Live Wires: Starting to Write [Autumn 2023]
Spark your creativity and take your first steps into the world of poetry!
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
Always wanted to write poetry, but not sure where to start? Then this is the course for you! Explore the world of poetry with inspiring readings of contemporary writers and poets from the past, before developing your own work with in-class prompts designed to tap into your creativity, exploring different themes each week. These themes may include: writing from the senses, memories and emotions; metaphor and simile; writing for the voice; creating poems of time and place; poems of praise; and introductions to a few popular poetic genres and forms.
There will be some gentle sharing and discussion of your writing, led by published poet and experienced tutor, Becky Varley-Winter, to help you find your voice and bring exciting new poems into the world. At the end of each term we will create a literary magazine, featuring any course participants who wish to put their work in print, to give a taste of selecting, honing and editing your poems.
10 weekly Zoom sessions on Wednesdays, 7–9pm (BST), starts 4 October 2023.
To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to administ[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].
About Becky Varley-Winter 
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Becky Varley-Winter’s first full-length poetry collection, Dangerous Enough, is forthcoming with Salt in 2023. She has also published a poetry pamphlet, Heroines: On the Blue Peninsula (V. Press, 2019), and her poetry has been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2019, won the T. R. Henn and Brewer-Hall Prizes, and appeared in Poetry Review, Magma, Rising, Finished Creatures and Tentacular, amongst others. Her other publications are a book on modernist poetry and literary fragments, Reading Fragments and Fragmentation in Modernist Literature (Sussex Academic Press, 2018), and a collection of short fiction, BLOOM (Broken Sleep Books, 2021).
‘I hoped to learn about how to craft my own poems through enrolling in this course but I have come away with much more; I identify myself as being a poet (albeit one at the beginning of my journey!). I would highly recommend the Poetry School to my writer friends.’
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