Autumn 2017: Course Quick Guide

Autumn Term 2017 is now open for booking!

The opening of this new academic year marks the beginning of our 20th anniversary year: a year in which we’ll be celebrating two decades of making poetry happen with exciting events, our festival partnership with Poetry in Aldeburgh, and, of course, brilliant courses, workshops, tutorials and opportunities to help you write poetry.

Remember that new students get 15% off all courses – call us to get your discount! Concessions are available, and applications for bursaries – covering up to 75% of course costs – are now open.

See our Quick Guide below.

FACE TO FACE – THREE TERM COURSES (LONDON)

⟹ Pamphlet/Portfolio with Wayne Holloway-Smith

The friendly push and crucial support you need to hone that pile of poems into a larger work and take your next steps in poetry. Book Here.

⟹ The Construction of the Poem with various tutors

Work with a range of top Poetry School tutors across 30 weeks & write and workshop poems across a range of different forms. Book Here.

⟹ Take it Forward with Ellen Cranitch

A beginners course galvanizing your creativity and unlocking your poetic potential with a walk through some must-know contemporary writers. Book Here.

⟹ Routes into Poetry with Tamar Yoseloff

A starter’s gun of a course, examining the basics of rhyme, metre, form and structure, through writing exercises and workshops. Book Here.

⟹ Level Up with Nick Field

Plenty of feedback and lots of ideas for those looking to take their poetry to the next level by exploring themes, finding inspiration and investigating key texts. Book Here.

⟹ Poem, Prompt, Pick & Mix with Jacqueline Saphra

An intermediate course for those looking to develop their writing and style through experimentation, play and close reading. Book Here.

⟹ Advanced Poetry Workshop with Matthew Caley

For students breaking into publishing their work, thinking about their motives & direction, and after rigourous critiques of works-in-progress. Book Here.

⟹ Intermediate Poetry Workshop with Matthew Caley

Not just a step down from the above, but a supportive group for feedback, new ideas, writing to theme & experimenting with forms. Book Here.

⟹ Advanced Poetry Workshop with Special Guests 1 & 2 with Kathryn Maris

So popular, we’re running it twice! Book your place to develop your work with weekly workshops, with three sessions enhanced by special guest poets. Book Here for the Morning Group and Book Here for the Afternoon Group.

⟹ Saturday Sessions with Ros Barber

A weekend workshop for those of us with busier weekdays. Join Ros for one full day a month to get feedback on poems and generate new ones. Book Here.

⟹ Conversations with the Past: From Sappho to Basho with Tim Dooley 

First in a trio of courses designed to widen your repertoire, drawing on the work of poets from a range of cultures and traditions, and building your own body of creative work with an individual identity. Book Here.

⟹ Child’s Play with Chrissy Williams

Callooh! Callay! All work and no play makes Jack a dull poet! Come and unleash your inner child with a series of poetic games and experiments designed to push, pull, skip, hop and pole-vault your poetry into new areas. Book Here.

⟹ Blake in Lambeth with Chris McCabe and Sophie Herxheimer

Artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer, and Chris McCabe, poet and author of Real South Bank, have summoned the spirit of ‎William Blake to inspire new works combining text and art. Book Here.

⟹ Hyper-Spectacle with Emma Hammond

Poetry is a revolutionary act. But where can poetry exist within a spectacular society that often fails to separate advertising from art, spin from reality? Book Here.

⟹ Empathy with Sarah Howe

Can you really see the world from another’s perspective? Explore empathetic writing with Sarah Howe. Book Here.

⟹ Foraging and Poetry Walk with Richard Osmond

In a companion workshop to our online course A Poet’s Herbal: Useful Lore for the Poet Outdoors, search for wild fruit, herbs and fungi among the hedgerows of wild London with poet and forager, Richard Osmond. Book Here.

⟹ Play On: Live Music Inspiration with Jacqueline Saphra

Use the experience of live music as a starting point for writing new poems (students will be encouraged to go to live concerts of their choosing). Book here. 

⟹ Flamboyance with Katrina Naomi

Would you love to give your poetry some much-needed glitz and glitter? This workshop will consider flamboyance and exuberance, with a focus on the poetry of Peter Redgrove. Book Here.

⟹ Language, structure and style: a course for teachers and educators with Poetry By Heart

A course aimed at teachers, to give detailed knowledge of all aspects of the history and application of formal techniques in writing poetry. Booking opens soon.

⟹ Displacement with Ruth Padel

What does the theme of ‘displacement’ mean to you?  Explore the subject broadly, from exile and banishment, to exclusion and psychological separation. Book Here.

