Transreading Elizabeth Bishop: Facts, Details, & the Unknown

Take inspiration from one of contemporary poetry's true masters! Join us as we capture animals, let them go, obsess over detail, and refuse to reach significance in our writing.

In 1966, Elizabeth Bishop wrote in a letter to Anne Stevenson: ‘Reading Darwin one admires the beautiful solid case being built up out of his endless, heroic observations, almost unconscious or automatic – and then comes a sudden relaxation … his eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown.’

Obsessed with detail, wary of big conclusions, a precise observer of the natural world, often surreal… Elizabeth Bishop was a unique poet and one that all writers can learn something from. Come on a journey through Nova Scotia, Florida, and Brazil, getting to know this wonderful poet, and using her work as a stimulus for your own writing.

Throughout the course we will read Bishop’s prose and poetry, with particular focus on the poems ‘Sandpiper’, ‘The Fish’, ‘A Miracle for Breakfast’, ‘Sestina’. ‘At the Fishhouses’, ‘The Moose’, ‘In the Waiting Room’ and ‘The Man-Moth’. There will also be some William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, Wallace Stevens and a crash course on the sestina form thrown in for good measure!

Each session will also feature a poetry writing assignment, inspired by Bishop’s work. By the end of the course we will have captured animals, let them go, refused to reach significance… and found ourselves like Darwin – and like Bishop – with ‘eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown’.

5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 14 Jan 2026. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.

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: Mr. Location Scout

About Natalie Whittaker View Profile

Natalie Whittaker has published two pamphlets: Shadow Dogs, with ignition press, and Tree, with Verve Poetry Press. She was a London Library emerging writer in 2020–2021. Natalie’s first full length poetry collection, The Point Is You Are Alive, was published earlier this year by Broken Sleep Books. She is an experienced poetry tutor and editor, and has a Masters in Writing Poetry, with Distinction.

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