Feeling All
Reclaim challenging personal experiences by articulating them into authentic, innovative, and impactful poetry.
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
‘won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life?’ – Lucile Clifton
This 4-week Poetry Writing course invites you to connect with memories of challenging personal experiences, mining the qualities of felt experience to generate powerful new writing material.
This course takes its title from Helen’s latest collection, Feeling All the Kills, which explores what it means to experience, and live in the wake of, a violent sexual assault and demonstrates how poets can grapple with traumatic experiences in order to reclaim these moments by articulating them into authentic, innovative, and impactful poetic art.
We’ll dive deep into poets whose work sings of joy through hardship – such as May Swenson, Lucille Clifton, Mona Arshi, and Mary Oliver, embracing our own internal landscapes to ‘feel into’ and unravel in language our own personal stories, and in the process, reclaim that which ignites us.
Nothing is off limits, but no one will be obligated to share either. Writers will be mindfully guided through a series of structured tasks, alongside free writing and discussion, and together we’ll work to create a safe space for artistic experimentation, expression, and creation.
Given the nature of this course, there will be discussion of challenging experiences and content that some participants may find upsetting. We work hard to create safe and inclusive spaces on Poetry School courses; so, if you will need any adjustments or mitigation strategies in order to attend, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on [email protected] to discuss these. Please also be aware that this is a practical, creative writing course and not a ‘Writing Therapy’ course, meaning the focus will be specifically on poetic craft and helping students write better poems, rather than offering any sort of targeted mental health support or counselling.
4 fortnightly Zoom sessions on Thursdays, 7–9pm (BST), starts 24 Oct 2024. 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. 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].
Image credit: @fotios-photos
About Helen Calcutt 
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Helen Calcutt is author of collections Somehow (Verve PoetryPress, 2020) and Feeling All the Kills, a verse account of assault and recovery, published by Pavilion Poetry in 2024. Somehow was a PBS Winter Bulletin Pamphlet & a Poetry School Book of the Year (2020). Her anthology Eighty-Four (Verve Press, 2019) created in aid of suicide prevention charity C.A.L.M, was a Saboteur Award shortlist and a Poetry Wales Book of the Year, 2019. Helen’s work has featured in the Guardian, the Huffington Post, PoetryLondon, Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland, and others. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Loughborough University for her outstanding contribution to the arts, December 2023. Helen is also a choreographer and is currently creating and touring a dance adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers with her dance-theatre company ‘Beyond Words’.
"It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say Poetry School has been transformative for me both personally and poetically."
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