is a Social Learning Network (SLN) that lives as part of The Poetry School website, so if you already have an account with us, you can access it straight away.

If you don’t currently have an account with The Poetry School, then you can register for free here.

Our online courses are structured according to regular fortnightly sessions (on average this amounts to 5 assignments over 10 weeks). Some also contain scheduled live chats, a ‘real time’, live-typed chatroom discussion between the tutor and students. Each term we offer a mixture of generative classes (writing new poems), feedback classes (honing old ones) and reading classes (learning more about poetry).

Each online course has its own dedicated private group in CAMPUS. Once you book a course you will automatically be enrolled and be able to access your course group. You will use your course group to post messages, interact with other poets, participate in live chats, submit poems and download assignments and reading lists. Everything is transcribed and kept for you in your group and you will be able to access everything – poems, messages, assignments, live chat transcripts – for as long as you need to.

We have worked hard to make CAMPUS as fuss-free and as close to face-to-face teaching as possible, with the additional benefits of convenience and access that online allows. If you are new to online learning, and unsure about whether it is suitable, please go to our IS ONLINE RIGHT FOR ME? section below.

ARE YOU AN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT?

As well as normal online programme, we also run a small selection of International Courses, which are exactly the same as our other online courses, but don’t contain any live chats or other synchronous learning elements, and are fully accessible regardless of what time zone you live in. Just look out for the ‘International Courses’ label in the course title. (Please also note that our Fortnightly Feedback, Studios and Masterclasses are also fully accessible to international poets).

What will I learn?

Each online course consists of a mixture of reading, discussion and writing exercises to stimulate thoughts, creative expression and technical craft, alongside encouragement and constructive feedback from your tutor and peers on your finished work.

Content will vary course to course, but on all our online 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 (on average 4-5 finished poems per course)
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

We pride ourselves on the standard of our teaching and the poetry produced on every one of our courses. Many of our online 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

The Poetry School offers a wide variety of online courses, and subject matter and structure varies from term to term, so please always check the course information carefully.

We have five main types of online course:

Interactive Courses consist of one assignment posted per ‘session’ every fortnight. (Most courses last for 5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks). You will be expected to post poems in response to an assignment, and then feedback on each other’s work in your CAMPUS online group forum. Each session culminates in a 2 hour live chatroom exchange with your course tutor and fellow students, where all the latest poems are examined in a free-flowing, live-typed discussion. All live chats are then transcribed and archived for students to re-read whenever they want. New assignments are posted after each live chat. Class size = 12 maximum.

Note: most our interactive courses are fully adaptable to international students and others who might have difficulty making all the live chats. To find out more information, please email online@poetryschool.com

International Courses are exactly the same as Interactive courses, but there are no live chats, making them accessible to students who live in all international time zones. All feedback and discussion on these courses is written/typed via the private group message board. Class size = 14 maximum.

Fortnightly Feedback is a good way to polish up poems-in-progress, and early draft work you are preparing for submission or preparation. Students share and leave written feedback within their CAMPUS online group forum only. There is no live chat component. These courses are suitable for UK & international students. Class size = 16 maximum.

Poetry Studios are short, intensive poetry writing courses that last 3 weeks. Unlike our standard 10 week courses, the emphasis on ‘Studios’ is more heavily skewed towards writing and getting words on the page, with a softer focus on group feedback and editing.

Masterclasses are 12 week courses with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. For advanced students only: fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no live chats and they are suitable for UK and International students.

Subject matter and level of ability for each course vary hugely from term to term.

Is Online right for me?

Online courses are open to all students but a basic level of digital literacy is essential. The Poetry School can help you with CAMPUS technical issues, but you need to be a confident user of digital platforms to take part in these classes. To find out whether an online course is right for you, please take our self-assessment quiz.

No specialist software is required – you just need a computer, tablet or mobile device and a wifi connection. All the live chats are typed/written and done in a multi-user chat room on CAMPUS, and due to the fast pace of these sessions, it is recommended you use a laptop or PC, or a tablet/smartphone with a keyboard attachment.

FAQ

Help! I’m having technical problems

Please email online@poetryschool if you’re having issues with CAMPUS or the Poetry School website. If it’s a local technical issue (i.e., with your computer, not our website) then please seek advice or help from a friend.

What happens if everyone on my course is much better than I am?

‘Better’ is very subjective. Our online courses are designed to be non-partisan, as we believe the best kind of educational experience we can offer is one where all types of student can meet and collaborate meaningfully with one another regardless of how they each self-identify (beginner, amateur, pro). There will be some poets in every group that, even though they have publishing credits, still feel very much like starters. Once you’ve got through the first session, you’ll see how useful, supportive and generous being in a large group of poets of varying levels can be. Many advanced poets also like having new writers in the group, as they tend to have very fresh and original approaches to reading work. All contributions will be extremely welcome.

Will I receive a certificate at the end?

Unfortunately we don’t do those. If you’re interested in something fully accredited, and you’re based in the UK, we do offer a Writing Poetry MA.

I desperately want to do a particular course, but I can’t make the live chats. Can I still do the course?

We’re happy to be flexible with individual course arrangements. Just let us know before or after you’ve enrolled and we will try accommodate you onto your course the best way possible. It’s not always feasible, but we do what we can. If you’re based abroad, then we offer a range of International Courses each term that have no live chats, as well as Feedback, Studio and Online Reading courses.

The Poetry School

Online Courses

Learn poetry anywhere in the world

All our Online Courses

The Poetry of Survival (Online International Course)

Fortnightly Feedback with David Tait

Drop the Dead Poet: Making Poetry From The News (Summer 2017)

Thinking Studio

Fair Field: How to Write Like a Medieval (Online International Course)

The Unsent, Unanswered Letter

Love and Lust (Summer 2017)

The Zoo of the New: Writing Childhood and Family (Online International Course)

Frame, Shot, Scene, Sequence: Powering Poetry Through Film

The Art of Memory: Poetry of the Past and Present

Keeping Our Wits

Bending Form: An Exploration of Possibilities

Ugliness Studio

Women's Sonnets Studio

How Online Works

What will I learn?

Course formats

Is Online right for me?

FAQ

Help! I’m having technical problems

What happens if everyone on my course is much better than I am?

Will I receive a certificate at the end?

I desperately want to do a particular course, but I can’t make the live chats. Can I still do the course?

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

Find a Course