Course Quick Guide – Autumn 2018

London

Three Term Courses: The first term of our flagship year-long courses (3 x 10 week terms)

The Poet’s Toolkit (Autumn 2018) with Shazea Quraishi
Explore poetry’s inner workings, hone your craft, and take a close look at various forms and techniques to help your poems achieve lift-off.

Pamphlet / Portfolio (Autumn 2018) with Wayne Holloway-Smith
Take your work to the next level and develop a group of poems into a manuscript

Intermediate Poetry Workshop (Autumn 2018) with Tim Dooley
A weekly workshop for poets looking to develop their individual voice and technique, run by the inimitable Tim Dooley.

Poem, Prompt, Pick & Mix (Autumn 2018) with Jacqueline Saphra
Mix up your writing and learn new skills and techniques with one of our most experienced tutors

First Encounters (Autumn 2018) with Meryl Pugh
Don’t know where to start? Take your first steps into the world of poetry with Meryl Pugh.

Saturday Sessions (Autumn 2018) with Ros Barber
Set aside one Saturday a month exclusively for your writing with this serious and supportive workshop.

Advanced Poetry Workshop (Autumn 2018) with Richard Price
Develop your writing through discussion and feedback in one of our flagship Advanced Poetry Workshops

Advanced Poetry Workshop with Special Guests 1 with Kathryn Maris (Autumn 2018)
One of our flagship advanced workshops, with the added perk of special guests each term.

Advanced Poetry Workshop with Special Guests 2 with Kathryn Maris 2 (Autumn 2018)
One of our flagship advanced workshops, with the added perk of special guests each term.

Advanced Poetry Workshop with Sasha Dugdale (Autumn 2018)
Develop your writing through discussion and feedback in this advanced workshop with Forward Prize-winning poet Sasha Dugdale

Workshops: One and two day intensive classes

Mondo: The Global Avant-Garde with SJ Fowler
Journey through a world of avant-garde poetry over this jam-packed weekend with SJ Fowler.

Poem of the Air: Marina Tsvetaeva Translation Weekend with Sasha Dugdale
Get up close and personal with the extraordinary work of Marina Tsvetaeva, working with her previously-untranslated ‘Poem of the Air’. 

Working with Collage with Linda Black
Explore collage and re-appropriation with Linda Black, learning how these processes can create exciting and original poems of your own.

The Spell of the Sensuous with Miriam Darlington
Explore how poets catch the world. Looking at the work of Mark Doty, Kim Addonizio, Carol Ann Duffy and others we’ll employ the senses to capture felt experience.

Language of the Social with Caleb Femi
Explore the social side of language and break through its barriers to catch a true glimpse of reality.

Bridging Two Different Lands: Identity and Place with Romalyn Ante
Explore the effects of travel and place on your poetic identity with PRIMERS winner Romalyn Ante.

The Portable Generator with Joe Dunthorne
Read great poems and then try to write better ones using a variety of different catalysts as a way to approach new work

The Big Idea: Building The Sonnet Sequence with Jacqueline Saphra
What could be better than a sonnet? A sonnet sequence!

Short Courses: One term courses over five sessions

On Noticing and Startling: The Short Story (Autumn 2018) with Eley Williams and David Hayden
Study with two celebrated writers and learn the various poetic techniques that can be used in writing short fiction.

Poetry & Cinema with Adam Feinstein
Explore the potent connections between poetry and cinema with acclaimed translator and film critic Adam Feinstein.

Fuck Lyric: Politics and Poetic Form with Joey Connolly
Join the fight and write new, original poems in support of poetry’s resistance against conservative conformity

Reading Courses: No writing or feedback, just reading, enjoyment and study of major texts

Accidents of Gain: Reading 20th Century American Poetry with Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe steers you through the innovations, experiments and diversions of 20th Century American poetry

Courses in the South West: Classes in Exeter and Bristol

‘Cradle to Grave’: The Journey (Exeter) with Sally Flint
Move chronologically through life’s journey, learning how to capture the significant moments

Ancient Tongues & Hybrid Texts (Bristol) with Rowan Evans
Expand your writing between voices and across centuries to explore how poetry can respond to ancient languages, folk culture and myth.

Online Interactive Courses: Our flagship ten-week online courses with live chats

Against English: Dialects, Coinings and New Vocabularies with Harry Giles
Write against English, take it apart, and explode language altogether

Please – No More Poetry: Postmemory & Historical Trauma with Anna Veprinska
How do we write responsibly about our intergenerational traumas?

Integrated Circuits: Creating Digital Poetry with Maya Chowdhry
Leap from page to screen and create interactive poems fit for our digital age

Tell Me About a Complicated Man: Poetry Inspired by ‘The Odyssey’ with Stav Poleg
Re-imagine Homer’s cast of Olympians, sea-monsters, Lotus Eaters and mere humans taking Emily Wilson’s ground-breaking new translation as inspiration.

Speaking Out: Finding Your Public Voice with Ken Evans
Poetry is a platform, not an altar. Learn to write ‘public’ poetry that resonates.

Short Short Fiction: The Tiniest of Stories with Tania Hershman
What can poetry learn from short fiction, and vice-versa?

The God in the Forest: Nature Mysticism with Seán Hewitt
Awaken the mysterious, divine power of rocks, rivers, birds, trees and ourselves

Online Studios: Three week intensive courses focussing on writing rather than feedback

So Many Blood-Lakes: Ecological Nightmares Studio with André Naffis-Sahely
Write poems about our increasingly imperiled natural world, unhampered by human expediencies

Skeleton Alphabet Studio with MacGillivray
Put your poems on the anatomist’s slab and sing the body electric

Thingly Power: (In)Animate Studio with Caleb Parkin
Discover your sensuous side and write poems exploring the radiant materiality of curious objects

The Decisive Moment Studio with Remi Graves
Explore what matters to you most by mining moments of magnitude in your life.

Online International Courses: Online courses without live chats, suitable for students in all time zones

Poems of Love, Poems of Praise (International, Autumn 2018) with Zeina Hashem Beck
Choose love, write against brokenness and towards the idea of praise

Possibilities of the Line (International) with Jennifer Wong
Going back-to-basics-and-beyond with the essential unit of poetry

Writing on the Cusp of Becoming Something Else (International) with J.R. Carpenter
Explore ways to incorporate variability, instability, transformation, and change into the process of composition 

Living in a Different World: Poetry, Of, Through and After 1968 (International) with Gloria Dawson
Radical readings and revolutionary spirit from 1968 — the year that shook the world

The Art of Telling (International) with Chen Chen
Tell, don’t show, with multiloquent new work

Transreading Courses: Read poems translated to English, English-language poems inhabiting other cultures, and multilingual poems. 

Transreading Russia with Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
Celebrate present-day Russian poetry, create your own new translations and trans-readings, and publish them on MPT Online!

We Cannot Stop the Rumbling Trains: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Transreading) with David Tait
There’s something for everyone in the rich and vibrant contemporary poetry of China.

Online Masterclasses: Advanced and in-depth courses on craft and theory

Conscious Tracks: British Modernism (Masterclass) with Peter Hughes
Excavate from the language hoard of radical, underground and late modernist British poetry

Imaginary Spaces: A Sculptor’s Kit for Poets (Masterclass) with Eric Berlin
Handling poems as built objects, this workshop explores the studio practices of sculptors – both contemporary and ancient – for lessons that apply to our writing.

Online Feedback: Receive thoughtful critiques of 5 poems

Fortnightly Feedback with Degna Stone
Knock those loose poems into shape with some concentrated feedback