Creative Constraint [Autumn 2023]
Mix up your writing, and learn new skills and techniques with Jacqueline Saphra.
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
Whatever else it maybe, a poem is a verbal artefact which must be as skilfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle – WH Auden
In this three-term course you’ll be offered strategies to free your imagination as well as ways to contain it; you’ll learn to develop your writing through experimentation and close reading. Each week you’ll read a selection of inspiring poems and participate in playful, exploratory, and inventive writing exercises to help you generate new poems and hone your writing skills. Alongside this, using examples and exercises designed to advance your understanding of form, you’ll discover how craft, technique and constraint can enable and enhance your creative impulse, driving your poetry into exciting and unfamiliar territories.
10 weekly Zoom sessions on Mondays, 6.45–8.45pm (BST), starts 2 October 2023.
To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to administ[email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. More information about how our Video Courses work can be found on the Video Courses page. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected].
About Jacqueline Saphra 
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Jacqueline Saphra is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. Her second collection, All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and her fifth, Velvel’s Violin, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was out from from Nine Arches Press in July 2023. She has taught in many different settings including The Arvon Foundation, The Oxford University Summer School and the MsT at Cambridge University. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet. www.jacquelinesaphra.com
‘An excellent course with a wide range of input from our tutor, Jacqueline Saphra, and stimulating contributions from fellow students.’
Finding the Form; Breaking the Mould [Autumn 2023]
Live Wires: Starting to Write [Autumn 2023]
Intermediate Poetry Workshop with Natasha Hakimi Zapata [Autumn 2023]