We are delighted to share with you our favourite poetry books of the year! Although it’s been a difficult year, where we couldn’t attend readings or poetry events in person, it has – nevertheless – been filled with exciting poetry, featuring long-awaited debut collections, innovative experiments, and fantastic books from long-established poets. There have been…
As you wrap yourself in your warmest scarf and woolliest sweater, you can look forward to our Spring 2021 Term here at the Poetry School! Our Spring Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is…
The leaves are green and the sun is still shining, but we’re already looking forward to the Autumn Term here at the Poetry School! Our Autumn Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our…
As we’re sure that most of you reading this are already aware, Roddy Lumsden very sadly passed away on January 10th 2020, after a long period of illness. In his passing, the poetry world has lost a true titan. Roddy was an acclaimed and innovative poet, an inspirational educator, a generous mentor, and a fastidious…
This handy quick guide to our Summer 2019 courses includes a booking link and a short description of everything we’re offering coming term! Click on a course for more information. Face-to-Face Courses London – One and Two-Day Workshops Mapping Our Lost Haunts with Jean Sprackland Rediscover the dens, playgrounds and treehouses of your childhood. Extrasensory Perceptions: Fortean Poetry with Caleb Parkin Channel poems from…
What book can no poet do without? That’s the question we ask every poet who teaches or writes for us. The Poet’s Bookshelf is a fantasy library containing one title – poetry or prose – recommended by each and every poet who comes through our doors. If you’re stuck for inspiration, why not have a…
‘Magical’ is not a word I often use to describe an experience, but my first visit to Poetry in Aldeburgh was certainly that. The town’s location on a gorgeous shingly beach, the soft, early November light we were blessed with for most of the weekend, the cosy pubs we’d head to in the evening for…
Face-to-Face Courses London Workshops: One and two day intensive classes The Light Room: Poetry & Photography’s Intersections with SJ Fowler Explore the light and dark of poems to develop new ways of seeing Come Back Early: Revisiting and Revising with Penny Boxall Find ways of turning a fresh pair of eyes on what we do….
To celebrate National Poetry Day today, we’re offering 20% off all our one-day workshops, for one-day only. Just use code NPD20 at the checkout stage online to receive 20% off the following courses: Working with Collage with Linda Black Experiment with collage and re-appropriation with Linda Black, learning how these processes can create exciting and original…
Face-to-Face Courses 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…
The Summer 2018 Term is now open for booking! We are delighted to open the booking period for the final term of our 20th anniversary year at the Poetry School. Remember that new students get 15% off all courses, just give us a call to get your discount! Concessions are available, and applications for bursaries –…
What were your top five poetry books of the year? What about top one hundred? Despite a rumour to the contrary… this year has been an alarmingly thick one for poetry. Stupefyingly thick. Not simply coats-the-back-of-a-spoon thick, but thick-enough-to-stand-up-in-a-straw thick, cutting-off-oxygen-flow-thick, a year so thick with great poetry you could re-mortar Dame Mary Archer’s 1683 residence, The Old Vicarage…
Avast! In scale, power and sheer unpredictability, there is nothing like the sea to inspire in both a physical and creative sense. Never homogenous, it is often astonishingly beautiful and offers up a beguiling mix of complexity and change on a micro and macro level – from the dance of exquisite plankton to the erosion…
Spring Term 2018 is now open for booking! We are delighted to open the booking period for the second term of our 20th anniversary year at the Poetry School. Feast your eyes on our forthcoming line-up of brilliant courses and workshops, and start planning your new year of poetry writing! Remember that new students get 15%…
Welcome 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…
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…
One-Term Short Courses: Stand-alone courses comprising five two-hour sessions over ten weeks in one of our London classrooms. The Pamphleteers with Saradha Soobrayen: Write, select, arrange and edit poems for your pamphlet with Saradha Soobrayen. #Afterhours with Inua Ellams: Discuss, dissect and explore various ways into writing counter or companion pieces to poems from the canon….
In Autumn 2016 we advertised for applications for Poet in Residence at the inaugural Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival. Ben Rogers was subsequently put into position and undertook a month full of research, interviews, writing prompts and poems. We asked him to provide his reflections on this mammoth task in the hope it might prove useful to…
Taking our lead from David Tait and Jennie Osborne this term, we’ve tried to give a concise run-down of our Spring 2017 courses, using just two lines or less! Short Courses A Conversation with the Past (Modernisms) with Tim Dooley: Consider how the innovations of modernism influenced the direction of poetry and workshop new poems in…
Everyone likes a bite-sized chunk, right? Well here is a barrel full of them as we try to introduce our Autumn 2016 course programe in two lines or less… Three-Term courses The Construction of the Poem with Tim Dooley, Judy Brown, Matthew Caley, Claire Crowther and Martyn Crucefix: A 30-week course on the history…
The best way to start to start learning about poetry is to read as much about it as you can. Here’s a list of our recommended ‘how to’ primers and textbooks: Adrienne Rich, What Is Found There: Notebooks Alfred Corn, A Poem’s Heartbeat Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera Anne Stevenson, Five Looks at Elizabeth…
Here’s a quick look at what’s on offer for our Autumn Term (beginning 14 September 2015). 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…
Poetry and music: a natural pairing? On instinct, yes! of course! why who hasn’t extolled a thumping good poem for its ‘musicality’, or raved about the ‘pure poetry’ of a great song? If you go back far enough to when nearly all verse was accompanied by flute and lyre, it’s hard to say whether poetry…
In this installment of interviews with poets and performers who have combined poetry with other media we hear from actor Robert Bathurst, who is staging and starring in a double-bill of Christopher Reid’s A Scattering and The Song of Lunch at the Chichester Festival; Jacqueline Saphra, poet and poetry school tutor whose book If I…
As an extra stocking filler to go alongside our ‘books of 2014’ blog yesterday, we present our favourite poetry gigs of the year. After all, not all poetry is best experienced on the page… KEY OD = Ollie Dawson / JBrd = Julia Bird / WB = Will Barrett / JBdn = Jo Brandon Chris McCabe‘s…