Freedom in Form: Creativity, Control, & Craft with Jacqueline Saphra
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
Formal constraints can enable and enhance your creative impulses, driving your poetry into exciting and unfamiliar territories. In this three-term course which includes both writing exercises and feedback, you’ll work with a supportive peer group to experiment with different poetic modes and learn to develop your writing through experimentation and close reading.
Each week, you’ll read inspiring poems as jumping off points to explore both received and open forms and be encouraged to take risks, extending your poetic range through guided writing exercises, generating new poems, and honing your poetic skills. Over each term we’ll explore how craft, technique and constraint can help you expand your poetic toolkit so you can find fresh energy, build confidence and even surprise yourself.
This course is currently in a Priority Booking period, meaning it is only available to students continuing from the previous term. We will open any remaining spaces to new students on Monday 18 November. If you would like to be added to the waiting list for this, please email [email protected].
10 weekly Zoom sessions on Mondays, 6.45–8.45pm (BST/GMT), starts 20 Jan 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: @girlwithredhat
About Jacqueline Saphra 
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Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, playwright, teacher, and activist. She is the author of nine plays, four chapbooks, and five poetry collections. Her second collection, All My Mad Mothers was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and her fifth, Velvel’s Violin, a Poetry Book Society recommendation and a Poetry Book of the Month Radio 4 Extra, was out from Nine Arches Press in July 2023. Jacqueline is a founder member of Poets for the Planet.
"My first course at the Poetry School has given me more confidence as a writer, increased my poetry knowledge and understanding of craft and editing, and helped me prioritise poetry more often."
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