Groups

Compose fresh responses to Ancient Greek and Latin texts and fragments

Discover the levers and mechanisms that power free verse forms

Manipulate new meanings with cutting, folding, and chance encounters

Deep-dive into poetry’s dark side

Explore what matters to you most by mining moments of magnitude in your life.

This is the CAMPUS Group for students enrolled on ‘The Urban Pastoral’ course led by Tim Dooley & Tamar Yoseloff.

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

Your full schedule is now as follows…

July 3rd = Assignment 1 posted

July 10th = Assignment 2 posted

July 11th = POEM SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR ASSIGNMENT 1

July 17th = Assignment 3 posted / POEM SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR ASSIGNMENT 2

July 24th = POEM SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR ASSIGNMENT 3

A Campus Group for Ellen Cranitch’s Autumn Workshop Group.

This course focuses on finding new approaches to writing poetry. It draws on a range of eclectic influences in order to inspire. Each week we’ll probe the fresh and the less familiar so as to galvanise our own work. From Anne Carson’s ‘box’ poems to Vladimir Nabokov’s coloured sounds, and from Iceland’s epic ‘The Kalevala’ to metaphor in its most secretive guises, every lesson will be energised by alternate viewpoints. Plenty of discussion and feedback on students’ own poems each session.

‘You said “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one.”‘ – C.P. Cavafy. What is it that drives people to the city? Do we get lost or are we reborn? What lures us to particular cities? A sense of history? Or its limitless opportunities for companionship? On this online course we will be ‘hitting the streets’ (as Queneau might have it), diving into dark alleyways, discovering and delighting poetry and prose that has been inspired by some of the greatest cities in the world. Over fortnightly sessions we will write our own poems and narratives in response to the cities we have known, and the cities we haven’t, as well as considering The Global City – the ur-city, that almost ineffable Shangri-la that somehow simultaneously exists in all cities at once. Featuring work from all around the world by, amongst others, Tomas Transtromer, Ocean Vuong, Charles Simic, Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison and Charles Dickens. It promises to be both the best of courses and the worst of courses…

Probe the (dys)functions and politics of family life

In the latest instalment of our Transreading series, discover voices from the central countries of our divided continent.

Celebrate present-day Russia through its poetry, and create your own new translations and trans-readings

Have you ever wanted to completely experiment with design of poem? Manipulate a piece of text to make something once drab, now visually stunning and fantastical? Or give serious thought to how form might best reflect content?

This Open Workshop with Lavinia Singer, the Poetry School’s Digital Poet in Residence, is all about appearances. Choosing one of three suggested poems, you will have complete freedom to present it in any way you see fit. Think about your choice of materials, layout, typography, colours, collage elements, images or illustrations – whatever you’d like to bring the text alive. We will then share our work and compare processes, where you will have a chance to outline your choices and consider how successful they were.

Unlock the potential of your surroundings with creative mis-perception

Is your version of the sea Derek Walcott’s ‘grey vault’ of history or are its ‘edges overgrown with lace’ as Ivan V Lalic would have it? The seascape has long been a favourite with poets, yet our relationship with it has never been entirely comfortable: it threatens to rise, swallows planes whole, and a large portion of its depths remains unchartered and unknown. In this course, we will look at the different ways in which the sea can inspire, intrude and disrupt your writing practice. From creatures of the deep to submerged forests, from coast-cultures to the sea as a foreign planet, you will encounter a variety of texts that will encourage you to create work that engages with the sea’s multiple facets. (This is a repeat of a course that has run previously).

Create true and original art out of that which was unspoken, formless and void

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“I don’t believe in writing every day, though I’m at my desk every day’ – Stanley Kunitz

Where do you write? Send us a photo!

This group was created in conjunction with the essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Kim Moore. Read it here: http://campus.poetryschool.com/a-room-of-ones-own/

Knock those loose poems into shape with some concentrated feedback

First poem submission deadline: 1 Feb (feedback posted by Will by 8 Feb)
Second poem submission deadline: 15 Feb (feedback posted by Will by 22 Feb)
Third poem submission deadline: 1 March (feedback posted by Will by 8 March)
Fourth poem submission deadline: 15 March (feedback posted by Will by 22 March)
Fifth poem submission deadline: 29 March (feedback posted by Will by 5 April)

Write poems of connection in an age of mass uprooting and movement