Joy in the Detail: Reading, Writing, & Editing as Creative Process

Develop your critical confidence and editorial skills with the editor-in-chief at Nine Arches Press.

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

Enjoy the creative burst of writing poetry, but can’t stand the fiddly, tiresome part of then redrafting and editing your poems? Unsure where to begin when getting your poems ready to take their place in the world? Fall back in love with the process and discover how reading, writing and even editing itself is a creative, joyful and integral part of making poetry. Rediscover not only how to redraft, fix and refine poems but also how to reinvent, transform and re-envision your existing poems and explore editing as a method for generating new poems.

With an experienced editor, poet and mentor at the helm, we will chart the poems’ full territory of possibilities, and especially focus in on the finer detail of imagery, punctuation, line breaks, form, layout and how to polish up poems so they are ready for publication.

Learn how to develop your critical confidence and become your best self-editor. Take away a poet’s veritable tool-kit of skills and insight to improve your poetry writing and poetry editing in the longer term.

5 fortnightly Zoom sessions on Saturdays, 10am – 12pm (BST), starts 25 May 2024.

Concessions & Accessibility

To apply for a concessionary 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, wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, or require any form of adjustment to access our courses, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our In Person Courses page.

Image credit: @susan_wilkinson

About Jane Commane View Profile

Jane Commane’s debut collection, Assembly Lines, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018, and longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Her poetry has featured in The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt Publishing) and The Guardian. In 2016, she was selected for Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 writer development programme, and awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017. Jane is editor at Nine Arches Press, and co-editor of Under the Radar magazine.

"My tutor was very supportive and encouraging; her warm guidance, vibrant and authentic teaching style and brilliant expertise has made the learning experience very enjoyable, engaging and inspiring."

- Autumn 2023 survey response

The Poetry School