⟹ Voice Workshop for Poets with Nicola Collett

Practical exercises to free the voice and develop its range and resonance. How can we communicate effectively and clearly when reading poetry to a live audience? Book Here.

⟹ Poetry & Visual Art: Margate & London with Tamar Yoseloff

A gallery day exploring the collection at Turner Contemporary in Margate, where artist John Davies will give a talk on two major sculptural works, Scarecrows and My Ghosts. This will be followed by a workshop session back at the Poetry School in London. Book Here.

⟹ The Power of Place with Edmund Prestwich

Examine ways poets have plundered the hidden, life-shaping power of remembered and imagined places. Book Here.

⟹ From the Archives with Martin Kratz

Handle and respond to some of the unique objects held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, from miniscule musical matchboxes to hand-designed tarot cards. Book Here.

⟹ Saturday Sessions with Ann and Peter Sansom

Three new workshops from long-running favourites, Ann and Peter Sansom. Book for September, October and November.

⟹ Dwellings with Andy Brown

Delve deeper into the people, natural history, human history, work, myths, language and local distinctiveness of our habitats. Book Here.

⟹ Landscape / Portrait with Holly Corfield-Carr

Taking you from initial sketches to the editing decisions involved in framing the finished piece, learn how to look at ‘the bigger picture’. Book Here.

⟹ A Poet’s Herbal: Useful Lore for the Poet Outdoors with Richard Osmond

An online course to accompany our one-day Foraging and Poetry Walk workshop. Learn how plants and fungi can inform your poetry. Book Here.

⟹ Signifying nothing? (Or, how to say diddly squat and not learn anything from it) with Eley Williams

Flip writer’s block on its head and turn lack of inspiration into a source for creative ideas: the art of saying it best when you say nothing at all. Book Here.

⟹ Site-seeing with Holly Corfield-Carr

Whether you write on the road, by the river or under the covers, explore the rich and peculiar landscapes your poems are written in. Book Here.

⟹ The Unsent, Unanswered Letter with Melissa Lee-Houghton

From ‘I’ to ‘you’ – experiment with epistolary poems to real and imaginary recipients with award-winning poet Melissa Lee-Houghton. Book Here.

⟹ Word Power: Poetry and Ritual with Kate Potts

Examine the relationship between poetry and ritual, create new work inspired by a variety of oral, ritual forms and explore the role of ritual in your own writing process. Book Here.

⟹ Re-Make Believe: Shaping the Fairytale with Miriam Nash

Drawing on tales from our childhoods, mix outlandish myth and feats of imagination with the performative energy of poetic speech. Book Here.

⟹ To Be Continued… Writing Poem Sequences with Suzannah Evans

Sustain an narrative, discuss a many-sided argument, explore perspectives, and break free of ’40 lines or fewer’. Book Here.

⟹ The Lyric Essay with Nuar Alsadir

This course will look at the lyric essay, a genre-mixing attempt to bring the process of essay writing closer to the sensibility of the lyric form. Book Here.

⟹ Our Hospitable Languages: Writing Multilingual Poetry with Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

Languages welcome newcomers. They like to mingle, blunder and tease. Read and write multilingual poems. Book Here.

⟹ Poems of Love, Poems of Praise with Zeina Hashem Beck

Write everything from romantic pieces, to poems of praise for places, friends, parents, lost ones, the body, God, and the self. Book Here.

⟹ Speaking in Tones: Crafting Musical Poetry with Jodie Hollander

Craft more ear-pleasing poems with a focus on metre, rhythm, tempo, pacing & effective line-breaks. Book Here.

⟹ Fragments: The Bed of the Imaginary with Kathryn Maris

An advanced online, genre-bending look at poets, novelists, philosophers and psychoanalysts who think and write in fragments. This is a new course type! Book Here.

⟹ Stand-Up Poetry Studio with Eric Berlin

Apply the lessons of stand-up comedy to your poems, explore the oral tradition of both artforms, blur the barriers and have a laugh. Book Here.

⟹ Hyper-Spectacle Studio with Emma Hammond

Work to keep your poetry revolutionary and vital by disrupting the norm and depositing your poems in unusual places for unsuspecting new audiences. Book Here.

⟹ Art Thieves Studio: Robbing Techniques from the Artist with Alice Lyons

Walk the tightrope between poetry and visual art  and begin to connect with language as an art material that can be honed, shaped and sculpted. Book Here.

⟹ Fortnightly Feedback with Claire Trévien

A rigorous editing workshop for five of your discarded poems across ten weeks of peer and poet feedback. Warning: you may experience cuts! Book Here.