Summit Festival 2024 Poetry Surgeries with John Whale & Matt Howard
In-depth 1-2-1 discussion on your poetry with poets and tutors John Whale and Matt Howard.
This is a rare opportunity for feedback on your work from prize-winning poets and tutors John Whale, author of Waterloo Teeth (Carcanet, 2010) and Frieze (Carcanet, 2013), and Matt Howard, author of Gall (Rialto, 2018) and Broadlands (Bloodaxe, 2024).
John and Matt will spend the morning of 20 October resident at Summit Festival, with two 1-hour slots available each, for in-depth one-to-one discussion on your poetry. In these focused and personalised sessions, attendees will be given feedback on their poems-in-progress, discussing the page as a space for understanding ecology and the environment. These surgeries are a unique opportunity to gain specialised editorial feedback; so, book a slot and prepare a selection of your poems-in-progress for advice and guidance.
The following slots are available (all times given in BST):
10–10.50am (John Whale)
10–10.50am (Matt Howard)
11–11.50am (John Whale)
11–11.50am (Matt Howard)
Sessions for this course will take place in House 10, Cavendish Road, University of Leeds School of English, Leeds, LS2 9JT.
To book your session, click ‘purchase course’ and then select a slot from the drop-down menu. You may submit up to 6 poems of no more than 150 lines total. Poems should be sent to [email protected] no less than 2 weeks before your session.
Questions & Accessibility
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].
About John Whale and Matt Howard 
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John Whale is Director of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. His two collections of poetry are Waterloo Teeth (Carcanet, 2010) and Frieze (Carcanet, 2015). The former was shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Award in 2010. He is managing editor of Stand magazine.
Matt Howard is manager of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. His first collection, Gall, was published by The Rialto in 2018 and was winner of the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize in 2019, and won Best First Collection in the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020. After eleven years working for the RSPB, Matt was Douglas Caster Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds from 2021-2023. His second collection, Broadlands, is published by Bloodaxe.
‘The Poetry School offers an amazing, wonderful, high-calibre, professional, warm, and welcoming environment of tutors and peers in which my poetry and my appreciation of poetry have flourished. I am forever grateful. I will be back for more classes!’
Summit Festival 2024 Pass
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