Groups

This year, Scotland will vote on its future independence from the United Kingdom at the same time as the centenary of World War I. One of Scotland’s most famous and divisive poets, Hugh MacDiarmid, participated non-violently in that war for the sake of small nations, coming out of the trenches with a renewed interest in Scotland and a belief in its potential as the locus of a literary movement his friend Denis Saurat termed ‘the Scottish Literary Renaissance’. A great polyphony of poetic voices has emerged from Scotland since, impacted by a remarkable century of restless social change and political ferment. This innovative course will explore some of Scotland’s finest poems over the last 100 years, beginning with the poetry of WW1 and the ballad tradition and ending with a crop of young poets writing their best work right now. By looking at four to six poems per decade, per session, you will see that Scotland is anything but small when it comes to its poetry!

This course will be followed next term by ‘A History of Scottish Poetry, Part 2’

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

Do you have a heap of discarded poems sitting on your sideboard or desktop which just won’t work no matter how many revisions you make? The Poetry School’s online poetry workshops provide a place for the general improvement of your left-for-dead poems, your work in need of refreshment, and your brand new pieces. Bring poems of any shape or size to these workshops for detailed written feedback once a fortnight from a tutor, and general forum feedback from fellow students. This group will be especially good for those working towards a manuscript, or those with a large batch of poems that they are looking to ready for magazine submission.

This workshop group will use published poems to generate writing exercises and discussion that explore the use of form. We will look at poems that observe structural rules and/or break and change them. We will also question what we mean by ‘risk’, and how we can be riskier in our own writing. Every second week will be dedicated to workshopping poems arising from the course – participants will therefore be expected to produce at least one new rough draft every fortnight for the course’s duration.

Chris McCabe’s three-term course takes students on a literary odyssey using James Joyce’s epic text as inspiration. Ulysses is a one-man compendium of forms, inspirational for its radical rethinking of what literature can be. From found poetry to sound; from the recycling of previous genres to the inspiration of food and the city, students will not only create new poetry responding to sections of Ulysses but will also discuss ideas around Joyce’s thinking as a writer. The course will build towards an event performed by students on 16 June 2014, the 110th anniversary of Bloomsday.

In this Spring term, you’ll use Ulysses as a prompt to create new pieces of writing.

Find out more here: http://18.134.219.44/courses-workshops/face-to-face/the-bloomsday-project–ulysses-writing—performing-course.php#sthash.4jP7BV0A.dpuf

Beginning with the premise that inside every poem there’s a nugget of story, or at least that our minds are complicit in seeing one, you’ll examine the often hidden role of narrative in poetry, and practise some of the techniques that poets use to disguise, subvert and mutate the story whilst retaining enough of it to entice the reader to read between the lines, read on, and read again.

Are you entering a pamphlet competition or gathering your work to send to pamphlet publishers? If you would like some help working through principles to help you increase your chances of success come along to Daljit’s course. In the sessions, Daljit will help you realise the potential of your poetry by getting you closer to the essence of your work so it shapes the reader’s response whilst ensuring its best qualities are evident.

Christopher Logue, Alice Oswald, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon have all written brilliant adaptations of Homer, from the cinematic drama and violence of Logue’s War Music to the majestic sweep and poignancy of Oswald’s Memorial and the compact lyrics of Longley and Mahon. We will examine and discuss their very different approaches and draw inspiration for our own new poems from them. No previous knowledge of Homer required.

A series of five writing workshops over two weeks, experimenting with ways to dramatise the imaginative worlds of your poems using composition tricks held in common with drama and scriptwriting. Looking at the power of scene and setting, the dynamics of characterised voice and spot-dialogue, as well as suspense and tension, each workshop will consist of exercises to produce draft new poems for revision and development in your own time.

A group for the poets involved with the South Bank Centre’s Pull Out All The Stops project …

This is a Campus group associated with Pascale Petit’s Advanced Poetry Workshop, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: For poets writing at an advanced level, an in-depth feedback workshop of your poems in progress and discussion of the direction and development of your work. There won’t be writing exercises, but each session will be kicked off with reading published poetry to spark off new ideas, and to keep your poetic discipline focused over the year.

