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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 Abandoned Necropolis: Horror & the Grotesque in Poetry

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Tutor: Vik Shirley

The Abandoned Necropolis: Horror & the Grotesque in Poetry

Dig through horrors and grotesquerie to exhume scary new poems.

Start Date: October 3, 2023
End Date: December 12, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

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Tutor: Jennifer Wong

Unravelling Mothers

Rediscover this poignant theme through poetry that resists stereotypes and reimagines the experience of motherhood.

Start Date: October 3, 2023
End Date: December 12, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

Gabach, Gleg, Glib: Transreading Scots & Gaelic Poetry

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Tutor: Harry Josephine Giles

Gabach, Gleg, Glib: Transreading Scots & Gaelic Poetry

By unpacking Scottish poetry’s kist o riches, we can discover how thought and feeling echo across languages.

Start Date: October 3, 2023
End Date: December 12, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

‘The earthly runs to a stop...’: Endings as Practice & Subject

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Tutor: Ali Lewis

‘The earthly runs to a stop...’: Endings as Practice & Subject

Consider ‘endings’ in all their forms – from the end of the line to the end of time.

Start Date: October 4, 2023
End Date: December 13, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

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Tutor: David Caddy

The Poetry of Water

Wade through water’s cultural and environmental significance, as we dive into sea, coast, river, and pond in your poetry.

Start Date: October 4, 2023
End Date: December 13, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

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Tutor: Andrew Wells

Air in Unexpected Places

Take a deep breath, prepare to air new work, and join us as we break out of the vacuum to explore the air around us.

Start Date: October 5, 2023
End Date: December 14, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

Machines Poétiques: Transreading Twentieth-Century French Poetry

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Tutor: Iris Colomb & Jérémie Wenger

Machines Poétiques: Transreading Twentieth-Century French Poetry

Stretch and twist language(s) in this course examining the intersection of the mechanical and multilingual practices.

Start Date: October 5, 2023
End Date: December 14, 2023 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online

£122.00 *

Tutor: Sarah Fletcher

'O Soft Embalmer': The Poetry of Sleep

Delve into the obscured world of sleep, as we explore its rich creative possibilities in exciting new work.

Start Date: October 5, 2023 7–9pm
End Date: November 30, 2023 ( 57 Days )
Type: Online, Video

Technique [How to Discover or Disown It]

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Tutor: Matthew Caley

Technique [How to Discover or Disown It]

What training do you do to sustain and maintain yourself as a poet? Explore the essential work of writerly ‘technique’, as we consider new pathways into our writing.

Start Date: October 12, 2023 7–9pm
End Date: December 14, 2023 ( 64 Days )
Type: Online, Video

Unhidden: The Poetry of Ecological & Personal Spaces

£88.00 *

Tutor: romalyn ante

Unhidden: The Poetry of Ecological & Personal Spaces

Explore environmental impermanence and resilience as we produce impactful new work, directly engaged with climate crises.

Start Date: October 14, 2023 2–4.30pm
End Date: October 21, 2023 ( 8 Days )
Type: Online, Video

Short Controlled Bursts: Poems Inspired by the Movie ALIENS

£88.00 *

Tutor: Chrissy Williams

Short Controlled Bursts: Poems Inspired by the Movie ALIENS

A day of writing new poems, inspired by the movie ALIENS – one of the best films of the 1980s, and one of the best sci-fi movies of all time. We’re in the pipe, five by five…

Start Date: October 28, 2023 10.30am–4.30pm
End Date: October 28, 2023 ( 1 Day )
Type: Online, Video

Multimodal Messages: Multimedia Latinx Studio+

£112.00 *

Tutor: Elizabeth Torres

Multimodal Messages: Multimedia Latinx Studio+

Explore multimedia, multilingual, and multicultural Latin American poetry with poet, multimedia artist, and literary translator Elizabeth Torres.

Start Date: November 2, 2023
End Date: December 7, 2023 ( 36 Days )
Type: Online

Our New Critical Friend: Writing Poetry Alongside AI

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Tutor: Kat Dixon

Our New Critical Friend: Writing Poetry Alongside AI

Play with artificial intelligence to deepen your creative practice.

Start Date: November 4, 2023 10.30am–1pm
End Date: November 18, 2023 ( 15 Days )
Type: Online, Video

Seriously Wacky, or the Importance of Being Silly Studio

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Tutor: Liam Bates

Seriously Wacky, or the Importance of Being Silly Studio

Dive into silliness in your writing, as we see how 'messing about' can produce unexpectedly profound poems.

Start Date: November 6, 2023
End Date: December 4, 2023 ( 29 Days )
Type: Online

Art & Advocacy: Poetry as Testimony & Social Change

£88.00 *

Tutor: Abbi Parcell

Art & Advocacy: Poetry as Testimony & Social Change

Learn how to fuse art and advocacy to create lasting testimonies and use your poetry as a powerful tool for collective action.

Start Date: November 25, 2023 10.30am–1pm
End Date: December 2, 2023 ( 8 Days )
Type: Online, Video

Yippee-Ki-Yay: Poems Inspired by DIE HARD

£88.00 *

Tutor: Chrissy Williams

Yippee-Ki-Yay: Poems Inspired by DIE HARD

Join us for a day in December writing new poems inspired by the classic Christmas movie DIE HARD. Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…

Start Date: December 16, 2023 10.30am–4.30pm
End Date: December 16, 2023 ( 1 Day )
Type: Online, Video

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How Online Works

Online Programme consists of text-based courses with no video content. These 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 chatroom exchange with your course tutor and fellow students, where all the latest poems are examined in a free-flowing, live-typed, text-based 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 [email protected]

International Courses are exactly the same as Interactive courses, but there are no live chats, making them accessible to students and tutors 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 = 12 maximum.

Transreading courses – co-curated with Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese – invite us to write poems and translations in response to wide readings. Like translators, we read ‘the originals’ closely and intimately in order to transcend cultures, languages, and genres. We read voraciously: poems brought to English by translation, multilingual texts, fiction, nonfiction, drama, archives, ephemera, visual arts. Through trans-reading and trans-writing, we open our poetries to the multi-literate world. Transreading courses, without live chats, are suitable for UK and international students. Class size = 12 maximum.

Fortnightly Feedback courses are 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 3-4 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. Class size = 16 maximum.

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. Class size = 10 maximum.

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

How many courses can I take?

To ensure the best experience, we recommend taking no more than two courses per term. If you are interested in signing up to more, please email us at [email protected] to discuss the different course schedules.

Help! I’m having technical problems

Please email administration@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.

All our Online Courses

How Online Works

What will I learn?

Course formats

Is Online right for me?

FAQ

How many courses can I take?

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?

Find a Course