The Poetry of Lying & Stealing
Free your practice as we dive into the murky waters of lying, stealing, & unreliable narration.
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
This is a neurodivergent-friendly workshop with an emphasis on movement, speaking aloud, responding intuitively, and making use of free association. Over the session, we’ll take inspiration from published poems with unreliable narrators and participants will be encouraged to write about real events from their own lives, but to lie about these in varying degrees, as well as “stealing” and embellishing moments from others’ lives in their poems, as we work to break down moral and creative barriers between autobiography and fiction.
Through this process, we will explore how the most serious or difficult experiences can lend themselves to humour and, conversely, how absurdity can be a conduit for emotional depth. Can there be appropriate or inappropriate responses to a poem? Are there ethical questions around using certain topics or events in our poetry?
We will look at the first-person narratives of Sam Riviere, Tom Bland, Sharon Olds, and Emily Berry to explore how emotional truth is established and how a reader is invited to invest in a protagonist. Together we’ll explore how we can inhabit character while reading aloud, asking how we might relate to them, what are their motives, and how do these relate to our own, as writers?
1 x 2.5-hour session, running 2–4.30pm (BST), on 13 April 2025. This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM.
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. 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].
Image credit: Tim Scalzo
About William Wyld 
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William Wyld is a gender non-conforming poet and multi-disciplinary artist from Lewisham. They have featured at Guilfest, Wandsworth arts fringe, Wilderness Festival and Poetry Day at the National Poetry Library. Their work has been published in Lighthouse, Queer Life Queer Love II, and the Live Canon sonnet anthology, highly commended in the Bridport Prize and long-listed in the National Poetry Competition. William is a 2024 Poetry Archive Now winner and a Southbank Centre New Poets Collective alumnus. William’s debut pamphlet The Butterfly Bush is forthcoming with Little Betty Press in 2026.
Reading aloud and performing have helped William overcome the combined challenges of neurodivergence and permanent neurological pain, the latter resulting from a spinal injury in 2021. William’s paintings have been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Show and Discerning Eye, and his scenery and costumes have appeared in a number of independent films and in theatre and art installations across the UK. @williamwyld_artist
"The Poetry School has been vital for me to develop as a poet. I already attended about 10 courses in the past 4 years. It's very diverse and the sessions on Zoom are inclusive. I have benefitted so much and I am always looking forward to seeing what new courses are being released."
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