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Home » Online

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

Yippee-Ki-Yay: Writing Poems Inspired by DIE HARD £88.00 * Tutor: Chrissy Williams

Yippee-Ki-Yay: Writing 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
Languages of the Body Masterclass £200.00 * Tutor: Khairani Barokka

Languages of the Body Masterclass

Explore the potential for poetics to transform bodily experience into new creative work.

Start Date: January 8, 2024
End Date: April 1, 2024 ( 85 Days )
Type: Online
Minor Keys: A Mundanity Masterclass Sold Out! Tutor: Richard Georges

Minor Keys: A Mundanity Masterclass

Richness in the routine – extraordinary poetry from the everyday.

Start Date: January 9, 2024
End Date: April 2, 2024 ( 85 Days )
Type: Online
Insects & Poetic Inspiration Masterclass £200.00 * Tutor: Jodie Hollander

Insects & Poetic Inspiration Masterclass

Join us for this mini-beast masterclass, where we'll explore what benefits insects can bring to your poems' ecosystems.

Start Date: January 9, 2024
End Date: April 2, 2024 ( 85 Days )
Type: Online
Fortnightly Feedback with Kandace Siobhan Walker £91.00 * Tutor: Kandace Siobhan Walker

Fortnightly Feedback with Kandace Siobhan Walker

Knock your loose poems into shape with some concentrated feedback from Forward Prize-nominated poet, Kandace Siobhan Walker.

Start Date: January 15, 2024
End Date: April 1, 2023
Type: Online
Lyric Essays: Rumination, Speculation, Love Sold Out! Tutor: Sophie Seita

Lyric Essays: Rumination, Speculation, Love

Encounter and experiment with the essayistic, as we blend poetry, memoir, and criticism to create radical new forms.

Start Date: January 17, 2024
End Date: March 27, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Myth, Magic, & Monsters: Ancient Stories, New Truths Sold Out! Tutor: Catherine Smith

Myth, Magic, & Monsters: Ancient Stories, New Truths

Mine the magical in modern and historic poetry; creating your own personal poetic of myth.

Start Date: January 17, 2024 7.00 p.m.
End Date: March 27, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Transreading Creative Risk with Penned in the Margins Sold Out! Tutor: Tom Chivers

Transreading Creative Risk with Penned in the Margins

Take inspiration from one of the UK's most innovative and exciting poetry publishers.

Start Date: January 17, 2024
End Date: March 27, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Trifles & Kisses: Transreading Welsh Poetry £126.00 * Tutor: Grug Muse

Trifles & Kisses: Transreading Welsh Poetry

Croeso! Welcoming the new Welsh poetic; beyond the classics.

Start Date: January 18, 2024
End Date: March 28, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Poems About Growing Up £126.00 * Tutor: Lewis Buxton

Poems About Growing Up

Writing rites of passage; take inspiration from the teenaged and developmental for new coming-of-age poems.

Start Date: January 18, 2024 7–9pm
End Date: March 14, 2024 ( 57 Days )
Type: Online, Video
Imposters! Poetry of Personae, Pretence & Imposter Syndrome Sold Out! Tutor: Kate Potts

Imposters! Poetry of Personae, Pretence & Imposter Syndrome

Find the forms, craft and confidence to think through pretence, fraudulence and personae.

Start Date: January 18, 2024
End Date: March 28, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Invisible Frames: On & Beyond the Sonnet Sold Out! Tutor: Edward Doegar

Invisible Frames: On & Beyond the Sonnet

Find form and freedom in the famous fourteen.

Start Date: January 22, 2024
End Date: April 1, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
'The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)': Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets £126.00 * Tutor: Rebecca Levi

'The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)': Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets

Discover and be inspired by Chilean greats in both English, y en Español.

Start Date: January 23, 2024
End Date: April 2, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Burning Gaze: Revisiting the Romantics During Global Heating £126.00 * Tutor: Glyn Edwards

Burning Gaze: Revisiting the Romantics During Global Heating

Romancing the poem for the anthropocene.