This is a Campus group associated with Mimi Khalvati’s Versification course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description:If you have been practising poetry with confidence for some time, this course will help you address some of the more formal challenges of both metrical and free verse in depth and in detail. You will explore the relationship of form and content; metre, rhyme and syntax; stanzaic and fixed forms; lineation and stylistic choices in free verse.

A private group for members of Tamar Yoseloff’s seminar 5 to share re-drafts of poems presented in class.

‘It don’t mean a thing if ain’t got that swing’: is this true for poetry? This course, aimed at beginners and those who’d like to re-tune their writing, aims to explore the music of poetry. You’ll read (and listen to) a wide range of poems, from past masters of the lyric to 21st Century voices, from Wordsworth to Warner, in order to help you think about the composition and sound of your own writing. Each session will give you the chance to share your poems with a critical yet constructive audience, improving your confidence as a writer and reader.

This is a Campus group associated with Mimi Khalvati’s Advanced Poetry Workshop, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: In-depth focus on your poems in progress and the overall direction and development of your work. There won’t be writing exercises, but the sessions will be enlivened by reading published poetry as a stimulus for your writing and discussion.

This is a Campus group associated with the Tutor Academy course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description:We don’t only teach poetry writing skills at the Poetry School. We help working poets extend their range too – hence this course where experienced poets, new to teaching, try their wings in front of a class of helpful students. James Brookes will be looking at vanity, Luke Heeley at iconography, Wayne Holloway Smith will be ‘making it wonky’, Holly Hopkins will sort out your list poems and Sarah Howe will be working with dream poems. (More details on http://www.poetryschool.com.) Lots of great prompts for and feedback on your writing at half the price of our usual courses.

This is a Campus group associated with Myra Schneider’s Taking Your Writing Further course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: A group which focuses on detailed feedback and discussion of your poems in each session, also key topics. This year topics will include the music of poetry, taking risks, subtexts and some key twentieth century poets.

This is a Campus group associated with Roddy Lumsden’s Here and There and Now course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: To be a contemporary poet, you should read contemporary poetry, but it’s easy to fall behind when so much is happening and so many new poets are publishing. This course is aimed at well-read advanced students who want to discuss and learn about recent developments in UK and US poetry. This term will look at a new generation of younger UK/US poets who are revitalising poetry. Class members will be encouraged to write and show poetry which responds creatively to the poems discussed.

This is a Campus group associated with Myra Schneider’s Poetry & Prose course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: A monthly meeting for those who have had some experience in writing poetry or serious fiction, involving exercises and in-depth feedback to develop critical skills. Myra’s particular interests lie in personal writing, an area in which she’s widely published, also narrative.

This is the first of a trio of student-centred courses designed both for relative beginners looking for a more structured approach to their writing and for experienced writers looking to widen their repertoire or make a fresh start. You will have the opportunity to develop one or more approaches to writing and start to build up a body of creative work with a definite individual identity. You will examine the basics of free and formal verse structures, but also consider different ways into writing and different ways in which writing can engage with public or private themes. Through exercises, reading, writing, group feedback and small group planning sessions, you will be encouraged to construct an independent voice, to create shapes on the page and develop your writing with confidence.

This is a Campus group associated with the Poetry Library Lock-in course, a place for course members to share work, resources and conversation.

Course description: A new course for poetry writers and readers, to celebrate the Poetry Library’s 60th anniversary. Poets and regular Library users Claire Crowther, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Fiona Moore, Daljit Nagra and James Wilkes, in discussion with resident Librarians and course students, will talk about their discoveries in the Library and the new work it has led to. After-hours access to the Library’s collection of books, audio, video and ephemera will inspire new poems and deepen understanding of current trends in contemporary poetry. This course is suitable for people looking for independent inspiration for new work and also those wanting informal but in-depth poetry discussion.