Announcing our Spring 2016 Courses!

Here’s a quick look at what’s on offer for our Spring Term (beginning 25 January 2016). To find out about a particular course or tutor, follow the title links or call us to enquire on 0207 582 1679. If you’d like to print out a copy of our brochure to look through at home, you can find a print-friendly .pdf version here. 

LONDON – SHORT COURSES

Trust the Image with Catherine Smith – avoid the safe and predictable tropes in your poetry and create a new ‘image bank’

Defining a Style with Tim Dooley – for both experienced writers looking to widen their repertoire or for relative beginners looking for a more structure approach to their writing

The New Concrete: Visual Poetry with Chris McCabe and Victoria Bean – off the back of a hugely popular online course, get face-to-face with eye catching poems and create your own

The Poem as a Party Guest with Wayne Holloway Smith – don’t be a bore… play it cool and charm the room by leaving a little mystery in your poetry

Paradise Lost: ‘An Express Elevator to Hell’ with Simon Barraclough – what have Milton and James Cameron got in common? Get to grips with Milton’s epic in this interactive reading course

LONDON – TALKS

T S Eliot Prize Preview with John Greening – our annual round up of the year’s best collections, as selected by the T S Eliot Prize Judges

LONDON – SHORT / ONE DAY WORKSHOPS

Following the brush: Making Zuihitsu Poetry with Cheryl Moskowitz – learn about and employ ancient Japanese techniques in your own poetry

Poetry & Visual Art with Tamar Yoseloff – back due to popular demand, this two day course includes a trip to a gallery and time to workshop those poems it inspired

Improve your Performance: Voice Skills for Poets with Nicola Collett – exactly what it says on the tin, but with a hugely experienced voice coach – inject some confidence into your readings

What is a Poem? with Daljit Nagra – who better to give you the techniques to think again and write poems that push at the boundaries

Writing the Difficult Poem with Mona Arshi – capture those slippery, evasive and important poems with the current Forward Prize-winner

Food as Metaphor with Rosie Shepperd – literally a taster session: food will be served, poetry will be read and you’ll cook up some poems of your own

Hide and Seek in the Ideas Forest: Poetry & Picture Making with Sophie Herxheimer – take inspiration from Sophie’s Poetry Cafe exhibition of work and experiment with loosening poems and pictures from streets and trees

Streetwise with Penelope Shuttle – not just a place guiding us from A to B: remember, encounter and invent aspects of ‘the street’

BRISTOL

Poetry Studio with Fiona Hamilton – open to everyone wishing to participate in playing and experimenting with poetic forms, styles and genres

EXETER

Voice of the Earth with Jennie Osborne – find ways to voice your sadness, anger or joy for the earth as poets increasingly speak out for the voiceless

MANCHESTER

Ovid in Contemporary Poetry: a Reading and Writing Course with Edmund Prestwich – loved through almost two millennia, this course will look at Ovid and some examples of the poetry he’s inspired since to influence your own writing

Saturday Sessions with Ann & Peter Sansom – monthly sessions which combines brilliant writing exercises with insightful, supportive feedback

ONLINE COURSES

The Word Made Fresh’ – Restoring the Bible to English Poetry with Steve Ely – identify the Biblical literary techniques and work their influence into your poetry

Against English: Dialects, Conlangs and New Vocabularies with Harry Giles – for poets looking for multiple new techniques to break out from the limitations of language

Trust the Image with Catherine Smith – an online version of Catherine’s face-to-face course

What Work Is with Kim Moore – taking Philip Levine’s poem as a touchstone, explore other poets’ tackling of the subject and move towards the creation of your own ‘poetics of work’

Fragments, from the Thought to the Page 2016 with Kathryn Maris – a genre-bending course exploring those who write in fragments and suggesting new ways of observing yourself and the world

Long Poems & Invocations: Making The Measure Work For You with Melissa Lee-Houghton – explore what long poems bring out of the poet’s voice that shorter verse cannot and increase your work well beyond the traditional 40-line limit

A Life on the Edge: Hinterlands and Homelands with Holly Hopkins – bring those memories of suburbs, small towns and places on the edge of the ordinary to the page

Hearing Voices: World Poetry in Translation with Shazea Quraishi – in association with Modern Poetry in Translation magazine, generate new work with inspiration from translated pieces

Working with the Deep-Breathing Line with Liane Strauss – beyond pentameter, work on the lineation of your poetry and experiment with the long-line

The Poetry of Migration with Hannah Lowe – from colonialism to the current refugee crisis, this is for poets of all levels interested in exploring the movement of humans across borders

Fortnightly Feedback Course with Jonathan Edwards – a focused look at your poems-in-progress for all levels

The Lyric iPod: A Reading/Listening Group with Rishi Dastidar – an audio first for the Poetry School – get listening to the hits and get to grips not only with the lyrics of great songwriters, but their traditions, subject and themes