Poetry SchoolWelcome to The Poetry School Summer Sale!
Celebrate the bank holiday weekend with 25% off selected courses in London, Bristol, Manchester and online. Just use code SUMMER at the checkout stage online to receive your discount.
The offer ends on 8th September, so hurry!
Online
Signifying nothing? (Or, how to say diddly squat and not learn anything from it) with Eley Williams. Was £104, Now £78.
Flip writer’s block on its head and turn lack of inspiration into a source for creative ideas
What do I know? What am I even trying to say? Whether it’s thinking that one must make time for a Muse to descend or believing that certain conditions must be met in order to begin writing properly, poetry is easy to put off when it is freighted with ideas of meaningfulness. This course seeks to flip writer’s block on its head and turn lack of inspiration into a source for creative ideas, challenging the idea of ‘purposeful’ writing by exploring notions of meaninglessness as its own powerful medium for art.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks. Live chats on Tuesdays, 7-9pm GMT, first live chat starting 3 October. Book Here.
London
Child’s Play with Chrissy Williams. Was £90. Now £67.50.
Put away adult things and explore your inner child 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. We’ll look at all sorts of different children in poetry, from Carroll’s beamish boys to Plath’s loud vowels rising like balloons, and reconnect with our own childhood selves. We’ll also look at a wide range of different games that may be applied to your poetry writing, so you can approach the page in a different way – from the oulipian sublime to musical chairs. Get ready to sit down when the music stops and try something new.
5 fortnightly sessions on Thursdays, 7pm – 9pm, starting 19th October. Book Here
Level Up with Nick Field. Was £171. Now £128.25
Looking to take your work to the next level? Then this is the course for you!
Are you ready to submit your work for publication? Perhaps you’ve had some poems published and you’re looking to take further steps with your work. This course will involve exploring themes, finding inspiration and investigating key texts to help you take your work up a notch, create new work and discover fresh takes on writing poetry. Plenty of feedback, lots of new ideas.
10 weekly sessions on Tuesdays 6:45pm – 8:45pm, starts 19th September. Book Here
Take it Forward with Ellen Cranitch. Was £171. Now £128.25
‘I want to be able to speak and sing and make my soul occur…’ Do these words of poet W S Graham strike a chord with you? Do you have a poem in you burning to get out? This new course for beginners aims to galvanize your creativity. Each week we’ll read and discuss poems, looking at a range of contemporary work as well as seminal writers from the past. Meet Ocean Vuong’s passionate prose-poems and Gerard Manley’s Hopkins’ proto hiphop, examine the poems of everyone from Alice Oswald to Warsan Shire – these writers will inspire you to harness your own poetic impulse and take it forward.
10 weekly sessions on Mondays 6.45pm – 8.45pm, starts 18th September. Book Here
Foraging and Poetry Walk with Richard Osmond. Was £72, Now £54
Be inspired by nature on a day out in a wild London location with foraging poet Richard Osmond.
As well as a poet, Richard Osmond is a wild food forager, spending his days searching for wild fruit, herbs and fungi among the hedgerows of Hertfordshire. On this practical, in-person one day crash course, Richard will meet you in a wild London location, and you’ll spend the day being inspired by nature. You’ll be given practical advice on how to stay safe and informed when foraging, complete quick writing exercises based on the plants we encounter, and after a few hours outside the group will retreat to the pub. It will be a full immersion in the world of foraging, and the perspective you gain on this one-day event will be invaluable in informing your later solitary ventures into nature.
Sunday 10 September, 10am-3pm. The workshop starts at Redbridge tube station and ends at Wanstead (both Central line).
Play On: Live Music Inspiration with Jacqueline Saphra. Was £144. Now £108
What can music do for your poetry? What can your poetry do for music?
In this short course you’ll have the opportunity to use the experience of live music as a starting point for writing new poems. We’ll begin with an experiential workshop with discussion of published poems that are inspired by music. You’ll choose two contrasting concerts to go to in the month that follows, and using some tips and optional writing tools and constraints, you’ll write poems that we’ll workshop in the second session.
A two-day workshop running 10:30 – 16:30 on September 9th (Reading Day) and October 14th (Workshop Day). Book Here
Manchester
From the Archives with Martin Kratz. Was £90. Now £67.50.
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester contains thousands of manuscripts, correspondences, photographs and artefacts relating to the life and work of the novelist Anthony Burgess. While being renowned and celebrated as the author of the controversial novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess is less well known as a composer, translator and, yes, poet. This course offers the opportunity to explore, through your own writing, some of the unique items held at the Burgess Foundation.
Starting 24th October, 5 weekly sessions (except the final class, which skips a week and is on November 28th, not 21st), 7pm – 9pm. Book Here
Bristol
Landscape / Portrait with Holly Corfield Carr. Was £90. Now £67.50
Learn to look at the big picture when writing your poems
Taking you from initial sketches to the editing decisions involved in framing the finished piece, this course will teach you how to look at the bigger picture of your poems. Over five fortnightly sessions, we will use a range of playful and keen-eyed exercises borrowed from the best good lookers – poets but also painters, photographers, sculptors – to examine how you can make use of pattern, perspective or a carefully-positioned detail to bring real depth to the people and places of your written world.
5 fortnightly sessions on Mondays, 7pm – 9pm, starting 18th September. Book Here
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