Verse Epic: The Art of Narrative Poetry
Flex your imagination and push your craft as we explore the art of poetic storytelling.
Learn the art of poetic storytelling. Drawing from ancient and classic texts such as Beowulf and The Kalevala, Paradise Lost, and Keats’s Endymion, all the way to the contemporary narratives of poets, such as Alice Oswald, Jane Burn, and A.B. Jackson, we’ll learn core principles of narrative writing and how to apply them.
Join us as we learn what distinguishes a poem’s narrative from a prose narrative – exploring framing and structuring devices, how to use personas and dialogue, and trying our hand at episodic writing. This course will encourage you to flex your imagination and express yourself in new ways; it will give you the toolkit you need to tell your own stories, or adapt old stories in your own exciting way.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 16 May 2023. Live Chats on fortnightly Tuesdays, 7–9 pm (BST); first Live Chat: 30 May 2023.
To apply for a concessionary 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]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
About Cat Woodward 
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Cat Woodward runs The Poetry Master Class (@catsmasterclass). Her third collection, Strange Shape, is due in 2023 from Gatehouse. Her first collection, Sphinx, was published by Salò in 2017; her second, Blood. Flower. Joy!, was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons in 2019. In 2018 she won the Ivan Juritz Prize for creative experiment. You can read more about her work at www.catwoodward.com.
‘The Poetry School has given me access to a community of budding poets, has introduced me to poems and poets I'd not previously read, has inspired many new poems of my own, has opened up the editing process and taught me how to both receive and give constructive feedback.’
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