Start Date: January 23, 2024
End Date: April 2, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Genius Loci: The Spirit of Place £126.00 * Tutor: Cat Woodward

Genius Loci: The Spirit of Place

Capture the essential poetics of place; making writing the local natural.

Start Date: January 23, 2024 7.00pm
End Date: April 2, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Innovative Poetry in the 21st Century £126.00 * Tutor: Michał Kamil Piotrowski

A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Innovative Poetry in the 21st Century

Formally fruity; throw out your preconceptions and embrace the experimental.

Start Date: January 25, 2024 7–9pm
End Date: March 21, 2024 ( 57 Days )
Type: Online, Video
Making Poetry Happen: Poetry Performance by Women & Gender Nonconforming Artists £126.00 * Tutor: Iris Colomb

Making Poetry Happen: Poetry Performance by Women & Gender Nonconforming Artists

Connecting the performative to your poetic, inspired by innovative contemporary practitioners.

Start Date: January 25, 2024
End Date: April 4, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
‘The Weight of the World’: Long Poems & Sequences from around the World £126.00 * Tutor: Jonathan Edwards

‘The Weight of the World’: Long Poems & Sequences from around the World

Long reads – fathoming the deeply written.

Start Date: January 25, 2024
End Date: April 4, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
Babel Breath: Multilingual Poetry Sold Out! Tutor: Rhys Trimble

Babel Breath: Multilingual Poetry

Transread the poetry of the possible through lingual plurality.

Start Date: January 25, 2024
End Date: April 4, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
‘cicadas exist; chicory, chromium, citrus trees’: an Environmental Transreading Masterclass Sold Out! Tutor: Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

‘cicadas exist; chicory, chromium, citrus trees’: an Environmental Transreading Masterclass

Enquiries into the ecological – researching poetic responses to academic studies on the environment.

Start Date: January 26, 2024
End Date: April 5, 2024 ( 71 Days )
Type: Online
The Movement of the City, the Movement of the Mind: Writing Prose Poetry £126.00 * Tutor: Natalie Whittaker

The Movement of the City, the Movement of the Mind: Writing Prose Poetry

Playing with Prose; peer into, and produce your own, prose poetic.

Start Date: February 1, 2024 7–9pm
End Date: March 28, 2024 ( 57 Days )
Type: Online, Video
The Circle Game Studio+ £116.00 * Tutor: Kathryn Simmonds

The Circle Game Studio+

Get inside circular forms to see why repeating yourself can be a useful poetic technique.

Start Date: February 6, 2024
End Date: March 12, 2024 ( 36 Days )
Type: Online
Tales from the Wetlands Studio Sold Out! Tutor: Penny Boxall

Tales from the Wetlands Studio

The splendidly soggy: writing the wondrous of the wild and the wet.

Start Date: February 19, 2024
End Date: March 18, 2024 ( 29 Days )
Type: Online
Fighting the Tyrant: A Political & Personal Studio+ £116.00 * Tutor: Leah Umansky

Fighting the Tyrant: A Political & Personal Studio+

Move between the personal and political to explore the power of poetry in fighting tyrants.

Start Date: February 26, 2024
End Date: April 1, 2024 ( 36 Days )
Type: Online
‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’: Irony, Meaninglessness, & the Poetry of the Absurd £91.00 * Tutor: Vik Shirley

‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’: Irony, Meaninglessness, & the Poetry of the Absurd

It’s a fish, smoking a cigar, next to a glass of wine.

Start Date: March 2, 2024 10.30am–4.30pm
End Date: March 2, 2024 ( 1 Day )
Type: Online, Video
Writing Trauma in Poems £91.00 * Tutor: Eve Grubin

Writing Trauma in Poems

Heavy lifting; poetry working with pain and purpose.

Start Date: March 7, 2024 1.30pm–4pm
End Date: March 14, 2024 ( 8 Days )
Type: Online, Video
Show 20 More

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.

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