Delusions of Grandma: Rewriting the Family Narrative

Delve into the knotty world of our oldest, and often hardest, relationships in your poetry.

* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *

Join us for this expansion from a previous half-day workshop of the same name, as we explore the many challenges and joys of writing about family. With all-new poems and exercises, the course is structure to work through dips and rises of intensity under the following themes:

SESSION 1: Forgive Your Villains
Praise poems for the relatives we’re not inclined to praise

SESSION 2: Interlopers, Without & Within the Family
Focus on immigrant poetry/migrant poets

SESSION 3: The Family Pet
Animals, objects and automobiles, with escapism through magic realism

SESSION 4: No Eulogy
Eulogies and eulogistic poetry, filling gaps in the family records

SESSION 5: Family Favourites
Ending on the purest of praise poetry, whimsical and doting, joyous and light, yet not easy – as Wendy Cope says, “Happiness writes white”

Inspired by the work and teaching of Caroline Bird we’ll ask ourselves ‘What’s the game of this poem?’ and, across our five sessions, we’ll play with and push the boundaries of praise poetry. Your family poem-portraits may not (certainly do not have to) come out optimistic, but together we’ll commit to trying out new perspectives on our oldest, hardest relationships.

We’ll begin with a technique known as ‘fire writing’ – writing down all the things you’re not allowed to say about your chosen family member(s), creating a piece of paper you will likely have to set on fire soon after the workshop! Honesty, humour, and darkness are essential prerequisites to mercy, praise, and lightness, and you will be encouraged to write freely with yourself, knowing that you can choose whether and what to share with the group, in a safe and controlled space.

Looking together at poems by Hannah Lowe, Sharon Olds, Choman Hardi, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwyneth Lewis, and Pascale Petit, we’ll explore unseen labour, unspoken love, secret family languages, and how to become the family pet. We’ll tackle the greatest challenges of writing family, including having far too much material, and having fixed, singular perspectives of our loved ones. We’ll play with how to take contrasting angles within the same portrait, while learning how to catch yourself in the act of writing three poems at once, so you can choose which poem you want to write, resume focus, and put extra material aside for later.

Family can be very overwhelming, in both life and poetry, so we’ll work through very specific prompts to help you find particular moments to extrapolate and enshrine in your poems that, hopefully, can both bring you peace and create some vital new work in the process.

5 fortnightly Zoom sessions on Thursdays, 7–9pm (GMT), starts 22 Jan 2026.

Concessions & Accessibility

To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected].

What to Expect

Please check the left hand side of this page for information on how this course works in practice, under the heading ‘Course Style’. If you’re unsure as to what any of the terms there mean, or if this course is a good fit for you, then please take a look at our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image Credit: Thiago José Amaral

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