Seminar with Shazea Quraishi: Lighting the World
Intimate monthly seminars with Shazea Quraishi on Zoom, exploring ways to take poetic action in these trying times.
* This Seminar will take place on the video-conferencing platform, ZOOM *
In these times, when it’s easy to feel powerless, what is our call to action as poets? This intimate Seminar will help you bring truth, craft, and art to your writing. Meeting monthly, we will share poems within a supportive and constructive group of socially-engaged writers, and continue to explore ways to take action by bringing our skills as poets to speak to the times we are living in.
There is much to cherish, and much to strive to change, in these times and poetry is uniquely placed – more than any other artform – to illustrate, inform, and influence the world around us. Each term we will take inspiration from poetry of witness in English and in translation that speaks to political and ecological issues and the indigenous experience, and you will be encouraged to generate new poems of your own through monthly workshops and writing prompts.
Come with your ongoing projects, creative obsessions, and long-haul explorations to this monthly group featuring close reading, in-depth discussion, and feedback on your work, as well guidance on your next steps as a poet, and readings of contemporary poetry. With a maximum of eight students in each group, these seminars provide an intimate setting and generate supportive and critical friendships, helping you to become part of a poetry community. Join us as we read, discuss, and write new poems, alongside honing your craft and expanding your personal poetics to address the contemporary world, from the personal to the global.
Entry into this group is by application only. If you would like to sign up, please email [email protected] for information and we will assist you in the application process.
Do not book online before applying.
8 x monthly sessions between November and June. Classes will run on Mondays 6.30–9pm on Zoom and take place on the following dates.
9-Nov
14-Dec
11-Jan
8-Feb
8-Mar
12-Apr
10-May
14-Jun
More information about how all our seminars work can be found on the Seminars Course Page.
Image credit: Mathias Reding
About Shazea Quraishi 
View Profile
Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet and translator based in London.
She has published two collections with Bloodaxe Books — The Glimmer (2022), and The Art of Scratching (2012) — and two pamphlets The Taxidermist (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), and The Courtesans Reply (flipped eye publishing, 2010).
Her poems have appeared in publications in the UK, US and Canada, including The Guardian, The Financial Times, Poetry Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation, and have been anthologised in Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic, U.S. 2023), The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write (Saqi Books, 2017), and others.
Shazea worked with English PEN as a writer on their outreach program in prisons and refugee communities, later joining the board as a trustee. She was on the committee of the Society of Author’s Poetry & Spoken word group, and is writer in residence with Living Words, an arts charity that works with marginalised people including those impacted by a dementia or mental health concerns.
She has taught for many years, with organisations including Arvon, The Poetry Society, Poetry Studio, Translators at School, English PEN, Exiled Writers and more.
"I learned so much from this course and this tutor and the peer group was great. Everyone was working together to get the best outcomes for each others work, with an impeccable lead from Shazea, the tutor."
Sascha Akhtar’s Decolonial Praxis Seminar 2026/27
Philip Gross Zoom Seminar 2026/27
Suzanne Conway Zoom Seminar 2026/27