Groups

Investigate how poetry can engage with memory, both individual and collective, in order to reflect on the past and produce innovative work aiming towards the future.

An intensive studio course on bad language, bad form and bad taste.

Perhaps now more than ever, our poetry should engage with news and global events

Explore how women have claimed the sonnet as a vehicle of self-expression, and write your own sonnets.

A course imagining our addressee; how the addressee shifts or remains static, and to whom we most want to reach when we write a poem

This is the closed group for students enrolled on the Poetry School’s MA in Writing Poetry in partnership with Newcastle University, 2016/18, and studying in London.

This is a Campus group associated with Tamar Yoseloff’s Poetry & Visual Art courses, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: Poets have long drawn inspiration from painters and sculptors; with the rise of a new generation of artists challenging traditional media, can we find in them a source for poems which push boundaries in a similar manner? Tamar will take you into gallery spaces to engage with contemporary art and to encourage new poems in response. You will also look at parallels between the gallery as a space for exhibition and
the page as a dynamic space for composition, and, based on the tutors’ own experience, will discuss the technicalities of artist / poet collaborations, publications and residencies.

Set sail on an adventure to craft poems for young audiences.

An online staffroom for Poetry School tutors. Bring your own biscuits.

This advanced course will focus on the development of your own poetry through weekly homework exercises and in-depth feedback on your poems in progress. Up to four visiting poets during the term will give a short reading or discussion their work, answer questions, and offer feedback on student poems. Autumn guests, subject to confirmation, will include Amy Key (Luxe) and William Wootten (poet and literary critic).

Chart your own poetic landscapes, histories and edgelands.

Don’t worry, this is not a class for precocious school students, but an opportunity to explore different sorts of poetic form, and to challenge yourself to write according to the unique conventions, restrictions and freedoms of each particular form. Many people have tried sonnets and villanelles, but what about the sestina, the pantoum, the ghazal? Or blank verse, elegy, ode? We’ll look at examples (drawn from a wide range of writers) and you’ll generate new work, sharing drafts in progress with the group and receiving feedback based on close reading of your work. We’ll also ‘off-road’ and look at unusual versions of certain poetic forms, to explore how flexible and innovative form can be.

This course is appropriate for beginners and those who have written some poetry but who would like to take a more structured approach to their writing. You will examine the basics of rhyme, metre, verse forms, lineation and stanza structure. Through exercises, reading, writing and feedback, you will also begin to construct a voice, to create shapes on the page and develop your first drafts with confidence. (If you are a
complete beginner, we recommend you download our course How to Write Poetry before you take Tamar’s course.)

A group to share old and new voices, on their birthday and other occasions.

Write on Lynchian themes, including dreams, identity, sexuality and the supernatural world of love.

News updates, calls for submissions, insights into the editing process and general chat about poetry….

Butcher’s Dog is a biannual poetry magazine, founded in the North East of England by six poets who met through a Poetry School/New Writing North development programme in 2011.

Editing Lab: Consider the challenges, practical ‘nuts and bolts’ and decision-making processes in putting together your own pamphlet publication.

Receive detailed feedback on your works in progress from your tutor and fellow students.

The deadlines for submitting poems are as follows:

Poem 1: Feb 6th

Poem 2: Feb 20th

Poem 3: March 6th

Poem 4: March 20th

Poem 5: April 3rd

A ground-breaking collaboration between Newcastle University and the Poetry School: a new Masters degree in Writing Poetry, leading to the award of an MA from Newcastle University. Starting September 2015, this two year part-time course will be based in two centres. You can study at the Poetry School in London, or at Newcastle University itself via a combination of small groups and individual teaching. Both groups of students will come together for an annual joint Summer School, alternating between London and Newcastle. London tutors will be Roddy Lumsden and Clare Pollard; Newcastle tutors include Sean O’Brien and W N Herbert – and both teaching centres will benefit from guest tutor visits from the Poetry School’s established teaching faculty.

Outlandish visions, cartoon physics and dream logic to enliven your poetry.