Lighting the World: Writing in Times of Crisis

Take poetic action in response to these times of war, displacement and climate emergency.

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

Poetry is an act of attention. It asks us to look again and more closely at things in the world. It wants to be beautiful as language, as performance, but it wants to do something in the world’ – Kimberly Blaeser (Ojibwe)

‘It is your light that lights the world’. – Rumi.

In these times, when it’s easy to feel powerless, what is our call to action as poets? This 3-term course will guide you to explore ways to bring truth, craft, and art to your writing, when taking in the challenges we encounter in the world, from the personal to the global. We will take poetic action by paying attention to what is happening around us – whether it’s birdsong heard from a bedroom window or documenting the violence we see in our near environment and further afield – and bringing our skills as poets to bear on these events.

There is much to cherish, and much to strive to change, and poetry is uniquely placed – more than any other artform – to illustrate, inform, and influence the world around us. Each term we will read poetry in English and in translation, that speaks to political and ecological issues and the indigenous experience. We will take inspiration from poets including Jane Hirschfield, Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Longley, Jorie Graham, Adam Zagajewski, Mahmoud Darwish, Yehuda Amichai, Natalie Diaz, billy-ray belcourt and Louise Erdrich.

Key aspects of this course will be about developing your poetic craft and workshopping your own poems, ensuring that you have the best tools and techniques at your disposal and can work to write powerfully and effectively about the complicated places we each find ourselves in. Join us as we read, discuss, and write new poems, alongside honing your craft and expanding your personal poetics to address the contemporary world.

10 weekly Zoom sessions on Wednesdays, 6.45–8.45pm (BST/GMT), starts 21 January 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, please visit our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image credit: @usgs

About Shazea Quraishi View Profile

Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet and translator based in London. Her poems have appeared in UK and US publications including The Guardian, Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation & The Hudson Review, and anthologised in Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, Mapping the Future: the Complete Works Poets, and The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, among others. Her books include The Glimmer (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), The Taxidermist (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), The Art of Scratching (Bloodaxe Books, 2015) and The Courtesans Reply (flipped eye publishing, 2012).

Shazea is a trustee on the board of English PEN, and on the committee of the Poetry and Spoken Word Group of the Society of Authors. A Complete Works I alumna, she runs workshops with Poetry Studio, and is a tutor with the Poetry School and RHACC School of Ideas. She is also an ongoing artist in residence with Living Words, an arts and literature organisation that works with marginalised people impacted by a dementia or ongoing mental health concerns, www.shazeaquraishi.com.

"Far and away the best poetry course I have ever taken. I learned so much because of the way Shazea structured the course and encouraged us to share our work and give critical feedback. If you are serious about developing your work this is the best course I know."

- Spring 2025 Survey Response

The Poetry School