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Long Poems & Invocations: Making The Measure Work For You

Private Group with 15 members

What do long poems bring out of the poet’s voice that shorter verse cannot? A lot of workshops are all about editing work down to size and keeping things concise; on this online course we will be pushing poetry to its limits and generating work over 40 lines, the cut-off point for many magazines and competitions. Over 5 months we will explore specific poems – such as Toby Martinez De Las Rivas’s ‘Twenty-One Prayers for Weak or Fabulous Things’, Lucie Brock-Broido’s ‘Domestic Mysticism’, Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’, Kate Tempest’s ‘Brand New Ancients’ – and consider why these poems work as longer poems, their tempo, tone and use of repetition, exaggeration and stylisation, and also how on a larger scale poems can work without being over-written. We’ll then work ways in and out of our own long poems, learning how to keep up the stamina it takes to keep our lines limber and flowing, and how narrative structure, lists, meditations on reflective ideas, incantations, and invoking the mystical and metaphysical can yield grand results.

’No laughs please, we’re poets’ – can comic poetry be good poetry?

Private Group with 12 members

‘A poem is like a much, much richer joke’ – Adam Zagajewski. On this course, you’ll look at some seriously funny poems by the likes of Glyn Maxwell, Simon Armitage, Thomas Lux, Jo Shapcott and Carol Ann Duffy, exploring a range of approaches to the comic, considering aspects such as narrative, allegory and the use of the surreal. You’ll look at a range of forms, such as the sonnet and the villanelle, and how they can be used to shift a comic poem into seriousness; and how the use of everyday life and characters can result in strange and original comic impacts. Looking at ‘crossover’ writers such as Benjamin Zephaniah and John Cooper Clarke, this course will also seek to bridge the relationship between ‘page’ and ‘performance’ poetry, seeking similarities rather than differences in how both employ comic techniques. Lastly, you will look at what in literary terms is often seen as ‘bad’ comic poetry, while seeking to develop our own comic poems which, while they will hopefully make people smile or laugh, will go far beyond the confines of what is traditionally considered as light verse.

To book your place on this course, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/comicpoetry

Top of the Form

Private Group with 12 members

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.

Crimes and Misdemeanours (Open Workshop)

Private Group with 12 members

Think of all the rules you’ve heard in poetry workshops: Show don’t tell. Be more concise. Restrain your use of adverbs and adjectives. On this Open Workshop with Kathryn Maris, you’ll be ripping up the workshop rulebook with a roguish disregard for good taste and ‘respectable’ writing. With the help of a step-by-step assignment devised by Kathryn, you will write a poem in which you wilfully ignore all the usual workshop advice and wisdom, using material re-worked from Kathryn’s ‘Breaking the Rules’ course to guide you. Feeling anarchic?

Digital Open Day 2014

Public Group with 54 members

CAMPUS – the social network for poets – is hosting its first ever Digital Open Day on Wednesday 7 May 2014. If you’re currently a CAMPUS member or thinking about joining our community, this is best way to find out more, interact with other poets, as well as a rare opportunity to peek into our many secret vaults. It’s also a great chance for students new to our online course programme to experience peer-to-peer learning first-hand.

Full list of events here: http://campus.poetryschool.com/campus-digital-open-day/

Email [email protected] to find out more.

Shadow of Violence Studio

Private Course Group with 17 members

Cause disquiet, increase tension and leave a shadow of violence on your reader that lingers long after the closing line

Stand-Up Poetry Studio

Private Course Group with 17 members

Turn to the living oral literature of stand-up comedy for lessons that apply to your poems

Teachers’ Lounge

Private Group with 21 members

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