Experimental Poetry and Where it Came From: A Retrospective Masterclass

Swim in the waters of joyous experimentalism to inspire new innovations of your own!

This year, American experimental poet Peter Gizzi won the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize, so it feels like an apt time to look at the journey of experimental poetry from Eliot himself to Gizzi, covering some of the major works since the start of the 20th century. Between these white male bookends there will be a generous and glorious selection of the great female poets and poets of colour essential to this journey through experimental writing.

In this ambitious course, we will look at movements from Imagism and Modernism, Dada and Surrealism, to Concrete Poetry, Fluxus, New York School, and Language Poetry right up to the plethora of poets making contemporary innovations today, in prose poetry, hybrid poetry, found poetry, cut-up poetry and beyond. We will look at a vast range of schools and styles with opportunities to explore areas that appeal most. There will be something to inspire everyone’s writing!

Influential women experimental poets will be celebrated en masse, Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, Claudia Rankine (the first prose poetry book to win the Forward Prize with her collection Citizen), the conceptual and Oulipian work of Renee Gladman and Harryette Mullen, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, the exquisite hybrid, fragmentation of Nuar Alsadir, and the erasures of Mary Ruefle. We will also explore three women who we’ve lost in the last few years, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, and Lyn Hejinian and the anthology edited by experimental writer Carrie Etter Infinite Difference – Other Poetries by UK Women Poets.

As well as the already named, we will look at work including that by Niikuni Seiichi, Lee Harwood, John Ashbery, Veronica Forest Thomson, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jerome Rothenberg, HD, Wallace Stevens, ee cummings, Philippe Soupault, Raymond Queneau, Inger Christensen, Gertrude Stein, Bob Cobbing, J.H. Prynne, Will Alexander, Tom Philips, Clarke Coolidge, Ron Silliman, and many more.

Masterclasses are an expanded version of our International Courses, with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. These 12-week courses (maximum 12 places) are for advanced students only, and fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no live chats and they are suitable for UK and International students.

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, please visit our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image credit: @alexshuperart

About Vik Shirley View Profile

Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor and educator from Bristol now living in Edinburgh. Her books include Corpses (Sublunary Editions), Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions), Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), One by One (No Press), Poets (The Red Ceilings), Strangers Wave (zimZalla), The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN), and Cassette Poems (above/ground press). Her most recent publication is Some Deer (Broken Sleep) and her next full-length collection, Nervous Tic (Sublunary Editions), is due for publication in Autumn 2025. Vik’s work has appeared in Poetry London, PN Review, The Rialto, Magma, Gutter, and Dreaming Awake: New and Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom (MadHat Press). A regular performer at the European Poetry Festival, Vik is a Poetry School Tutor (teaching on themes including the surreal narrative, absurdism and the grotesque). She co-edits Firmament online and Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius. Vik has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry from the University of Birmingham.

"Poetry School courses have been invaluable to finding my voice and subject matter interests as a poet. I have discovered what I truly love writing about. Every tutor has supplied reading material that I wouldn't have found on my own."

- Spring 2025 Survey Response

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